Iowans signaled a clear message this week: Whatever political influence ethanol lobby once had is now gone. Big Corn’s crushing defeat, highlighted in a new online-exclusive video, comes at the hands of voters in America’s largest corn-producing state and paves a clear path for congressional repeal.
For years, presidential candidates and politicians have bowed before the ethanol lobby, often flip-flopping on positions to appease first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus voters. Ethanol’s perceived political power was once considered so strong, that the fictional TV series, West Wing, included episodes on the ethanol lobby’s influence.
But a decade into the corn ethanol mandate, voters and politicians realize that corn ethanol was a mistake and has been a massive boondoggle that’s hurting consumer pocketbooks and worsening our environment.
In fact, the American Council for Capital Formation’s survey, released a week before the Iowa caucuses, clearly identified the trend that ethanol is no longer a top tier voting issue as Iowans care very little about a candidate’s position on the RFS.
What’s more, national and local media – including the New York Times, Politico, NPR, LA Times and Quad City Times – reported on corn ethanol’s diminished political influence. And editorial boards coast-to-coast, including USA Today, Washington Post, Las Vegas Review Journal and Bloomberg View, joined the growing consensus of corn ethanol’s economic and environmental shortcomings and called for corn ethanol’s repeal.
With voters in Iowa rejecting the ethanol lobby, congressional leaders – even in corn producing states and on both sides of the aisle – have the support to take action and repeal the broken corn ethanol mandate.
