Senator Jay Rockefeller to Retire From Senate: This Is Not a Good Thing

West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller announced today that he will not be seeking a sixth term in the Senate, giving the usual line of spending more time with his family as the reason for his retirement from public office.

Rockefeller has, for the most part, been very supportive of the coal mining industry. In 2010 he introduced legislation that would have placed a two-year moratorium on the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. And he has taken no serious legislative action to restrict or slow down mountaintop removal.

            He has nonetheless been good at supporting miners. He says that the Senate achievement of which he is most proud is the measure he sponsored in 1992 that was aimed at preserving retirement benefits for miners and their widows and children.

            Despite his support for coal, the industry and its supporters are now accusing Rockefeller of abandoning them. Rockefeller supports his fellow Democrat, President Obama, who has made efforts to roll back some of the most egregious rule-making left over from the George W. Bush administration that gave coal companies almost carte blanche to tear down mountains, fill in valleys, and pollute the streams of Appalachia.

            It’s hard for me to feel bad about the retirement of a Senator who has supported mountaintop removal and scuttled action on global warming, but with Rockefeller’s retirement, the prospects for the mountains of Appalachia, as well as the health of the planet, may have worsened. Shelly Moore Capito, who currently represents West Virginia’s second congressional district, has vowed to run for Rockefeller’s seat. In a state that has swung from being solidly Democratic to being a GOP stronghold, her success in gaining this Senate seat is most assured. (Indeed, the politics of the state have shifted so far to the right that Rockefeller may have lost to Capito if he has chosen to run for a sixth term.)

Capito co-sponsored the “Stop the War on Coal Act,” that would, among other things, loosen rules for the storage of coal ash and gut aspects of the Clean Water Act. It’s a wish list for the coal industry. She has also authored legislation that would hamstring the EPA’s ability to do its job.

Rockefeller has been no environmental champion, but at least he hasn’t worked to worsen the situation in West Virginia and the rest of Appalachia. With his retirement, it looks like that’s exactly what we will get.