Environmental groups are starting to pour money into some of the highest-profile races in the country.
With 100 days to go before Election Day in November, greens are launching seven-digit attack ad campaigns in Senate races and undertaking million-dollar organizing efforts in the fight for the White House.
{mosads}They hope 2016 is the year climate change and environmental issues play a starring role for voters, and they’re beginning to take aim at vulnerable members and in high-profile races to exert their influence.
Within the last three weeks, a pair of green organizations teamed up to drop almost $3 million on two Senate races, and a billionaire-backed group has promised to spend $10 million with a labor group that is organizing voters for November. The groups — and history — say that’s only the beginning of the spending.
Voters in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin began seeing greens’ ads on the air this month.
The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) and the Environmental Defense Action Fund teamed up last week on a $1 million ad buy against Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (R). The ads criticize his skepticism over climate science and try to tie him to oil companies that have donated to his campaign.
Earlier in July, the groups launched a $1.8 million effort against Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey (R), with an ad hitting him for oil donations and saying, “big oil polluters” have a “friend” in Toomey.
Those two races are among the highest-profile in the country, with Democrats looking to capture the five seats they need to win back the Senate in November. The LCV also has field teams on the ground in other states and an ad on the air in Nevada — but they say their push is just beginning.
“Through our field programs and ad campaigns, sometimes in partnership with EDF Action, we are defining climate science deniers and big polluter allies early.” Clay Schroers, the Victory Fund Campaigns Director at LCV, wrote in a memo, due out Monday, on the group’s independent expenditures this cycle.
“This tactic allows us to elude political clutter and reach voters now, ensuring the challenge of climate change and the opportunity for clean energy gain traction as top tier issues in close elections.”
LCV and EDF are two of the bigger outside groups playing in the climate sphere.
LCV has “spent or planned” $5.4 million so far this year, the group’s memo said. In 2014, LCV spent $19.1 million on campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), with EDF following at $2.9 million. LCV spent $14.1 million on its 2012 campaign.
The two groups were bested by NextGen Climate, an organization from billionaire activist Tom Steyer that spent $20.5 million in 2014.
Steyer himself pumped almost $75 million into Democratic causes last cycle, and he’s promised to spend more than that in 2016. Early in July, he announced a $10 million effort with a labor union to organize voters for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, saying, “whether it’s on climate change, economic opportunity, or racial justice, a [Donald] Trump presidency would be a disaster for working families.”
While LCV and EDF are already going up with ad buys, other groups are preparing to follow with organizing efforts for state and local races. The Sierra Club, for one, plans to send up to 60 organizers into swing states like Nevada, Colorado and elsewhere to help on-the-ground work for federal and state candidates, Executive Director Michael Brune said.
“We’ve done it the past but we’ve refined our approach to it, and we’re going to be a lot bigger than we have in the past,” he said.
But Republicans say greens face tough obstacles in making their case.
Polling tends to show voters mostly ignore climate issues — only 2 percent consider the environment the most pressing problem facing America, according to a July Gallup poll — despite dire warnings from Democrats and a renewed focus on the problem from the Obama administration.
Greens also aren’t the only groups playing in contentious states, minimizing the impact of any single ad campaign. Pennsylvania has seen $24.6 million in outside money already, according to the Center for Responsive Politics; groups have spent $4.7 million in Wisconsin.
Further, the GOP hopes to flip environmental issues against Democrats, equating climate efforts with new government regulations and accusing their opponents of having misplaced priorities.
“While Wisconsinites want to make sure we’re safe from terrorism and our economy is growing, Senator [Russ] Feingold and his allies are talking about killing jobs in the name of climate change,” Johnson spokesman Brian Reisinger said of his Democratic opponent.
In Pennsylvania, Toomey’s team has also accused Democratic challenger Katie McGinty of too quickly taking jobs in the energy sector after stints as a federal and state environmental regulator.
“Pat Toomey is proud to stand with the thousands of men and women whose jobs depend on Pennsylvania’s energy sector, while also fighting for commonsense steps to protect our environment,” spokesman Ted Kwong said.
Greens and liberals, though, see a chance to put the climate issue front and center with voters this year.
Trump, for one, has been a factor in driving greens’ ambitions this cycle. His positions on climate change — he once called it a hoax — conflict so greatly with Clinton that she deployed it as an attack line during her speech at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday.
“I believe in science,” she said in a veiled reference to Trump. “I believe that climate change is real and that we can save our planet while creating millions of good-paying clean energy jobs.”
Donors and activists are heeding the call, too. Brune said “people have their hair on fire over the prospects of a Trump presidency,” lending a sense of urgency to their work between now and November.
They hope to sharpen the climate contrast between Democrats and Republicans before Election Day.
“That’s clearly the largest gap on environmental issues that we’ve seen in presidential electoral history,” he said.
“Part of our job is to show how climate change isn’t an isolated issue but is intertwined with other deeply-held priorities, like good jobs, enhancing our national security and protecting our clean air and water.”