The Liberal Super PAC Hoping to Use $100 Million to Turn 2014 Into a Fight About Climate Change

[DonViejo]

By Josh Voorhees

A California billionaire is hoping to unleash somewhere around $100 million in this year's mid-term elections with the singular focus of increasing the chances that United States will take action to address climate change, the New York Times reports today.

The sheer nine-figure size of that fundraising target—cash that in typical super-PAC fashion will largely be used for attack ads tearing down candidates on the other side of the issue—is news in itself, but it's also the latest example of Democrats learning to love the super PACs that roared to life after the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision. "We have a democratic system, there are parts we would want to reform or change, and Citizens United is prominent in that," the billionaire in question, Tom Steyer, told the paper. "But we’ve accepted the world as it is."

Have they ever. According to the Times' Nicholas Confessore, Steyer is currently at work raising roughly $50 million to pair with another $50 million of his own money to bankroll his NextGen Climate Action group (which includes the super PAC and the other secondary political apparatus), a total that would put the climate-focused organization on the same playing field as the conservative political network overseen by the Koch brothers:

Mr. Steyer, 56, accumulated more than $1.5 billion during his days at the hedge fund Farallon Capital Management, before he retired in 2012. Today, he is among the most visible of a new breed of wealthy donors on the left who call themselves “donor-doers,” taking a page from the Kochs, Mr. Bloomberg and others to build and run their own political organizations — outside the two parties and sometimes in tension with them. ...

more
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/02/18/nextgen_climate_action_tom_seyer_california_billionaire_hopes_to_raise_100.html?

[polichick]

1. Very happy to know it - thanks! k&r

[KamaAina]

2. This guy is the real deal

he got Prop 39 put on our ballot and passed in 2012. Among other things, it directs the state to spend a sizable sum of money on green energy projects. Guess whose hedge funds are heavily invested in green energy comapnies?