U.S. Senate, Maryland

Chris Van Hollen

Chris Van Hollen is running for a third term representing Maryland in the U.S. Senate. He previously served Maryland's 8th Congressional District in the U.S. House from 2003 to 2016, and before that, spent four years in the state House of Delegates and eight years in the state Senate. Throughout his long career in public service, he has been a consistent and leading voice for the environment. Early in his time in the state legislature, he made protecting the Chesapeake Bay a top priority, authoring the law that banned drilling in parts of the Bay watershed. In Congress, he cosponsored the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act. In the U.S. House, Van Hollen has served as the co-chairman of the bipartisan Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus and the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Task Force.  He has been a longtime leader in the efforts to combat climate change, introducing the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act, and helped lead the support in Congress for President Obama's Clean Power Plan and the Green Climate Fund. He has also introduced the National Home Energy Savings Revolving Fund Act, which provides funds to local governments for use in making loans to homeowners to make energy-efficiency upgrades, as well as legislation to create a government-backed “Green Bank” to reinvigorate the market for funding renewable energy projects. He fought the Trump administration's efforts to gut the fuel efficiency standards and introduced cap and dividend legislation, the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act. As a state senator, in 2000, he passed a bill that was at the time the most comprehensive package of tax incentives to promote clean energy anywhere in the country. Representative Van Hollen has earned a 98% lifetime score on LCV’s National Environmental Scorecard.

Candidate profiles are paid for by the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, www.lcvactionfund.org, and authorized by the candidate committee.