DENVER – When he vowed to spend as much as $50 million of his own money and raise the same from like-minded donors, billionaire Tom Steyer electrified the political world with his promise to make climate change an issue in this year’s midterm elections.
Those elections are now two months away, and the former hedge fund manager is running out of time.
On pace to raise far less than the widely touted $100 million, his group has a relatively minor presence on the airwaves. Steyer now says his biggest impact this year will be an old-fashioned, get-out-the-vote ground game.
“Our strategy is to do direct voter contact,” Steyer said in a recent interview. “Particularly in an off-year election, which depends more on turnout, actually having people going out and directly speaking with voters face to face is actually the thing that changes elections.”
But Steyer’s burgeoning political operation will focus on only a handful of races, bypassing several coal- and oil-rich states where Democrats are in highly competitive Senate contests that could determine control of the chamber. At a time when he’s still outlining his plans for staff and volunteers, his free-spending conservative opponents have been at work wooing voters for months.
To be sure, Steyer hasn’t backed away from the midterms. He’s given more money than anyone else this year to the myriad of political groups spending freely to buy television ads, call voters and pack mailboxes with fliers. Since the 2012 election, he’s personally donated almost $26 million to his super PAC, NextGen Climate Action, with $5 million of that earmarked for a donation to a group run by former top aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that’s focused on keeping the Senate in Democratic hands.
But NextGen has gotten little other support, collecting only about $1.7 million from other donors through the end of July. Steyer’s nonprofit, NextGen Climate, does not have to disclose its finances, but it also cannot be explicitly political in its actions.
By comparison, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already raised enough money to spend $15 million this cycle, including more than $2 million to help Colorado Republican Rep. Cory Gardner in his race against Democratic Sen. Mark Udall. It’s one of the races Steyer cares about most, and NextGen has spent less than $800,000. By the time Election Day arrives, the Chamber of Commerce expects to have spent $50 million on TV ads, mail and phone calls – an increase from the $32 million the business group spent in 2012.
This week, Steyer’s team announced plans for the final weeks of the campaign that focused on using hundreds of paid and volunteer organizers to turn out environmentally minded voters in four races for U.S. Senate – Colorado, Iowa, Michigan and New Hampshire.
