On the Campaign Trail with Ed Tibbetts

Chuck Grassley, one of the most stalwart backers of ethanol, took to the Senate floor today to tilt back at the critics who say the renewable fuel is causing food price increases and contributing to famine worldwide.

He came with an interesting bit of ammunition, too. A Wednesday story in Roll Call (subscription required) that outlines a campaign launched by the Grocery Manufacturers Association to roll back the ethanol mandate in last year’s energy bill.

The story says GMA signed up public relations company Glover Park Group to help out.

Roll Call got hold of  the GMA request for proposal and Glover Park Group’s response.

From the story:

In its RFP, the GMA outlined a four-part approach: building “a global center-left coalition,” which includes environmental, hunger, food aid, poverty, development, senior, children, business, nutrition, farm consumer and labor groups; taking advantage of the “extraordinary earned media opportunities” caused by rising food prices; mobilizing local food banks and “other local opinion leaders in key states and districts”; and hiring “trusted third-party experts” to document the effect of fuel mandates on, among other things, global hunger and poverty, job losses in the food industry, and inflation.

In its 21-page answer, a copy of which was also obtained by Roll Call, Glover Park laid out a hard-hitting plan with two main goals for the campaign.

“First, we must obliterate whatever intellectual justification might still exist for corn-based ethanol among policy elites. … Second, we must demonstrate to policy makers at the state and federal level that there is a political price to allowing ethanol policy to drive up the cost of food,” Glover Park wrote.

In order to do that, Glover Park said the campaign must “clearly show the direct and irrefutable link between corn-based ethanol policy and the variety of harms caused by that policy, above all food price inflation” along with an urgent and remedy-based messaging strategy.

The emphasis, the lobbying and public affairs shop noted, must be that “this is a ‘Now’ issue that is fast reaching crisis proportions for American consumers.”

Grassley says it’s a “smear campaign” prompted by the GMA. “They’ve outlined their strategy of using environmental, hunger and food aid groups to demonstrate their contrived “crisis,” he says.

Grassley also throws some punches at the Clinton White House. Glover Park Group has some prominent Clinton connections. Joe Lockhart, the former president’s press secretary, is a partner there. Other Clinton staffers work there, too.

“I fought President Clinton during his 8 years in office at every turn when he tried to undermine our renewable fuels industry.  Now I’m fighting his former staff and staff that worked for the Gore and Kerry presidential campaigns. I imagine they’re leading this effort because they can’t stand the fact that President Bush has proved to be the best friend the renewable fuels industry has had,” Grassley says.

The grocers defended themselves in the Roll Call article.

GMA’s Scott Faber said it was hight time the group, which represents many of the nation’s largest food, beverage and household goods companies, joined the debate.”We think that America has only heard one side of this debate for too long,” said Faber, GMA’s vice president for federal affairs. “The food industry is just adding its voice to the anti-poverty, environmental and consumer groups that have been ringing the alarm bells about diverting so much of our food to our fuel supplies.”

Glover Park Group didn’t respond to Roll Call’s requests for comment, the article says.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 2:02 pm and is filed under On The Campaign Trail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.