Climate Activist Plans $100 Million Election-Year Push

Bil­lion­aire cli­mate change act­iv­ist Tom Stey­er plans to spend as much as $100 mil­lion on cam­paigns to sway 2014 races for Con­gress and gov­ernor’s man­sions, The New York Times re­ports.

Their story provides fresh de­tails about ef­forts by Stey­er, a re­tired hedge-fund ti­tan, to make politi­cians pay a polit­ic­al price for op­pos­ing ac­tion on cli­mate change.

Tar­gets in­clude the Flor­ida gov­ernor’s race and per­haps the con­test for the Iowa Sen­ate seat that Demo­crat Tom Har­kin is va­cat­ing.

Stey­er is “ral­ly­ing oth­er deep-pock­eted donors, seek­ing to build a war chest that would make his polit­ic­al or­gan­iz­a­tion, Nex­t­Gen Cli­mate Ac­tion, among the largest out­side groups in the coun­try, sim­il­ar in scale to the con­ser­vat­ive polit­ic­al net­work over­seen by Charles and Dav­id Koch,” The Times re­ports.

Na­tion­al Journ­al‘s Amy Harder re­por­ted Monday on his po­ten­tial at­tack ads against Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisi­ana Demo­crat who sup­ports the Key­stone XL pipeline, a pro­ject that Stey­er is try­ing to de­feat.