House Rivals by Mike Lawson Read Free Book Online

thousand bucks goes a long way.
    â€œBut these Republicans aren’t a bunch of sheep, and a lot of them are farmers and ranchers and they care about the environment and anything that affects their property and mineral rights. And Curtis doesn’t always need to get a law passed. Sometimes all he needs to do is slow things down, so legislation gets delayed. Or if there’s a politician who’s ranting against something Curtis wants, he just needs to quiet the politician down.”
    â€œSarah, have you actually got any evidence that Curtis has bribed anyone? I mean, have you witnessed him bribing somebody or has anyone been willing to go on record that Curtis bought them off?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen how do you know . . .”
    â€œLet me give you an example. You know what a blowout preventer is? The device that failed in the Deepwater Horizon and dumped five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico?”
    â€œYeah, I know what you’re talking about,” DeMarco said.
    â€œThere was bill going through the North Dakota statehouse to increase inspection requirements for blowout preventers, and naturally Curtis was against the bill because more inspections would delay production and increase his costs. This one Republican named Stevens sided with the Democrats on the bill and he was pushing his party to approve it. Stevens is actually a pretty good guy when it comes to balancing energy production against environmental concerns.
    â€œWell, Stevens is a farmer and to get to his farm he uses a road that passes through another farm. Stevens has an easement from the other farmer allowing him to use the road, and his dad had it before him. But one day, the other farmer says he’s not going to allow Stevens to use the road anymore, and this meant that Stevens would have to drive an extra twenty miles to get to his place. To make matters worse, the road he’d be required to use has a bridge that goes over a little creek, and it’s not rated for heavy loads. Stevens filed a lawsuit, of course, but the lawsuit was going to drag on for a year and in the meantime, Stevens would go broke. The next thing that happens, don’t you know, Stevens stops supporting the bill, it fails in the Senate, and he gets the easement back. You see?”
    DeMarco shook his head. “And that’s it? A guy won’t let him use a road and then the guy changes his mind and Stevens changes his vote?”
    â€œYes. Nobody gave Stevens a bag full of cash. Curtis just created a situation where Stevens would go bankrupt if he didn’t play ball.”
    â€œHow did you find all this stuff out, about Stevens and the easement and the other farmer?”
    â€œWhen Stevens changed his position I wanted to know why, and I started digging. I talked to people, like the Democrats he’d been working with, and his lawsuit, of course, was a matter of public record.”
    â€œBut you don’t know for sure that Curtis made the other farmer cancel the easement, or why he did it, or if that’s the reason Stevens changed his vote.”
    â€œI do know! I just can’t prove it. Stevens denies it, of course, and when I asked the other farmer—who his neighbors all said is a shitty farmer and up to his neck in debt—he refused to talk to me. But I know!”
    Before DeMarco could object again, she held up a hand to silence him. “There was another case. A Democrat, who lives in Williston, which is right about in the middle of the Bakken oil field. She was making a big stink about flaring and saying that Curtis was one of the biggest polluters.”
    â€œFlaring?” DeMarco said.
    â€œJesus,” Sarah muttered, appalled by DeMarco’s ignorance. “Flaring is where they vent off and burn waste gases that supposedly can’t be efficiently captured and processed. If you were to go up in space it would look like there are ten thousand bonfires burning on the