Environmentalists Pour Money into State Elections

Seeing no end to gridlock in Congress, national environmental groups are trying a new strategy for winning battles on climate change and green power: pouring record amounts of money into legislative races in a handful of states.

 
The multimillion-dollar push by groups like the League of Conservation Voters and liberal billionaire Tom Steyer’s super PAC aims to secure friendly majorities in the legislatures of states such as Oregon, Washington and Colorado. Victories there could help blunt their grim prospects in D.C., where the all-but-paralyzed U.S. Senate may be in Republican hands after November.
 
In Washington state, where control of the state Senate narrowly rests with a conservative coalition of 24 Republicans and two Democrats, switching just two seats could put green-minded lawmakers in charge. That would help Gov. Jay Inslee’s chances of enacting a market-based carbon reduction program next year. Environmentalists there also hope to block coal export projects and are increasingly worried about trains carrying crude oil.
 
In Oregon, environmentalists are just shy of a majority of legislators needed to renew a green-fuel mandate that expires at the end of 2015. In Colorado, they want to maintain the state Senate’s thin Democratic majority, which could help defend a renewable energy program and impose tighter standards on oil and gas development.
 
“Policy action on clean energy will be at the local and state level for the next few years,” said Betsy Taylor, a Takoma Park, Maryland-based leader of a network of wealthy climate donors, adding that some states are considering imposing a price on carbon and more than 100 cities have clean-energy programs. “Donors are paying attention to this and investing in local candidates who are climate heroes.”
 
LCV’s state chapters are “looking at the state legislators as the congressmen and senators and governors of the future,” said Daniel Weiss, the group’s senior vice president for campaigns.