A leading green group wants to register 1 million voters who support candidates who back action on climate change, a goal that underscores the environmental movement’s growing campaign clout and sophistication. But as the environmentalists kick their campaign efforts into high gear, they’re wondering whether they have a presidential front-runner in their corner.
The League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, with the Earth Day Network, the NAACP National Voter Fund and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, announced the registration target at a Washington Earth Day event Saturday that drew tens of thousands to the National Mall.
The effort dovetails with pushes from environmental groups:
• Tom Steyer, the billionaire ex-hedge fund manager and bankroller of climate group NextGen Climate Action PAC, last week spearheaded a handful of panels on climate change at the annual meeting of the Democracy Alliance, an influential collection of progressive donors who must contribute at least $200,000 annually to approved Left-leaning organizations.
• The Sierra Club and Greenpeace are working with a number of groups through the Democracy Initiative, an endeavor that aims to roll back voting restrictions that would ostensibly ease burdens for minorities who tend to be more left-leaning.
• And LeadingGreen, a combined effort from the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, is gearing up for its first full electoral cycle of accepting donations in hopes of prodding candidates on climate issues.
“What’s kind of cool with what’s emerging with the political movement part among the broader environmental movement is everybody is kind of finding their own niche,” Heather Taylor-Miesle, director of the NRDC Action Fund, told the Washington Examiner.
But for all the cohesion and coordination that — at least in the mind of environmental campaigners — has for the first time given environmentalists the kind of machinery to go toe-to-toe with deeper-pocketed fossil fuel companies, there’s one thing it lacks: A candidate who inspires the more left-leaning portion of the green base.
“In the traditional Democratic primary you’d have some more candidates to the left and some to the right of Hillary Clinton,” Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for 350.org, told the Examiner. “I think the effect of the lack of that in 2016, or at least the lack so far, is that a lot of groups that would normally jockey to get their issue in the debate, it’s more of a battle to get to Hillary Clinton.”
Many groups say it’s too early to render a verdict on the climate policies of Clinton, a Democrat and the clear front-runner for the White House in 2016. The ex-secretary of state and former first lady just officially announced her candidacy last week.
“I talk to donors every day, that’s my job. And I’m not getting that. I was with a whole bunch of donors last week and everybody was really jazzed. And you wouldn’t know that if you read the papers,” Taylor-Miesle said. “I just don’t understand what we would have wanted from her. When you’re not a candidate, you’re not a candidate. She wasn’t in elected office. She was laying low on all issues, not just ours.”
The more left-leaning environmental groups say Clinton carries some red flags. Her unwillingness to speak about the Keystone XL pipeline, a project she oversaw at the State Department that environmental groups contend would exacerbate climate change by locking in development of Canada’s carbon-rich tar sands, is one of them. Revelations that oil companies and oil-friendly nations such as Saudi Arabia provided funding to both the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Foundation are another.
“These are all indicators … that we’re going to have to really watch not only what she says but also ends up doing on the campaign,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth Action.
Environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth, 350.org and Greenpeace view their place as pushing candidates leftward or, as Pica describes it, “beyond what they believe is politically feasible.” To that end, some have begun organizing behind the “Ready for Warren” activists to prod the populist Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., into running for the presidency in hopes of moving the Democratic primary field more left than the centrist Clinton would go if unchallenged.
Still, even some of those more liberal groups are willing to give Clinton more time to flesh out a climate-friendly image. They said recent tweets and comments by John Podesta, Clinton’s top strategist who was most recently a senior climate adviser to President Obama and a former chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton, point to climate change being a top issue for Clinton.
“We think of this as a fight we can win and that we have to win,” said Ganapathy, who added that former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat who has hinted at a White House bid, could win favor from environmental groups. “I think we can get that in Hillary, but we have to push. … the activists that will be knocking on doors for Hillary over the next 18 months are the same people who are 350’s members.”
Many groups are willing to give Clinton more time to fashion her climate and energy image. But they’ll be looking for specifics beyond rhetoric, as the environmental movement is convinced momentum is behind it just one presidential election after climate change didn’t even surface in debates between President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
“The next president must create real and lasting solutions that cut carbon pollution while creating a clean energy future that continues to improve the economy and creates jobs. The next 19 months offer all presidential candidates an opportunity to demonstrate exactly how they would do that,” Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, said when Clinton formally announced her candidacy.
The presence of someone like Steyer certainly helps push Clinton and others, Ganapathy said. Steyer, a Democrat who is thought to have political ambitions of his own, spent $74 million in the 2014 election, making him the largest public spender of the cycle. The midterm was a warm-up for 2016, which boasts not only an open room at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., but also a Senate map that favors Democrats.
“You’ve seen the rise of Tom Steyer as an important player in American elections and that will only go up. He spent 2014 building an infrastructure and that will start to pay dividends,” Ganapathy said.
In 2014, NextGen Climate opened nine state offices in key early voting state Iowa and one in New Hampshire, which hosts the second vote of the primary season. It also set up shop in 13 Florida locations, the key battleground state and home to GOP presidential contenders Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush.
“It’s exciting to see new partners coming together in this fight, because by working together we can make these issues local, communicate the real impacts clearly, and effectively engage voters on the ground, neighbor to neighbor,” Suzanne Henkels, a NextGen Climate spokeswoman, told the Examiner in an email.
Environmental groups’ ground game, one of the more expensive but effective methods of turning out voters, has grown with Steyer as the lead financier. NextGen Climate itself did some canvassing by trying to get 1 million “drop off” voters — those that don’t typically turn out for midterms — to the polls in the last election cycle.
The door-knocking from the League of Conservation Voters is part of the division of labor among environmental groups. While the effort is non-partisan and not overtly political, the constituencies the League of Conservation Voters plans to target lean to the left. Much of the same could be said for Sierra Club’s and Greenpeace’s actions through the Democracy Initiative.
“This pledge for the Earth Day event was just the opening announcement of the effort, we have made no specific plans yet for which states and which specific tactics will be used on the voter registration project. I can say that project is most likely to focus on registering what we see as under-represented sectors of the electorate: women, young people and communities of color,” David Willett, a League of Conservation Voters spokesman, told the Examiner in an email.
The NRDC Action Fund, meanwhile, is working “behind the scenes” with potential candidates and drawing on the environmental group’s policy expertise to ensure elected officials are educated on climate and energy issues, Taylor-Miesle said. And while she is willing to give the fledging Clinton campaign a grace period, the group will be watching.
“We will push her just like we push President Obama and just like we push [GOP Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz and we push Marco Rubio,” Taylor-Miesle said.
