Senate Democrats are laying the groundwork to make the vote on Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency into a referendum on whether Republicans believe humans are causing global warming.

Scott Pruitt is high on Democrats’ list of no-go Trump nominees, in large part thanks to his resistance to the scientific consensus that human activity is the leading cause of global warming. Democrats are unlikely to derail Pruitt’s EPA bid, but they see the potential to turn GOP votes against him — a rare wedge between Trump and Republicans, given the tradition of party unity on Cabinet-level positions.


“I do think that there’s something we can do to stop” the nomination, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said in a brief interview last week, noting that his party needs only a few of the Republicans who have voted “on the right side of climate” to oppose Pruitt to topple the nomination. “We are totally mobilized for this one and ready to roll.”

Whether or not Democrats manage to pick off even one Republican, starting a fight over the EPA nominee — and his divisive climate-change views — has already helped rally a liberal base demoralized by Trump’s victory. Outside groups and Democratic senators are gearing up for a hearing showdown, seeing Pruitt as a chance to highlight Republican intransigence on climate change issues.

It helps that they now have someone they can cast as the planet’s Public Enemy No. 1.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) vowed that Pruitt “is going to become the living embodiment of the fossil-fuel and anti-clean air, anti-clean water movement in the United States of America. And I like those odds.”

Incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) tweeted Friday that “I oppose” Pruitt, a direct public stance he has taken on no other Trump nominee so far. By contrast, Schumer singled out Rex Tillerson's "disturbing opposition to sanctions on Russia" among a serious of questions saddling the ExxonMobil CEO's nomination as secretary of state, but stopped short of declaring he would vote no.

Even Democrats’ incoming senior member on the environment committee, the moderate Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, sounded a combative note last week after Pruitt’s nomination.

“We cannot roll back the progress we made in the past eight years to protect the environment,” Carper tweeted. “Anyone leading EPA who wants to ignore science or look out for special interests at the expense of public health can expect a fight with me.”

Republicans say they don't feel threatened. Instead, GOP leaders cheered Trump's selection of Pruitt, who's set to dismantle most of President Barack Obama’s climate agenda, and say they are prepared for Democrats to make trouble.

“Democrats are still in shock that they’ve lost the presidency and are in the minority, still,” Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a GOP leader and incoming chairman of the environment committee, which will vet Pruitt, told reporters last week. "I don't take anything for granted."

Barrasso pointed out that Republicans let seven Cabinet nominees sail through on Obama's first day in office, a deference they hope Democrats will afford to Trump. But many senators already have told POLITICO that for nominees that they deem particularly objectionable, delay will be the order of the day.

Meanwhile, environmental groups both establishment and upstart are itching to provide backup for Democrats — and lay out the stakes for voters concerned about global warming — despite their long odds of success, given the 2013 rules change that ended filibusters of most presidential nominees. “We will continue to work with our allies in the Senate to make it crystal clear just what is at stake and why a climate denier like Pruitt has no business running the EPA,” League of Conservation Voters Senior Vice President Tiernan Sittenfeld said in an interview.

Democrats are eyeing three Republicans — Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee — as the most likely to oppose Pruitt, given their previous votes to affirm that human activity is warming the planet.

Jamie Henn, strategy director at 350.org, said his group is planning to specifically target those three — all of whom voted last year for a symbolic Schatz-written measure that said humans "significantly" contribute to climate change.

Pruitt's dispute with climate science has drawn opposition from George W. Bush's onetime EPA chief, bolstering Democrats' case to battle the GOP on his nomination even if they can't stop it. And Bush's former press secretary, Ari Fleischer, advised Democrats last week to focus their efforts on fighting Pruitt, as a base-rallying move, instead of trying fruitlessly to derail multiple Trump nominees.

Environmental advocates describe the nomination fight as a bright-line issue.

"This is about whether you are pro-science or anti-science," Henn said. "Both Democrats who need to hold the line and Republicans who have said a lot about this issue in the past will be faced with a choice."

Sit-ins and other grass-roots protests are a favorite strategy for 350.org, which protested outside the Washington home of former Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) during the Keystone XL pipeline debate — tactics that are likely to be redeployed during debate on Pruitt.

Also on greens’ pressure list for the Pruitt vote are Republican Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada and Jeff Flake of Arizona, who face reelection in 2018; Rob Portman of Ohio, who has championed clean energy proposals; and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the energy committee chairwoman, who allies with her home state’s oil and gas companies but has prioritized global warming. The Sierra Club on Wednesday launched digital ads targeting GOP Sens. Graham, Collins, Alexander, Heller, Flake, Portman and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

Collins said in a brief interview last week that she would have to delve more deeply into Pruitt’s record before deciding whether or not to support him. “It appears that it will require some scrutiny on my part,” Collins said of the nomination, “but I know virtually nothing about him.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said he thinks the business lobby has a vital role to play in siphoning Republican support from Pruitt, who has vowed to roll back major portions of Obama’s climate policies.

“[L]ook at where the bulk of corporate America is on climate change,” Whitehouse told reporters. Singling out the 81 corporations that pledged to help make good on Obama’s global emissions-cutting deal, he said: “If they take interest in this, that can change the way the nomination comes out.”

Trump’s nomination Tuesday of Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) as his interior secretary could further intensify the fight against Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma. Both are poised to enact a deregulatory agenda anathema to most Democrats, but Zinke is a freshman lawmaker and decorated veteran with an affable persona and Pruitt is a hard-driving fossil-fuel industry ally who has portrayed resistance to widely accepted climate science as principled dissent.

Zinke is drawing criticism from green groups, focused on his support for his home-state coal industry. But his record also includes endorsements from outdoors groups and support for the federal conservation funding program, which has put him at odds with other Western conservatives.

“Pruitt epitomizes the oil and gas industry, what’s wrong with the system that Trump was trying to attack,” one veteran progressive group official said, adding that a sitting member of Congress would likely “have a higher level of support than someone coming in fresh from outside.”

Scott Pruitt's dispute with climate science has drawn opposition from George W. Bush's onetime EPA chief. | AP Photo

While the majority of Senate Democrats are expected to take a firm stand against Pruitt, a handful of moderates, particularly those up for reelection in 2018 in states that Trump won big, could feel pressure to back Pruitt. Many of them have been critics of excessive EPA regulation in the past.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey wrote to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday urging him to back Pruitt, a pointed step given that the ambitious Morrisey is seen as a potential reelection challenger for Manchin. The Democrat responded by praising Pruitt's "impressive résumé" but declined to commit to a "yes" vote until he can talk with Pruitt about "how he intends to right-size the EPA."

However, Pruitt also has challenged the federal government’s ethanol mandate before the Supreme Court — a move that may not sit well with farm-friendly Democrats.

“I’m still learning about him, but I have serious concerns about his record of opposing” the ethanol policy that he would have to enforce, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) said of Pruitt in a statement last week.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) “is very concerned about Mr. Pruitt’s history of not protecting clean air and clean water, which is a constitutional right in Montana,” spokesman Dave Kuntz said by email. “That said, he looks forward to reviewing Mr. Pruitt’s full resume, asking him tough questions to ensure he understands Montana’s values of responsible energy development, transparency and a ‘clean and healthful environment.’”

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) is “reserving judgment on President-elect Trump’s nominees until their confirmation hearings,” a spokeswoman said.

