NC Senator Who Champions Fossil Fuels Got Industry Money For 20 Years

"WASHINGTON -- With checkbooks in hand, executives from the embattled coal mining industry converged last year on the remote Olde Farm Golf Club near southwest Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

Unlike in 2010, when golf legends Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player played the elite course in Bristol, Virginia, to raise money for homeless kids, the beneficiaries of the gathering on June 10, 2015, were two political allies of the coal industry: Republican Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania.

The joint fundraising effort, which had begun weeks earlier, netted each senator’s campaign $73,750, at least $63,000 of it from coal industry political action committees, executives and their family members."

Greg Gordon reports for McClatchy September 29, 2016.