Tom Steyer declined to put a number on his future spending. | Isaac Brekken/Getty Images Billionaire Steyer expects to increase spending in 2016

DES MOINES, Iowa — Environmentalist Tom Steyer — the country's biggest individual political donor during the 2014 election cycle — says he expects to spend even more cash in 2016, focusing on his clean energy-focused super PAC that’s been aggressively organizing across the country, especially in Iowa.

“In 2014 there were some really stark choices, but there was no election as important as 2016,” said Steyer, a Democratic billionaire who spent $74.3 million on the 2014 midterms, according to a POLITICO analysis — including roughly $67 million on his NextGen Climate Action group.


The former hedge fund manager, who reported contributing $13 million to the group in 2015, declined to put a number on his future spending, but he indicated that the high stakes of the presidential election — combined with the coming flood of money from the Republicans Charles and David Koch — would spur him to open his wallet even wider for the group that’s now pushing candidates to commit to a goal of 50 percent clean energy powering the country by 2030, having convinced 30,000 Iowans to commit to caucus on Monday for candidates based on their energy plans.

“If you took 2014 and look at what we’ve already spent this cycle that we’ve reported with the [Federal Election Commission], you know, the chances are seeming pretty good to me [that I would spend more]. Don’t they to you? I hate pinning myself down,” Steyer said.

“We really do change these [plans] along the way. [But] from our point of view, could there ever be a more crucial election with a more crucial issue? I don’t think so. It’s really — if you think about the impact of how this is going to turn out, my guess is there’s going to be a stark choice in November,” he added in an interview with POLITICO at NextGen Climate’s Iowa headquarters in Des Moines earlier this week while volunteers scattered around the office made calls to Iowans.

It’s likely to be a sizable investment from a man who emerged as a major political player in the last election cycle, and who himself was the subject of much Democratic hand-wringing after just three of the seven races his group targeted in 2014 went to the Democratic candidate. And it’s a move that will catch the eye of Hillary Clinton backers who have long targeted him for donations, particularly after he hosted a fundraiser for her early in the campaign. But this week, he was careful not to lean toward to any Democratic candidate, praising Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley equally.

“The Kochs have said they’re going to spend $900 million. In the past when they’ve said they’re going to spend X, they spend 1.5X. It’s very hard to know for sure because they do everything as secretively as possible, and try to stop anyone from knowing. If they really spend 1.5 times $900 million, they’re clearly going to spend a ton more than us. So the true question I think you should be asking is, ‘is your truth strong enough to stand up to their money?’ Is our truth going to defeat their money? Because they have nothing else going for them. It’s democracy. If the truth doesn’t beat the money, we’re in a lot of trouble."

In interviews, NextGen state director Zack Davis and Steyer outlined how they’re pushing that message, detailing the group’s organization here during 2015 and its plans for the rest of 2016.

In Iowa, the group has built off its 2014 efforts, when it identified over 42,000 voters in the state who tapped climate change as a voting priority, said Davis.

Looking at 2015 as a chance to build a field organization while presidential campaigns were still gearing up, NextGen staffers and volunteers fanned out to neighborhood meetings, house parties, phone banks, and door-knocking sessions in an attempt to convince Iowans to caucus for a candidate based on that candidate's energy plan. Over one-third of their pledges came from people between the ages of 18 and 35, said Davis, and over 1,500 were registered Republicans.

NextGen is planning to retain its presence in Iowa past Monday’s caucuses, Davis and Steyer said, aiming to pressure the general election candidates in the swing state.

“Our belief a year ago was [that this will be a] critical election, and on just this topic — we think this is the generational issue we have to get right — the two parties could not be further apart,” said Steyer, pointing to the group’s 10 field offices across the state, which is more than most presidential campaigns, and its 20 campus organizations in Iowa. “If you look at the Democrats as a group and the Republicans as a group, it’s hard to imagine two groups of people vying for the same job with more different policies on a critical issue."

The group’s various wings have also invested in billboards and television, radio, newspaper, and web ads that either target Republicans on their energy platforms or agitate for more conversation about the topic in debates — making it by far one of the most active political or issue-based groups.

Davis and Steyer pointed to the 2008 debate over healthcare reform, when various groups sent their activists to events all over the early-voting states to pressure candidates to talk about the issue, as a model for them — and their activists have been a ubiquitous presence on the trail, particularly in Iowa college towns.

"You saw a bunch of purple shirts in the crowd, immediately [whichever candidate] was there started talking about healthcare almost unprompted because they knew they were going to get a question [on the topic], explained Davis, referring to members of the Service Employees International Union who peppered candidates with questions that year. Now, he said of his own group, “you see the orange shirts everywhere you go."

Clinton and O’Malley have both signed physical pledge cards signing onto the “#50by30” plan — Clinton after one of NextGen’s organizers saw a picture of her at a nearby coffee shop and ran over to present her with it.

And Sanders, Steyer said, had been appropriately forceful about the issue even without signing a card: “He has brought it up repeatedly, He said it’s a national security issue, the number one issue facing Americans, you know, he has emphasized it dramatically."

Still, Steyer’s unwillingness to tip his hand didn’t preclude him from weighing in on the Democrats' nominating process so far, as he singled out the debate schedule that has come under a renewed round of fire in recent days after months in which Sanders and O’Malley railed against the plan to only hold six debates, and just four before Iowa.

The influential donor called for a new climate-change focused debate in September, and reiterated this week his displeasure with the schedule and the debate moderators’ lack of questions on the topic.

“We were worried about [whether candidates] would address it. And in fact they’ve been way better than the moderator or interlocutors of the debates, which have basically stunk,” said Steyer.

“Everyone realizes that the Democrats made a horrible decision to have few debates, to hold them underwater on Christmas Eve. We have three great candidates, why would we not want to show that to the American people? And for whatever reason, we hid that light under a bushel."