Senate Republicans fended off Democrats’ climate change campaign in the Senate last week, but their strategy exposed cracks in the majority party.

Republicans managed to neutralize a Democratic amendment on climate change in favor of a watered-down statement that left deliberately vague how much human activity is to blame for global warming.


But the move proved almost too successful: Fifteen Republicans agreed with Democrats that humans played at least some role in the changing climate, enough to put the amendment within one vote of passage, to the dismay of the Senate majority.

The nearly successful Republican language came as a surprise and was welcomed by liberal stalwart Sen. Barbara Boxer of California.

“What a breath of fresh air. … I urge an ‘aye’ vote,” she told the Senate ahead of the roll call.

The amendment authored by Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), one of dozens proposed to the bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, came up in a whirlwind session that saw both parties angling to outmaneuver the other in a messaging battle over the first bill to hit the floor in the new Republican-controlled Senate.

In the end, only a modest measure stating that climate change is real and not a hoax passed the chamber, winning even the backing of Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the author of a book that denounces the idea that climate change is man-made.

But the 15 Republicans — including seven from red states as well as one likely presidential contender, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky —went further, agreeing climate change was affected by human activity.

GOP energy lobbyist and consultant Mike McKenna cheered the demise of Hoeven’s climate amendment, which left Democrats only a muddled campaign-trail message to use against vulnerable Republicans.

Still, he warned that the number of Republican senators backing Hoeven’s amendment set a “really troubling” precedent, especially since Senate Minority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) missed the vote while recuperating from his accident.

“If Harry Reid’s well, that passes,” McKenna said in an interview. As for Democrats, he added: “Next time they’re going to come back much smarter, much tougher. … If we’re losing Republicans on votes like that, we need to construct better votes.”

The GOP’s trick play on the climate amendment had the party first propose language that stayed on message, praising “abundant, affordable, clean, diverse and secure” energy, its mantra that includes fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. But an edit emerged in the hours ahead of the vote that borrowed the Democratic language on human-caused climate change but omitted the word “significant” to describe the impact.

Hoeven later told reporters that the change to include the climate language was made “because our members felt they needed something they could vote for,” though he was ultimately forced to vote against it to prevent it from reaching the 60-vote threshold.

Some greens hailed the division among the Republicans and their leadership. Environmental Defense Fund senior director Jeremy Symons, a former Boxer aide, wrote Friday that the Hoeven vote “exposes [a] GOP rift on climate.”

But several GOP senators who backed the Hoeven amendment sought to play down the importance of the vote, including Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who dismissed it as no “big deal.” And he noted that President George W. Bush’s top environmental adviser had acknowledged global warming and was “trying to push technologies to deal with” its effects.

For Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), voting in favor of the measure was easy. “There always has been [climate change], there always will be,” he said, but the impact from humans is “up for debate.”

“Climate change is real — humans probably have some part of it,” said another Republican who backed Hoeven’s language, Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona. “How significant? I don’t know.”

Republicans’ omission of the word “significantly,” he added, “reflects, I guess, some modesty about how little or as much as we know.”

Still, the Democratic minority watched with interest as Hoeven was forced to vote against his own amendment to prevent it from passing.

“Their confusion was evident from our perspective,” one Senate Democratic aide recalled.

Another Senate Democratic aide described the near-passage of Hoeven’s language as “hopefully a sign of progress to come, but only time will tell.”

But greens were split on why Paul, who’s weighing a White House bid in 2016, would take a vote that fellow conservatives could use against him.

“Being a denier isn’t politically viable anymore,” Democratic political consultant David DiMartino wrote via email, citing polls that show Iowa and New Hampshire voters aligning with climate science and Mitt Romney’s recent turn back to public acknowledgement of global warming. “Rand must be seeing the same numbers Mitt is seeing.”

Paul’s spokesman, Brian Darling, declined to comment on the vote.

As recently as last April, Paul downplayed the threat of climate change and humans’ contribution to it, and he slammed potential presidential foe Hillary Clinton in September for saying global warming is among “the most consequential” dangers to America. But Republican strategist McKenna said Paul voted yes on last week’s climate proposal “on purpose,” since agreeing that humans play some role “is a pretty cheap way to hedge your bet.”

“In a crowded field, everyone is trying to be the standout,” Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund chief Heather Taylor-Miesle wrote in an email. “Paul’s vote could represent that thinking, but I just like to believe that he is coming around on the science and reading the tea leaves on the politics.”

Sierra Club legislative director Melinda Pierce took a dimmer view of Paul’s vote for the GOP climate language, saying in an interview that it “opens a conversation” for the future but doesn’t mark the Kentuckian as a pro-environment maverick. “Maybe he put his toe in the water, but he didn’t go swimming.”

Scientists at the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and many other government bodies have for years raised the alarm about rising sea levels and higher temperature. The changes will threaten coastal populations and food supplies, while weather disasters become ever more destructive — unless humans quickly act to stem the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

The offices of several other Republican senators who agreed last week that humans are changing climate did not return requests for comment by press time, including Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

And even if Paul or the Republicans take heat for last week’s vote, the oil industry remains confident that economic growth and jobs will turn out more voters than threats to the planet.

“Even with Tom Steyer’s epic defeat at the ballot box last fall, some Democrats are still holding on to the hope that climate change is their winning ticket,” one industry source wrote via email, addressing the GOP’s climate stance on condition of anonymity. “The American people made it very clear where they stood in the last election. The Steyer wing of the party should be put on notice.”

Darren Goode contributed to this report.