NextGen climate action plans $100m spending in 2014 elections

Retired investor Tom Steyer's political organization, NextGen Climate Action, is preparing to spend more than $100 million during the 2014 election, he said. The San Francisco-based group intends to pressure federal state officials to enact climate change measures through attack advertisements against governors and legislators, the New York Times reported Tuesday. Targets include the Florida gubernatorial race, where incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Scott has claimed he is not convinced science has established climate change is man-made, and the Iowa senatorial race, where a Democratic candidate, Rep. Bruce Braley, is an outspoken proponent of measures to limit climate change. The plan is to make NextGen Climate Action a political organization on the scale of the conservative political network overseen by Charles and David Koch, the newspaper said. To that end, Steyer, a billionaire, gathered leading liberal donors and philanthropists to his Pescadero, Calif., ranch in August to ask them to join in his efforts. People involved in the discussions said Steyer sought $50 million in donations to match $50 million of his own contribution. "We want to do things that are both substantively important and will have legs after that," Steyer said in an interview on the 2014 elections.