NexGen America is a youth-focused climate organization that brags on its website to have registered 1.3 million people to vote; in 2020, it reached out to thousands of young voters in swing states through traditional ads, campaigns using “micro-influencers,” and direct messages. (Canvassing being difficult to impossible during a pandemic, voter drives in general were forced to go digital.) It’s far from the only climate group focused on young people—since its establishment in 2013, the Sunrise Movement and Zero Hour have both risen to prominence—but it’s the most well-funded, thanks to its billionaire benefactor, Tom Steyer. And that money gives it far more power in electoral politics than those smaller orgs.
When it comes to campaign spending, NexGen America greatly surpasses any other climate organization except for the League of Conservation Donors. Its war chest is almost entirely funded by Steyer, who has also given millions to his anti-Trump PAC Need to Impeach and spent $340 million on his doomed-from-the-start presidential bid. In 2020, NexGen’s PAC spent $47 million as of mid-October, most of it from Steyer’s own pockets, which is in line with its spending record. It chipped in $74 million during the 2014 cycle, $96 million in 2016, $64 million in 2018.
Steyer has sometimes intervened in Democratic primaries to support the greener candidate, most notably backing Ed Markey in Massachusetts in both 2014 and 2020 (that spending didn’t go through NexGen). But NexGen’s PAC money has gone to the same obvious swing-state races that attract other Democratic donors. In 2014, NexGen spent heavily on Senate races, aiming at Colorado’s Cory Gardner, Iowa’s Joni Ernst, New Hampshire’s Scott Brown and Michigan’s Kerry Lynn Land. In 2016, they targeted New Hampshire’s Kelly Ayotte, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey and Nevada’s Joe Heck. That produced a mixed bag of results, with Gardner, Ernst and Toomey all winning their races. In 2018, NexGen spread around its money (well, Steyer’s money) more evenly to a host of House races. It’s also changed its ratio of negative ads to positive ads: In 2014, it spent $18 million in outside expenditures attacking Republicans and just $1.3 million supporting Democrats; in 2018, it spent $3.4 million supporting Democrats and just $660,000 attacking Republicans.
And whereas in 2014, NextGen spent most of its money on ads and transfers to other campaign committees, by 2020, the majority of its expenses were related to salaries for its own employees (though it still spent $3.7 million on ads for Biden and against Trump). That shift suggests a focus on the voter turnout efforts and less on backing Democrats through attack ads.
How effective was that turnout operation? It’s difficult to isolate one particular organization’s work, but a press release touted a total spend of $59 million, a staff of 487 and a volunteer base of 22,000, and 441,000 “pledges to vote” collected. Turnout broke records in November thanks to a host of factors, but NextGen was among one of the many organizations that probably helped swing the election to Biden.
One thing’s clear: The money Steyer is pumping into NextGen is likely to produce more than his presidential campaign did.
