Here's the PR Firm Behind 'Your Energy America' Front Group Pushing Atlantic Coast Pipeline

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โ€œYour Energy Americaโ€ is a newly formed front group pushing Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline. By tracing hosting information for the group’s website, DeSmog has found evidence pointing to the PR firm behind the group: DDC Advocacy, which has known ties to the Republicanย Party.ย 

Short for Democracy, Data & Communications, DDC‘sย founding partner, chairman, and CEO,ย B.R. McConnon in the past โ€œhas acted as a key contact and spokesperson for [National Federation for Independent Business],โ€ according to his LinkedIn. NFIBย takes funding from Koch Industries and other major corporate interests, and McConnon began his career as a policy analyst for the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy, the precursor to Americans for Prosperity.ย 

โ€œYour Energyโ€ was launchedย in the heat of the Virginia gubernatorial primary races and is run by the American Gas Association. The race for Virginia’s highest officeย recently saw Democratic Party candidate Ralph Northam and GOP candidate Ed Gillespie come out ahead as their parties’ nominees for the looming Novemberย election.

Credit:ย CentralOps.net

Dominion’s Atlantic Coast pipeline, slated to run from West Virginia to North Carolina and slice through western Virginia, servesย as a key issue in the race, with both Northam andย Gillespie coming out in support of the pipeline.ย According to ThinkProgress, โ€œDuring the primary, Northam and his PAC received $109,283.30 from Dominionโ€™s executives, board members, lobbyist, and PAC,โ€ while Gilespieย receivedย $43,125.

Your Energy Virginia, an offshoot of Your Energy America, whose website is also hosted by DDC, served as a sponsor for the Virginia Chamber of Commerceโ€™s 2017 Energy and Sustainability Conference held in May. Dominion served as the lead sponsor for that convening, which featured a keynote address by Virginia’s Democratic Governor, Terryย McAuliffe.

A source who requested anonymity and attended the Chamber of Commerce event told DeSmog, he saw Ryan Lowry, DDCโ€™s Vice President of Client Relations, wearing a Your Energy Virginia name badge at the event. DDC has played a pioneering role in pushing web-centric โ€œastroturfโ€ public relations campaigns, which it callsย โ€œgrassroots.โ€

โ€œThe firm was among the first to try to use technology for grassroots advocacy,โ€ Jim Gianiny, DDC‘s president, said in 2010 interview with the Personal Democracy Forum. โ€œThe firm built up a consulting and grassroots advocacy practice around its technology to become the full-service issue advocacy firm that we areย today.โ€

Related: Check out DeSmog’s research profile on Your Energyย America

Koch, American Petroleum Institute Clients of DDC

DDC is an Associate Member of Edison Electric Instituteย (EEI), a lobbying and advocacy wing of the electric utilities industry which has paid DDC over $1.8 million to do public relations work since 2012, according to U.S. Internal Revenue Services (IRS) tax forms. According to a list of web domains hosted by DDC andย obtained by ThinkProgress in 2009, the Koch Industries political affairs committee, KochPAC โ€”ย as well asย several tobaccoย companies โ€” have websites hosted by DDC.

โ€œWeโ€™re strategic partners and problem solvers for your most complex public affairs issues,โ€ DDC says on its website. โ€œWe offer the most innovative digital tools, technology and data to help you get the results you need, when and where you needย them.โ€

A 2007 client list tracked down by DeSmog shows that DDC has also worked with companies such as BP, Dominion, Edison Electric, Southern California Edison, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,ย San Diego Gas & Electric, News Corp (owner of Fox News), and others. On its website, a DDC case study page also says it did the digital work for the American Petroleum Institute‘s Energy Citizensย campaign to promote hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€) in the Marcellus Shale.

โ€œDDC has actively partnered with the American Petroleum Institute (API) for years, designing, executing, and managing all facets of their key national advocacy program,โ€ explains the profile.

โ€œDDC was tasked with creating an on-the-ground campaign focused on raising the profile of Energy Citizens in support of natural gas production from the ‘Marcellus Shale’ formation in Pennsylvania. This was the first time a consumer-based advocacy group would collaborate with other local landowners, small businesses, and industry groups to support natural gas development from the Marcellus Shale site; conveying positions to government officials, the media, and the broader public; as well as building organizationalย momentum.โ€

In the โ€œEnergy Citizensโ€ Marcellus campaign, DDC said it helped to convene two roundtable meetings with local congressional representatives, get 170ย letters of support published and sent to Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale Commission, and recruited over 2,300 people to take up theย cause.

According to IRS tax filings reviewed by DeSmog, API paid DDC $29.3 million for its work between 2011 andย 2015.

Tobacco, Bush Ties To DDC

DDC also has its own political action committee named DDC PAC, which has given thousands of dollars in campaign contributions exclusively to Republican Party candidates. The Guardian reported in 2013 that DDC was working for Phillip Morris on a website trying to fend off efforts to mandate plain packaging for the tobaccoย industry.

In 2011, DDC acquired the firmย BlueFront Strategies, which was at the time owned and founded byย Sara Fagen, who served as White House political director for President George W. Bush and as a top strategist to the 2004 Bush re-election campaign. Fagen, who served as a fundraiserย and did data work for Jeb Bush’s short-lived 2016 presidential run, now works as a partner at DDC. Her husband, Joel Fagen, works for Foxย News.

Corporate Get Out theย Vote

The day before the June 13 gubernatorial primary election in Virginia, The Intercept’s Ryan Grim reported that Dominion had done an internal push of its employees to go to the polls and vote for Northam. DDC has actually done this sort of thing before, according to a 2012 article by Lee Fang published in The Nation, which pointed to a similar effort to urge Koch Industries employees to getย out the vote for Republican Party presidential nominee Mittย Romney.

โ€œDDC Advocacy is part of a cottage industry of Beltway consultants who specialize in helping businesses activate their employees and customers into mini lobbyists,โ€ reported Fang. โ€œIt’s not clear if DDC Advocacy is replicating the type of explicit candidate endorsements pioneered by Koch for these otherย companies.โ€

Dominion itself has a get-out-the-vote website, DominionEnergyAction.com, which is hosted by the firm Charles Ryan* Associates.ย Charles Ryan’s other clients includeย American Petroleum Institute, Independent Oil and Gas Association of West Virginiaย andย others.


Credit:ย CentralOps.net

Sara Fagen, then named Sara Taylorย and a key aide to Bush chief of staff and campaign chief Karl Rove, was credited by The Washington Post as a โ€œmicrotargetting guruโ€ who in 2004 โ€œwas among those who helped use sophisticated analysis of consumer data to enable the Bush campaign to target potential voters even when they resided in Democratic-leaning voting districts.โ€ DDC spent over $4 million on various get-out-the-vote techniques in 2012 on behalf of Republican Party presidential candidateย Romney, according to U.S. Federal Election Commission data, which does not require DDC to disclose who paid the firm to do theย work.

Getting out the vote is one thing, but creating the veneer of a grassroots movement in support of pipelines is another related, but albeit distinct, thing altogether. What they share in common: a need for the appearance of everyday peopleย working together as a means to anย end.

โ€œThe fossil fuel industry craves its own grassroots movement, and they really are having a hard time not appearing to be the thugs that they are,โ€ Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center,ย recently told ThinkProgress of Your Energy America. โ€œIn most cases, our communities are an obstacle for these companies to get through so that they can makeย money.โ€

DDC representatives did not respond to a request forย comment.

*Updated 6/22/17: This story previously erroneously listed Charles River Associates, not Charles Ryan Associates. We regret theย error.

Main image credit: David Wassenaar |ย Facebook

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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