FRANKFORT --- With a loan of $300,000 to his campaign, Jack Conway is bankrolling his bid for U.S. Senate from “millions of dollars in tainted money” he has made in a Texas natural gas company opposed to developing clean Kentucky coal, the Mongiardo for Senate Campaign charged today.
“Jack Conway is launching a new round of false negative ads against Daniel Mongiardo from over one million dollarshe made in a Texas gas company that favors developing natural gas over clean Kentucky coal. With over 90% of his stock holdings concentrated in this one Texas energy company, Jack Conway has invested against Kentucky miners, their families and coal communities throughout Kentucky. Jack Conway should be ashamed of himself,” said Kim Geveden, Mongiardo spokesman, "because the worse Kentucky coal does, the more money Kinder Morgan and Jack Conway pocket."
As reported in the Courier-Journal, Conway purchased in April 2009, $1 million to $5 million in stock---over 90% of his reported assets---in Kinder Morgan Energy LP, a Texas energy company that favors natural gas over developing clean Kentucky coal. Over the past year, Kinder-Morgan’s stock has gone from $48.75/share on April 26, 2009 to $68.27/share on April 26, 2010, a 40% increase. If Conway invested $2.5 million, he has made over $1 million this past year.
“Despite having a family fortune worth millions several times over, Jack Conway has enriched himself by over $1 million in a company hostile to Kentucky’s coal economy, its workers and communities. Anyone who cares about Kentucky coal cannot trust Jack Conway,” said Geveden.
On January 21, Kinder Morgan CEO Richard Kinder said he “favors natural gas as the solution to the country’s energy problems.” In an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle in July 2009, Kinder said that natural gas and nuclear are the only answers for the next 10 to 20 years to address climate change while developing clean coal technology will waste “enormous sums of money.”
Despite having spent a million dollars on TV ads, most of it negative against Mongiardo, two independent polls this past week show Conway is on average eight points behind Mongiardo.
“Kentucky families and seniors should begin taking steps to protect themselves from the nasty, false negative attacks about to be launched by Jack Conway on TV, radio, mail and phones in the closing days of this campaign as he desperately tries to buy what he couldn’t otherwise earn. With Conway pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into his campaign, parents should take care not to let their children answer the phone or open the mail. There is no doubt that the things Jack Conway is going to do and say in the final days of this campaign would make even Mitch McConnell blush,” warned Geveden.