Photo credit: Creative Direct
by Steve Haner
If the Commonwealth of Virginia was not paying Matthew Moran to serve as Governor Glenn Youngkin’s deputy chief of staff and point person with the General Assembly, as recently revealed, who was? Based on the websites for his employers, mainly the renewable energy industry.
For example, Moran is identified as on the Virginia advisory board of an advocacy group called Conservatives for Clean Energy, strong supporters of the push to eliminate fossil fuel use in the state and replace it with solar and wind-driven electricity.
Go to the website promoting Link Public Affairs, which lists him as a principal, and under “Our Work” you find as a client the Maryland-Virginia-Delaware Solar Energy Industries Association. On its promo page, support for the Virginia Clean Economy Act is the highlight. Another client of Link’s is S Power, a major solar developer active in Virginia.
Moran is also employed by Creative Direct, a political campaign consulting concern with a Richmond base but a national reach. There is additional overlap between its personnel, Link, and Conservatives for Clean Energy, with another Creative Direct partner listed as that advocacy group’s state director.
As a registered lobbyist during 2020 and 2021, Moran’s client list also included quite a few renewable energy companies or advocacy groups. Presumably those relationships ended before the start of Youngkin’s term in January.
Why are you having to read this on Bacon’s Rebellion? Shouldn’t who he was collecting money from, the actual clients as well as the firms, have been part of the original news stories? It took me three minutes to find all that, so why didn’t the Richmond Times-Dispatch or the Washington Post? And why did Virginia Mercury, usually so eager to pile on Youngkin, merely link to the other stories and not do its own?
In contrast, look at the treatment given by the state’s legacy media and Virginia Mercury to another Youngkin staff choice with energy industry connections, Andrew Wheeler. Mercury in truth is now the outlet covering the Capitol the most thoroughly. Wheeler had worked for the fossil fuel industry and had taken actions in the Trump Administration strongly opposed by the Solar-Wind Industrial Complex. That was part of the story all along.
In Moran’s case, only half the story has been told. If Moran’s client list, previously or through Link, had included a natural gas firm or a coal company, as a lobbyist or merely for advisory or public relations services, would the stories have been different? Imagine if media had learned Wheeler was still being paid by coal interests? The coverage would have been incessant and national.
My theory, just a guess on my part of course, is those media outlets are all also part of the Dominion Energy-Solar-Wind Industrial Complex, all tied into the same messaging goal of telling Virginians: “Fossil fuels are bad and solar and wind energy are good.” Moran is aligned with them and was ensconced in an incredibly key location of influence at a very crucial time. They took a pass for an ally.
The people who worked so hard to prepare legislation seeking to repeal or amend or even tweak the Virginia Clean Economy Act and related measures have to be wondering now, is this why the Governor’s Office was dead silent on them through the session?
Adding to their questions is this: this unprecedented arrangement was approved by Governor Youngkin’s legal counsel Richard Cullen, formerly of the law firm McGuireWoods LLP, the Main Street Richmond firm long affiliated with Dominion Virginia Energy for legal and lobbying services. Protecting VCEA from any change was the utility’s 2022 legislative goal, as well.
Working as a lobbyist, grassroots or communications expert on behalf of any or all these clients is fine. Being paid by them (directly or indirectly) while presenting yourself to the public and legislators as a key aide to the Governor is the issue. Is it possible to keep the interests of paying clients and the Governor separate? Skepticism is warranted.
The revolving door between working as a state employee and then as a lobbyist and even back to the public payroll again is well-used. But folks are usually on one side of the door at a time. Somebody leaving state service (say from the Governor’s staff) faces a waiting period before taking on lobbying clients. Moran will face no such prohibition on returning to public relations consulting for entities with matters pending before state government.
Lobbyists have to register and report, but the loopholes in that process are well known. One of the largest is the failure to track and report the related communication and grassroots influence spending aimed at firing up the public in support the lobbying efforts. That is what firms like Link do, and often very well.
To borrow a phrase, now you know the rest of the story.
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