Ex-Obama Aide Duels Ex-Kerry Staffers Over Keystone

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-08/canadian-province-hires-company-with-ties-to-kerry.html

Supporters and opponents of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline have recruited former aides to Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama in dueling efforts to influence the White House.

Alberta -- the source of the oil sands that would be sent though TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s pipeline -- hired Boston-based public relations firm Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications Inc. to promote the project, according to disclosure reports. Rasky Baerlein’s chairman, Larry Rasky, worked for Kerry’s first campaign for the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts in 1984, according to his biography on the firm’s website. Rasky also served as communications director for Vice President Joe Biden’s unsuccessful campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, former White House aide Bill Burton is part of a new coalition of environmental groups opposing the pipeline. Burton, whose outside group raised $65 million in support of Obama’s re-election last year, said the “All Risk, No Reward Coalition” group is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to prod Democratic supporters of the president to push him to reject the pipeline.

“We have an electorate of one: President Obama,” Jane Kleeb, the head of BOLD Nebraska, a group fighting the pipeline, said on a conference call with Burton yesterday.