But before all you wacko birds go making a big stink out of this, remember:  the money he took was completely incidental to the real issue at hand, namely, that Gary Peters stands for the environment!  The rest is deflection by evil right-wing extremist forces bent on raping the earth for profit.  Washington Free Beacon:

Michigan Democratic senatorial candidate Gary Peters attended a fundraiser held by anti-Keystone billionaire Tom Steyer despite his proclaimed opposition to the influence of out-of-state billionaires on Michigan politics.

Steyer, a hedge fund billionaire, has pledged to spend $100 million in 2014 to elect environmentalist Democrats in February. Peters accompanied Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) to Steyer’s San Francisco mansion less than a week after the announcement. The pair dined on salmon and grass-fed beef from Steyer’s personal ranch and before walking away with $400,000 for Reid’s Senate Super PAC.

Peters has collected $170,000 from leadership PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Peters’ pilgrimage to San Francisco contrasts his commitment to getting so-called dark money out of politics, as well as his public statements criticizing the libertarian Koch brothers. His campaign site’s blog attempted to connect Republican candidate Terri Lynn Land to the liberal boogeymen.

“The Koch Brothers: out of state oil billionaires trying to buy the election for Terri Lynn Land,” the post said. “They share an agenda. … If Terri Lynn Land and the Koch Brothers win—Michigan loses.”

Peters’ environmentalist position mirrors Steyer’s agenda. The environmentalist billionaire’s top priority is blocking the Keystone Pipeline, which would create tens of thousands of jobs. The Obama administration delayed the project again in April, just weeks after President Barack Obama attended a $5,000-per-plate fundraiser at Steyer’s.

[…]

The Land campaign slammed Peters for placing big money donations ahead of the interests of Michigan workers.

“Congressman Peters has sold out the workers of Michigan to a liberal California billionaire. To Michigan families and workers, the Keystone means more jobs, lower gas prices and greater American energy independence, but to Gary Peters opposing it means a political meal ticket,” Land spokeswoman Heather Swift said.

Those positions may have won Peters support from big money donors like Steyer, but the Democratic congressman is also relying on financial support from labor groups that support the pipeline. Obama’s Keystone delay sparked outrage from some major labor unions.

Land and Peters are running neck-in-neck for the Senate seat held by outgoing Democrat Carl Levin.

After years of this perfidy and the disastrous Democratic politics that have all but destroyed vast urban stretches in Michigan, the fact that a Democrat crony corporatist isn’t 25% points behind makes me weep.  That a Republican even has a fighting chance for Levin’s seat, though, gives me a modicum of hope.

Incidentally, the same exact campaign is being run here in Colorado:  Cory Gardner, the most likely GOP candidate to take on pro-ObamaCare, anti-Keystone Senator Mark Udall, is being targeted in ads tying him to “Big Oil interests” and outside money that “taints” Colorado politics.

Evidently, Udall and the folks at OFA who are helping him beat back attacks on his record, seem to think Coloradans have forgotten how Michael Bloomberg essentially purchased nearly the entirety of the Democrat legislature in Colorado, pushing them to pass gun laws that not only remain wildly unpopular in most of Colorado, but which led to the recall of two Democrats, including the Senate President, and exposed, in sordid detail, that the people presuming to maker our gun laws haven’t the first idea about firearms.

Too, it compelled several representatives and State Senators, including my own here in Weld County, to openly proclaim they had no intention of following these new laws, nor of enforcing them, given that on their face they were unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, Colorado’s status as a purple state has been impacted by pre-“comprehensive immigration reform” influxes of new Democrat voters.  Which is why the state is shaped almost like a political donut, with the heavily liberal interior urban enclaves, which are surrounded by Colorado’s traditional voters, many of whom voted to divide Colorado into two different states.

Udall won his Senate seat by running ads saying his opponent would take away a women’s right to choose.  This time, we’re supposed to be terrified by “Big Oil.”  And yet with heating and cooling prices rising, potential brownouts on the way, and gasoline reaching near $4 a gallon at times, “Big Oil” is starting to look a whole lot better than “Big Government Environmental Shakedown Artists.”