{"id":534089,"date":"2010-04-19T11:34:33","date_gmt":"2010-04-19T15:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.southernstudies.org,2010:\/\/5.12228"},"modified":"2010-04-19T11:58:23","modified_gmt":"2010-04-19T15:58:23","slug":"power-politics-tva-chair-steps-down-to-focus-on-conservative-fundraising-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/534089","title":{"rendered":"POWER POLITICS: TVA chair steps down to focus on conservative fundraising effort"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mike_duncan.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>After serving as chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority for a year, Mike Duncan stepped down from the post on Friday, citing<\/a> his new duties leading a new conservative political fundraising organization.<\/p>\n

The former treasurer, general counsel and chair of the Republican National Committee, Duncan is now directing American Crossroads, a new political action committee that’s competing with the RNC to raise money from corporate donors.<\/p>\n

“I recently have taken on some additional responsibilities that I also believe are extremely important,” Duncan said<\/a>, adding that he thinks American Crossroads “will become an important player in American politics.”<\/p>\n

Duncan also serves as chair and CEO of Inez Deposit Bank in Inez, Ky.<\/p>\n

American Crossroads has gotten commitments of almost $30 million so far, and is seeking to raise more than $50 million to help dozens of Senate and House candidates this fall, the National Journal reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The new PAC — which has been referred to as the “shadow RNC”<\/a> — comes as official GOP fundraising efforts have taken a blow from revelations that RNC officials spent almost $2,000 at a risque club<\/a> in West Hollywood.<\/p>\n

Duncan will remain on the TVA board, to which he was appointed by President George W. Bush. His selection as chair of TVA last February was controversial, passing by a vote of 4-3 — a rare show of dissension by TVA board members, who usually act unanimously. Southern Alliance for Clean Energy Executive Director Stephen Smith described the choice<\/a> of Duncan as “overly partisan and tone deaf.”<\/p>\n

Unanimously picked to replace Duncan as TVA chair was Dennis Bottorff, chair of the Nashville venture capital firm Council Ventures. Though he’s a major contributor to GOP candidates<\/a>, Bottorff was one of the board members who voted against Duncan’s chairmanship.<\/p>\n

Bottorff notes<\/a> that the energy industry is changing in profound ways that will require major capital investments and new ways of doing business:<\/p>\n

“The new environmental regulations that are being contemplated in Washington will present enormous challenges to TVA’s engineering and financial teams, along with challenges — as well as opportunities — to its leadership and employees. I hope I am able to help TVA’s senior management team, and my fellow Board members, provide the leadership that we will need to navigate these critical times.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But like Duncan, Bottorff has no prior management experience in the electric power industry.<\/p>\n

Bottorff takes TVA’s helm as the utility giant — a federally owned corporation that generates most of its electricity by burning coal — faces a class-action lawsuit from people impacted by the massive December 2008 spill<\/a> of more than a billion gallons of toxic coal ash from TVA’s Kingston plant in eastern Tennessee. TVA unsuccessfully sought immunity<\/a> from the suit by arguing that it was an arm of the federal government, even though it is self-financed. It’s estimated that the cleanup is costing the utility more than $1 billion, not including litigation.<\/p>\n

As a result of the Kingston disaster, the Obama administration is currently considering new regulations for coal ash that could also have a big impact on TVA’s business and bottom line. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After serving as chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority for a year, Mike Duncan stepped down from the post on Friday, citing his new duties leading a new conservative political fundraising organization. The former treasurer, general counsel and chair of the Republican National Committee, Duncan is now directing American Crossroads, a new political action committee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4085,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-534089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4085"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}