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Top super PAC donor wants to wean US off fossil fuels
YOUNGSTOWN
Tom Steyer, described by The Washington Post as the top donor to super PACs in the nation, said he is working to wean the nation off fossil fuels and instead use alternative energy sources.
In an exclusive interview Thursday with The Vindicator, Steyer said he strongly backs Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Republican Donald Trump because she has a comprehensive energy plan.
“It’s pretty clear he [Trump] doesn’t have the temperament or character to be president of the United States. That’s pretty darn obvious,” he said.
Trump is also “very limited in his policies,” Steyer said.
Steyer said he was in Youngstown to “meet and talk to some of the people who have been working or volunteering to talk to millennials about energy and climate.”
Steyer is founder of NextGen Climate, a nonprofit that tackle’s environmental issues, and NextGen Climate Action, its super political action committee.
The Post recently listed him as No. 1 in the nation among those who have given money to super PACs, which can accept unlimited contributions, pegging his contributions for this election cycle, through Aug. 31, at $38 million. The newspaper also said Steyer, who made his fortune as a hedge-fund manager, put $70 million into the climate-change super PAC during the 2014 election.
During Thursday’s interview, Steyer downplayed the money he’s given saying, “The effort here is we independently work within the political system. We do occasionally contribute to politics,” but what “we really do is try to set up an organization to try to facilitate a broader democracy.”
Steyer contended he doesn’t lobby and instead he “tries to empower citizens” and help them “make good decisions.”
Steyer said he’s trying to persuade millennials who backed U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in his failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination to back Clinton over Trump.
NextGen conducted a poll in late July, he said, that showed 44 percent of millennials “did not believe Secretary Clinton and Mr. Trump had different policy positions.” That’s because, Steyer said, Sanders, who attracted much support from millennials, spent “eight months saying they were the same.”
But as people are informed of the candidates, he said they’re backing Clinton even though some are still bothered Sanders isn’t the nominee.
“They’ve got to realize we don’t have Sen. Sanders, but the second choice [Clinton] is so much better than the third choice,” Trump, Steyer said.
That same poll shows in late July that 65 percent of Sanders’ supporters were going to back Clinton, and that percentage is now at 74 percent, he said.
Steyer, of San Francisco, said Clinton’s energy policies fit with his: to have all energy usage come from “clean energy,” such as wind and solar, by 2030, and 100 percent 20 years later.
Jackie Stewart, Ohio state director of Energy in Depth, the education and research arm of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, says Steyer has “pledged vast sums [of money] to push his fringe anti-fossil fuel agenda,” and NextGen “is dumping a significant portion of its” money into “Ohio to target millennial voters and fund failing anti-fossil fuel campaigns across the state.”