Which political races should climate advocates focus on to get the most bang for their buck? (Hint: not the presidency.) In this episode, executive director Caroline Spears of Climate Cabinet explains how her organization uses data science to identify state and local races with high potential to impact climate progress.
Text transcript:
David Roberts
If you ask climate-oriented voters about the upcoming election, they will inevitably begin arguing about Joe Biden. This is one of the frustrating features of US political discourse: attention is overwhelmingly focused on the federal level.
But the vast, vast majority of elected offices are held at the state and local level, and that is where a great deal of climate policy and politics will play out in coming years. These state and local races do not often get the attention and money they need from the climate community, despite their importance.
In 2020, a new organization called Climate Cabinet set out to address this problem. It bills itself as “Moneyball for climate,” using data and data science to identify under-the-radar state and local races where relatively modest interventions can yield substantial climate progress.
In 2022, Climate Cabinet worked with 60 candidates and claims to have won about 75 percent of its top races. This year, it’s going to more than double that, supporting 150 climate candidates nationwide. I'm excited to talk to co-founder and executive director Caroline Spears about what she's seeing in this year's elections, what types of offices hold the most climate power, and how the climate movement can get smarter and more efficient in its political work.
Without further ado, Caroline Spears, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Caroline Spears
So happy to be here. Happy Tuesday.
David Roberts
Happy Tuesday. I guess it'll be Wednesday when this comes out, so we'll just say happy Wednesday too, really. So, I've been hearing about your work for years, Caroline, and I'm very excited. Just briefly, let's start with how did you end up here? What sort of work were you doing that led you to perceive this need and perceive the fact that no one else appeared to be filling this need?
Caroline Spears
It is a fun and interesting journey, and it has been over the last five years. I certainly never set out to start an organization, but here's how it went down. It's 2018, at the time I was working for the largest utility-scale solar developer in the country, and we were mapping projects. I was a financial analyst. My job was to take hundreds of projects that we wanted to build over the entire United States, put them into one giant Excel spreadsheet, and say, "Which projects work in which states and why?" That was my job. And in doing that, I noticed something interesting.
We were building 67 projects in the state of Massachusetts and zero in the state of Arizona. Listen, we spend a lot of time talking about federal politics, but what I found in working on the clean energy side, on the build side of this problem, is that we had policymakers across the country who held a lot of power over our ability to actually build the clean energy economy. And we had the wrong people in office. And the people who were in office who were great, some of them needed better information. Some folks were simply the wrong people to be there.
So, we spent a lot of time talking about the feds, but that is all state policy all the way. And that's how I got into this. I started volunteering for candidate after candidate running for these high-impact offices across the country, and from that, Climate Cabinet was born.
David Roberts
And so, just to clarify, is it a 501(c)(3) or a (c)(4)? And maybe just tell listeners what the significance of that is.
Caroline Spears
Great question. Y'all, we are a couple minutes into this, we are doing legal stuff already. Okay.
David Roberts
But we're gonna get nerdier than this before we get to the fun stuff. So everybody just buckle up.
Caroline Spears
Just buckle up. We're doing it. We're here. So, our theory of change is simple, which is that there are people running for office across this country running for high-impact offices who need our support when they're running for office, when they win their election, and after they take office: run, win, and legislate. When you do that, that's a simple thesis. And what I learned very early on is when you go to your lawyer and say, "This is what I want to build," they give you three legal entities to work with. So, our theory of change is simple.
Our legal side is complex. We have a 501(c)(3), which is educational. We have a 501(c)(4) that lobbies for actual policies, and we have a 527, or a political action committee, that helps candidates win when they're running for office.
David Roberts
Interesting. So, you're like a full-service shop over there. You've got all 501s and a 527 to boot.
Caroline Spears
We're really hanging out in the 500s code section of the IRS.
David Roberts
I want to spend a little time on — this is probably not the most exciting place to start, but I'm a nerd, so I want to start here. I want to start with some methodological questions. So, the premise here is you're looking for races where there's a high climate impact and relatively low barrier to entry and low attention, sort of low money, low salience. So, where you can have a high impact with relatively low resources. Identifying those races, I think, involves a lot of data crunching, a lot of data science. So, what data are we talking about here?
What data sources are you gathering and sort of what are you doing with that data?
Caroline Spears
Yes, Moneyball can be simplified into two major concepts: The first is political window, and the second is climate opportunity. So, the first asks, "Can we win?" And the second asks, "Is it worth it?"
David Roberts
Right.
Caroline Spears
And so, essentially, what we're always looking for is we are looking for a political opportunity. So, we want winnable candidates — that includes not just the political history of the district that they're running in. It also means, are they running a good campaign? Are they knocking doors? Are they talking to voters? What are the mechanics of that piece? And the second piece is climate opportunity. We care about the greenhouse gases under legal authority of the office that folks are running for, and that has significant strategic implications. Right. One of the group of candidates that I'm really excited about this year are our candidates running for the Pennsylvania state legislature.
Pennsylvania is a top-five state in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. I deeply care whether we get a pro-climate majority in that state, and so we're putting our resources in that direction.
David Roberts
So, I assume then that there are some sort of edge cases on both sides of that. Sort of like some where the political opportunity might be more challenging, but the climate opportunity is big enough to make it worth it anyway, and maybe some vice versa, where, like, you think you can get kind of an easy win, even though it's not a huge climate thing, you can help somebody win easily. Like, sort of wondering, does everything have to be in the bullseye? Or what are the kind of edge cases?
Caroline Spears
The way you're thinking about it completely maps, which is that I think a lot of times, we're used to — our brains are so used to working in a linear fashion in a uni-economic universe, but politics is all about the expected value calculation. So, Pennsylvania is a great example of this. Kind of what's common at this point when we're recording this conversation and get excited, because I think the narrative around this will change in a few months. But right now, the zeitgeist is all about the Pennsylvania house. It's almost split 50-50 between the two parties. And the question is, who will hold the Pennsylvania house?
What's not really in the zeitgeist currently, but you should care about and pay attention to if you're thinking about climate, is the Pennsylvania Senate. The odds are long, but the impact is very large. So, the Pennsylvania Senate is a key opportunity we're looking at this year. You know, I think of our candidates — every year, we're supporting 150 candidates — I think of those candidates as a Vanguard ETF. I think about diversified risk. We have candidates running races where we have an incredible climate champion, we have to keep them in office. We also have candidates running races that we are going to put our best efforts behind, helping them win.
They're running challenging races in challenging districts. And so, we have candidates that are on both sides of that spectrum.
David Roberts
I mean, it's a little bit like the Loan Programs Office: You wouldn't want to win all your races. Cause that would sort of show that you are kind of not taking big enough chances. Right? I mean, presumably, you have some loss rate that's built in.
Caroline Spears
Exactly.
David Roberts
So is there anything on the data side, data sources or ways of crunching data or ways of analyzing data that you feel like you're lacking? Or do you feel like the mechanisms through which you're identifying candidates are good enough and you're mostly focused on the races themselves?
Caroline Spears
When we started investigating this space and I started volunteering — again, like Climate Cabinet was all started talking to candidates: "What does it take to help you win on climate and how can you get there?" So, that focus has always stayed the same. So, when it comes to specific data, it's always targeted towards those goals. The first value proposition that I saw was really about greenhouse gases under legal authority. And how do we create that list across the 500,000 offices?
David Roberts
Good God, are you serious?
Caroline Spears
I am so sorry to tell you this. I have really bad —
David Roberts
I knew it was a lot, but jeez.
Caroline Spears
You know what the worst news is? And this gets exactly at your question: We actually don't know how many elected offices there are in America.
David Roberts
Like, no one knows? There's not a definitive? There's so many. This is a longstanding gripe among political scientists, I'm sure you're aware. Just that American democracy is sort of clogged. There are too many races for people to keep track of, basically, like the individual, any individuals voting for like ten offices, and there's just no way to monitor. But anyway, so you presumably need some way of winnowing down from 500,000 to something tractable.
Caroline Spears
Okay, we have 500,000 offices. Let's chart the climate pathway through those. What I quickly found was just what I said: I thought I was going to go to someone in the government or someone in democracy. I thought I was going to find some group that tracks, "Here are all the offices. Here's who your elected representatives are, here's when they're up for election next." I thought that was a baseline democracy function that we already had going on. And I am so sad to say that it's not, so we had to build that, too. And there's some data sourcing we use from publicly available databases that are fantastic.
The University of Florida has really incredible enriched data sources, for example. And there's a few groups out there. But to solve for that central goal, which is, "Who are all of our elected officials?" is actually quite a challenging question to answer.
David Roberts
So, you've built this tool so I can go to climatecabinet.org.
Caroline Spears
Yeah, climatecabinet.org will have all of our candidates that we're supporting this year.
David Roberts
But, like, can I go and type in, like, here's my zip code, and you'll tell me who's running, who all my electeds are?
Caroline Spears
So, what we do is, we, thinking about that 500,000 number, we triage. So, we first look at greenhouse gas under legal authority. We look at, if you think of the government as a layer cake, we take different layers that we know have outsized impact on climate, and we triage through that. So, that means that, no, if you go to our website, I am not going to tell you every single ballot proposition on your ballot, every single third judicial court of appeals person on your ballot. That is information that a group like BallotReady will have.
We can talk about some of the ecosystem here. There's an interesting ecosystem of people trying to break through this logjam of information, this information deficit that we have. There's a broader democracy conversation there around, "Shouldn't this be publicly available?"
David Roberts
Yes, one would think.
Caroline Spears
I'm a big fan, to say that it should. So, people have a right to know. But on our website, you will find our triaged, stack-ranked list of anyone with "Slated" next to their name; they're on our 150 list for the year.
David Roberts
Right. So, then you identify a candidate or a campaign. What do you do for campaigns? Do you give them money? Do you just, is it just an endorsement? Is it guidance on how best to run and where to knock on doors? Like, how granular do you get? What's your engagement with campaigns?
Caroline Spears
We have fantastic state leads across the country who are working with candidates and policymakers day in and day out. And sometimes, I think that especially because of the — we got into some of the legal stuff because of the legal designations — sometimes, folks talk about those as though they're two separate worlds: It's the same person. They're individual people. A classic example would be somebody who's a high school history teacher, like Schuyler VanValkenburg in the Virginia State Senate. You know, they jump into office and immediately are expected to get up the curve on every single issue facing the entire state.
Now be an expert on budgets. Now be an expert on roads.
David Roberts
Yeah. Speaking of information deficits, candidates, elected officials have those too.
Caroline Spears
Yeah, exactly. And so, we have folks across the country who are stationed and ready to answer those questions. What it really looks like is we are early, catalytic investment into our candidates, both from that person's side and from a financial side, because candidates have to raise money to win. So, if we're thinking about, and this always breaks everybody's brain, so I hope this comes through. Okay, we have an election on November 5, famously. I don't know if you've heard.
David Roberts
Uh, I've been trying so hard to forget.
Caroline Spears
Unsuccessfully. All right, so that's happening last December. So, December of 2023 is when we started supporting these candidates. We will cut them early, catalytic dollars. Think about trying to be a candidate, running a campaign in 2024 with everything going on. Think about how challenging it is to hire staff, how you need to book vendors. You need to be out on the doors talking to voters before the voters have so much information just crashing over them and completely tune out. So we really make sure that our candidates are well positioned early in the year financially to reach the voters and educate and persuade the voters that they need to.
There's actually a candidate right now in Arizona, Kevin Volk. We met in mid-March of this year. Mid-March of this year, he had already knocked a thousand doors in the state of Arizona, in his district, the 17th district.
David Roberts
So, you're helping with money and information both, and you're helping candidates who have already been elected with information and orienting information as well.
Caroline Spears
Yes. In each state, we do think about the broader ecosystem. There are educational services.
David Roberts
Right.
Caroline Spears
What we're really able to do with our legal structure. And if you open the door to me getting wonky about the legal structure, I'm extremely proud. I'm extremely proud of the legal structure that we've set up and the flexibility, and we have really strong legal compliance. So, thanks to Emma Fisher, my co-founder, for being so good at that.
David Roberts
Well, I've spent many years complaining about all the (c)(3)s out there, educating and raising awareness and the lack of (c)(4)s out there. You know, putting shivs in the hands of actual candidates, you know, getting in the actual scrum and trying to win.
Caroline Spears
We gotta get them elected.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Caroline Spears
Think about running for the Texas state legislature. The Texas state legislature meets to pass legislation five months every other year. Yeah.
David Roberts
So dumb.
Caroline Spears
Median state legislator's salary: $24,000, zero to two staff median. And they control the state budget. They control the electricity grid. In Arizona, there's this constant fight between the public service commission wants to regulate electricity, and the state legislature wants to run electricity. And there's this constant, like, "Who's going to control what piece?" There's this power play. We see that power play with counties and state legislatures across the country. Michigan just passed a 100% clean bill. Minnesota passed a 100% clean bill.
David Roberts
Yes, here's a question that's much on my mind and quite interesting. I'm quite interested to hear you talk about . Do you, when you choose a candidate and sort of adopt them, do you ask them to put climate at the top of their public communications? In other words, do you ask them to become publicly climate candidates, or do you just say, "Do whatever you got to do to win?"
Caroline Spears
You know, in the immortal words of Nancy Pelosi, "Just win, baby." That was like a quote, I think, from 2018. Yeah. I think two things are important at the same time. If you're good on climate and you're running, I want those candidates talking about whatever is most salient to voters in their district. Voters have a lot going on. They have a lot on their minds this year. I want something that gets those voters to yes. So we really let candidates determine how they want to run their campaign. What we do is we make sure that the folks we're investing in have a good campaign.
They have a plan to win. And we count votes. We count votes. Once people are in elected office, our data science team calls it "votes, not vibes." And that's what we count. We're tracking what policies people are passing in office. I would say we let the candidates determine. They're in the community, you know, they know what they need to be focused on and talking about.
David Roberts
So, you're not trying to sort of impose a messaging strategy on them, basically, which seems extremely smart to me. So, you know, obviously, state legislature is a big one here. Presumably, you've messed with some municipal offices, mayors. I'm just sort of curious about what are the range of positions here. There are like, public utility boards, air quality districts, water boards. You can get really granular. Homeowners associations. Just like, how granular and local are you getting here? What is the array of elected positions that fall under your ambit here?
Caroline Spears
It really goes back to political window times climate impact, and we're always looking at size of our investment as well. So, if I think about the range of races we'll focus on this year, we'll go from Public Service Commission and Insurance Commissioner at the statewide level. We have some applicants in for Drainage District and Sewage District management. I'm letting my political team decide where we want to go. I bet we do take up a few of those for, like, really flooding prone areas, that climate opportunity. So, I would say that's the full range.
And the legal authority can differ between all of those places. But it's all about, again, it's that calculation of, "Can you win? Is it worth it?" And the third element being, "What is the cost to win?" And so we're always looking at those three. And in context, like, financially, the US presidential race this year will be over $10 billion.
David Roberts
Good God.
Caroline Spears
Isn't that horrifying?
David Roberts
Good God. I feel like it just passed a billion. Not that I feel like I remember it passing a billion and everyone being horrified by that. That's how old I am.
Caroline Spears
That's what's going on. Our competitive Senate races, you're talking $150 million, $200 million, and our races are less than 1% of that cost.
David Roberts
So, like, water quality districts. You're not getting, like, hundred-thousand-dollar water quality district races.
Caroline Spears
Listen, show me a good climate opportunity and a plan to win, and I'm interested.
David Roberts
What is the most expensive race you've gotten in?
Caroline Spears
So, our races, regardless of expense, what we make sure is that we are doing 10% to 30% of early dollars, because the goal is to be catalytic.
David Roberts
Right.
Caroline Spears
And the goal is to be early. The range I'm about to give you is wild. We will be involved in about $5,000 to $8,000 races.
David Roberts
Wow.
Caroline Spears
There are some of those.
David Roberts
That's very small.
Caroline Spears
I just pulled the campaign finance reports. And then, on the high side, those Pennsylvania Senate races, I expect to be $1.5 to $2 million.
David Roberts
Right. Because lots of people are focused on those. Right. Lots of people are aware of how important those are.
Caroline Spears
Yep. And still, like that cost, our most competitive Senate race will be about $200 million. So that's still 1% of the cost of a US Senate race, which is astonishing.
David Roberts
And this is all just donations, right? Where do you get your money? Is it individual donations, philanthropic donations, both, or what's the — where do you come up with this money?
Caroline Spears
A lot of philanthropy is still really tied into 501(c)(3) giving, which can't be used for politics.
David Roberts
I'm aware.
Caroline Spears
Yeah, and, you know, depending on the issue, that can differ. I think, for climate, there is an exceptionally strong case that politics breaks open the window. Good climate education cannot take root in a state legislature that denies vaccines or the 2020 election. Like, that's just not going to happen. And if someone has a counterpoint, I will read it because I have not seen it. It's not the world we're living in right now. But I personally am excited to get more folks into, like, smart politics. Politics for a reason. Not politics for politics' sake, but politics to solve climate change.
That's what we're doing here. That means that a lot of our political giving is all individuals. It's folks who find us on the Internet. It's folks who find us on Twitter. I personally go to climate events, folks who meet our state leads and are excited about what we do. And that individual side is really where our candidates get support.
David Roberts
You know, you've got, what is it, like 500 races total now under your belt? Something like that. Have you found that there are particular types of offices or types of races that have outsized returns? Is there a pattern where the sort of investment is low but the payoff is high? Have you found patterns? Where are the best opportunities, I guess, that you've found? State legislatures, is it PUC, where have you found the best payoff?
Caroline Spears
So, definitely, we're looking at competitive PUCs this year. Because of their enormous authority over the electricity grid, they're usually not elected. They are elected in a few states. So, I'm thinking about the Arizona Corporation Commission candidates this year. Those are up. They are live. We are focused on them. I'm excited about those races.
David Roberts
So what about ballot initiatives? Do you ever endorse them? Do you ever work on them?
Caroline Spears
So before — let's do ballot initiatives. Before ballot initiatives, I would be remiss if I didn't go on a small rant about the outsized influence of state legislatures.
David Roberts
Oh, please. I love rants.
Caroline Spears
It's so interesting because a lot of what I do is talk to folks across the country about these races and what's exciting and where can we win? And state legislatures win the prize for the thing that bores people the most, that has the most power.
David Roberts
Oh, my God. I know. I've tried so hard to make state politics sexy. Over here at Volts, I'm doing my part.
Caroline Spears
I know. I follow you on Twitter. I'm on the Substack. I mean, nothing bores people more than a conversation about, like, New Mexico House District 18, for example. But state legislatures, the amount of preemption authority that we have seen. State legislatures not only pass legislation; when a city gets a little too over their skis, they take that city's power away. It's astonishing.
David Roberts
Yep.
Caroline Spears
So, of course, at Climate Cabinet, we think about counties, we think about cities. State legislatures have the ability to go into those cities and strategically strip away authority. And we have seen this happen in some of our cities. It has been wild. The city of Dallas, for example, wanted to electrify their leaf blowers.
David Roberts
Just the lowest fruit there. Just like the most obvious thing that a friggin city can do in the entire world.
Caroline Spears
The lowest hanging fruit, truly.
David Roberts
So Texas prevented Dallas from doing that?
Caroline Spears
They passed, and it's in the courts and it's getting challenged, and they're going to bring back another bill. It's actually an open question right now. They passed something called the "Death Star" bill. Yeah.
David Roberts
Texas.
Caroline Spears
Which stripped local of their authority, not based on an idea of constitutionality, but based on an idea of "All of these cities are doing stuff we don't like."
David Roberts
Yeah.
Caroline Spears
So, we're gonna take that power away.
David Roberts
Pretty naked. And, like, conversely, you know, you get Minnesota, where you get just a squeaker of an election, you get this tiny Democratic majority, and they just went nuts. They just did everything. They did voting reform, climate stuff, energy stuff, like, you know, LGBTQ stuff, name it. Like, they just went on a tear. Like, I don't know why that's not sexy to people. Like, that's where things are happening. That's where progress is happening.
Caroline Spears
It's incredible what the Minnesota state legislature did. Speaking of high ROI. All right, y'all, it's May 22. In about a week from when this podcast airs, we are announcing our Minnesota slate. These are candidates where, speaking of outsized impact, there's a lot of campaign finance. You see these huge numbers. Minnesota is a fun exception because Minnesota candidates' legal max, they can't raise more each than like $90,000 a candidate.
David Roberts
Oh, by law?
Caroline Spears
By law, so if you want an outsized impact and you're like, "Listen, I'm not going to have the money that Jeff Bezos does." If you're in that camp: Minnesota.
David Roberts
Go to Minnesota.
Caroline Spears
They just passed incredible legislation, and the Minnesota House this year will be a complete nail-biter. And it's something that's getting skipped over a lot because people don't see it as a competitive press. It's a classic example of when you take a fully state strategy, your map looks different. And Minnesota is an absolute top-tier priority for me and for Climate Cabinet this year.
David Roberts
Interesting. All right, back to ballot initiatives, though. Are you messing with them at all?
Caroline Spears
We are focused this year on candidates, and as an organization, we primarily focus on that policymaker and that policymaker's journey. Run, win, and legislate. So for that reason, we will not be doing ballot measures this year. I'm tracking them personally because it's actually all the candidates look at the ballot measures, too, and there's an interplay there that's very interesting. Yeah. It's one of those things. It's worth doing. I'm glad folks are focused on it. One other thing that we've seen, not to keep going back to the power of state legislatures, look at Florida with felon enfranchisement.
We've had Missouri with some of the weed legalization. We do have ballot measures that then go back to the state legislature and get stripped of a lot of their potency.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Caroline Spears
So, I think ballot measures are important, and it's also thinking about the legal authority of all the levels of government. And understanding when they take power away from each other is critically important. I've heard government described as a layer cake. Tom Kalil from the Obama administration talks about it as a marbled cake. And I think that's probably a better metaphor for this situation.
David Roberts
Yeah, they all interact. How do you think about accountability for the candidates you endorse and help? Once they win, what can you do to hold their feet to the fire? And if they go the wrong way after they win, is there anything you can do to penalize them? How do you think about accountability generally?
Caroline Spears
Again, this is politics for a purpose. Our goal is not just to elect a bunch of people in one party or another or nonpartisan, say, "All right, we're good, let's walk away." And that's where we get into the importance of having folks who are lobbyists, having folks who have powerful relationships with legislators, being in the state capitol, at the county commission board after folks get elected. It's a critical piece of the puzzle.
David Roberts
Maybe this is not something you want to answer, but have you, can you think of a case, have you had a case where this happens, where you help somebody win and then they, for whatever reason, get caught up in state politics and go the wrong way on crucial issues? Have you had to grapple with that?
Caroline Spears
We have. The kind of through line I will give to this is, it's the power of relationships. So we, in fact, had this happen in Arizona. I'm thinking of a very specific case where someone we helped elect and then they signed on, not a vote, but a primary co-sponsor of a really bad renewable energy siting bill that would have blocked our ability to actually build the clean energy future. And so what we were able to do in that specific scenario is have our state lead, reach out to that person and say, "Hey, tell me more about this legislation," and walk them through it.
And that person actually ended up, they couldn't retract their co-sponsorship, but they ended up sending a letter to the governor to recommend a veto. They were like, "I signed on to this. I was told these things. I learned more information," and they actually backed off the bill.
David Roberts
If it came to it and a candidate did that and didn't take it back and dug their feet in, you can withdraw your support and your relationships. Could that meaningfully hurt candidates in some way? Or, you know, I guess your kind of reach is limited. Your ability to do that is limited. But I'm just wondering sort of like how big of a stick you have once they're in office.
Caroline Spears
Right now, what's on my mind is, we have Michigan has huge elections this November. It is really important that we keep the Democratic majority in the Michigan House. They passed pretty good legislation, and it's important that we keep that majority. There are folks in that pathway to 100% clean energy that really put a lot of time, skill, and effort into getting that 100% clean bill passed and making sure that it's strengthened. And there are also folks who had a role in weakening it who didn't go the right way. So that's something that right now, we are about halfway through rolling out our Michigan candidates.
And the passage of that bill and how folks interacted with it is absolutely something we look at when we decide on endorsements. You're catching me in like — we are in the middle of endorsements section, so we will be done with our top candidates by early to mid-June, which is really exciting. It's the earliest ever. We've put more money into the field already than we did for all of 2022, which is great. And so, yeah, the answer is we absolutely look at how folks didn't vote well, and we take that into account when determining whether to endorse someone.
And then if we're endorsing them, how much campaign support are they really going to get from our state leaders?
David Roberts
So, I guess the stick is, "We're not going to help you next time when you try to get reelected." I mean, that's the real stick.
Caroline Spears
Yeah.
David Roberts
Speaking of getting the Democratic majority reelected in Michigan, I'm curious how you think about partisanship in reference to your organization, in reference to Climate Cabinet. Do you self-identify as a Democratic organization that's mostly working for the best Dems you can find? Do you think of yourself as nonpartisan? Do you worry about being viewed as partisan one way or the other? I'm just sort of curious about your relationship to partisanship in these deeply, deeply partisan times we live in.
Caroline Spears
We do. We live in deeply partisan times. And I talk to a lot of folks who wish that that were not so. And I also wish that that were not so. But the reality is, is that politics is oppositional, it's partisan. There are baked-in characteristics, and I personally am more interested in how do we use that to solve climate change. That's always how I approach this question. And really what that comes down to, again, it's about votes, not vibes. I care about how people voted. Every year our team goes through and looks at about over 3,000 policymakers' voting records.
That's the number of voting records we have on deck right now. And so, we are really looking at, "How did you vote on that transmission line bill?" We are looking at how did folks vote when it came to refinery pollution that's dumping benzene into a neighboring low-income community and emitting greenhouse gases at the same time. Like, some of the pollution oversight is astonishing in a bad way. We need more pollution oversight — should be a non-controversial stance, but somehow it is. And that means, yeah, we're primarily looking at how folks voted on climate. We do see massive partisan differences.
David Roberts
I was gonna say like, you focus on the votes, but like, I'm sure in practice that means mostly dems. But what do we mean by mostly? Like, do you track the sort of net number, partisan numbers of your, of your candidates? And is it like, in practice, is it almost all dems? Is it 99%, 90%? Like I'm curious, are there Republican state and local office holders that you have found vote the right way sufficiently that you're willing to support them?
Caroline Spears
Yes, there are Republicans in the US who have voted the right way sufficiently that we do support them. And there are a handful every year that we think about, that we focus on, that we work to get elected. Here's why I only said a handful: Last time we did this big policy, we do it about every two years, this huge policymaker deep dive into how all of these politicians voted. Last time we analyzed almost 5000 policymakers, we had 1000 Democrats get A+ scores and we had nine Republicans. That is truly the partisanship of this space. It's astonishing, but it gives us a clear indication of where we need to go.
Like, I'm always looking for the data to give us strategic insights. That's a strategic insight.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, it's just the fact of the matter. And whenever people object to me about that kind of partisanship, I always just say, like, "Well, you know, Republicans are free to step up." Like, it's not me. It's not me stopping them from doing so. I wonder, does your name in the list of endorsers and supporters trouble a Republican race? In other words, do you think your organization gets coded as partisan? And could you theoretically, like, do some harm to a Republican by popping up as a high-profile supporter?
Caroline Spears
With our Republican candidates, we are not disclosed. Yes, but again, it's a minority of who we're focused on.
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Caroline Spears
Again, we are focused on high ROI, and that's where we go. But, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, it is partisan. We are just in a position. I think one interesting baseline assumption that I think it's accurate to take at this moment in politics is that there's a lot of "I wish walkable cities were not partisan. I wish EVs were not partisan. I wish transmission lines were not partisan. I wish building solar jobs in the state of Arizona were not partisan." I deeply wish that that were not partisan. But we are in a situation where in Arizona, the Republicans have had, before Hobbs was elected, trifecta control for generations and built less solar than the state of Massachusetts.
Just to go back to that, like, listen, sometimes I think a lot of climate, it can be, you know, "What engineering degree do you have?" There's sometimes a big STEM barrier to entry. There are some things that are really obvious, and one of those things that's obvious is Arizona should be an absolute powerhouse of solar.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Caroline Spears
It should be a breadbasket of energy. That is an economic future that the state could hold. And it's being held back by politics and by just — I don't even know how to describe the state legislature right now. Right now, the Republicans in Arizona are really upset about walkable cities.
David Roberts
The 15-minute cities where you have to live in a box and eat bugs, Caroline.
Caroline Spears
It's horrible. I hate walking to the grocery store. It's the worst. I never want to live down the street from a little coffee shop.
David Roberts
Nothing worse than a grocery store being close to where I live. I will not stand for it.
Caroline Spears
I will not stand for it.
David Roberts
Yes, they, well, I think them being in charge for several generations and them being weird and obsessed with stuff like this are not unconnected. Maybe more competition would help.
Caroline Spears
And weirdly, you would think that, "Okay, there are these folks with these beliefs, but they're going to come from really rural areas." That's not necessarily true. We have folks running in toss-up races. We have one of our candidates in Arizona is running in a toss-up race against someone who calls herself "Trump in heels."
David Roberts
Oh, goodness.
Caroline Spears
Yeah, just to say, like, there's an again, political window. Climate opportunity, like, political window. Great. I have an opportunity to replace "Trump in heels" with a climate champion in the state of Arizona. I'll do it.
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah. And I actually meant to ask this before, but I'd like to touch on it just quickly now. So, you know, in lots of races, you know, sort of legendarily, there are lamentably few competitive races in the US. And lots of places, you know, it's going to be a Republican or, you know, it's going to be a Democrat. So the primary becomes kind of the only leverage point where you can push things one way or the other. How many of the races you're engaged in are primaries rather than proper elections?
Caroline Spears
The great second corollary to the partisanship thing. So, I talked about how, you know, we had a 1000 Democrats and nine Republicans who got A scores. That's also a lot of Democrats who are not worried as we need them to be on climate. And usually, the kind of profile of a Democrat who's not as great as they need to be is someone who took office a really long time ago.
David Roberts
Yeah, it's age. I bet age is a huge part of it.
Caroline Spears
It's a huge part of it, honestly. And so, one thing I'm looking forward to, you know, it's May 22, on June 4, there will be an incredibly critical Democratic primary in New Mexico. We are supporting eight candidates there, and it's a huge matchup, Democrat versus Democrat. We have candidates there who have failing grades on climate and like, yeah, they have a Democrat beside their name, but there's a big matchup. We expect oil and gas to spend heavily, and one of the policy outcomes that's at stake is oil and gas wells. And who pays for them? Should it be the company that profited off of those oil and gas wells, or should it be the taxpayer who should be on the hook?
David Roberts
Yes, again, you might wonder why that's even a question.
Caroline Spears
Listen, I feel like that's my whole life.
David Roberts
So, you're engaged in lots of primaries, too. Are you engaged in any Republican primaries? V ery curious about that. Like, even in sort of locked Republican districts, are there maybe glimmers of better Republicans that you can get behind?
Caroline Spears
There are. I'm not going to go into any specifics this year, but I do have a handful of Republican primaries that we're tracking this year that I'm personally excited about. Our base problem is that Republicans that we identify, that we're excited to support, end up retiring on us because it's not the future of the party.
David Roberts
They can't stand their colleagues.
Caroline Spears
Listen, I don't know why. And we see this in the data, too. The climate score — one of the data analyses that we do is climate score by legislator vintage. So in other words, is the first year someone takes office, does that affect how they vote on climate? And there's a clear trendline for Republicans. The more recently elected folks are voting statistically worse on climate. So it's a big problem.
David Roberts
Yeah, I mean, it kind of looks like the moderates, or whatever you want to call them, non-MAGAs, are being systematically squeezed out of the party at every level.
Caroline Spears
That's right.
David Roberts
I bet it's getting harder and harder to find ones to endorse. Here's another sticky question that I'm very curious about, and then I want to hear about some examples. You know, there's a lot of talk on the left these days. If you've spent time in left spaces, as I'm sure you have, there's a lot of talk about, you know, sort of, uh, solidarity and intersectionality and etc., etc. There's been a lot of sort of like "we should stand or fall together" sentiment on that side. So you see a lot of climate activist groups, you know, getting involved in Gaza or endorsing unionization or something like that.
You know, sort of like this idea that everybody should be for supporting everyone's issues. I'm curious how you interface with other issues, like what if someone was good on, really good on climate, but, I don't know, terrible on, I don't know, trans stuff or foreign policy or something. Are you sort of monofocused on climate?
Caroline Spears
So, I think the first thing that really comes to mind when you say that is a lot of nationally focused groups are really focused on a lot of issues because they deal with Congress and Congress has foreign policy concerns. Congress deals with Israel-Gaza, Congress deals with a lot of issues. I think what's so interesting about the work that we do is that our state and local folks, like some of the biggest fights they have are about whether the trash cans should have wheels on them. That's maybe on the sillier side, but —
David Roberts
Well, those are the things that actually engage local people. Like, local people care a lot about that kind of stuff.
Caroline Spears
Yeah, totally. And like, Arizona has a huge budget shortfall this year and there's a huge fight in the legislature right now about the voucher program. So, I would say that our state leaders and our candidates are deeply intersectional and that they care about a lot of different issues facing their community. And it's our job as a politically savvy organization to understand and think through issues that are fundamentally, you know, can change how our policymakers view our policies, which are in the climate lens. So, I would say that, like, we're a climate organization, that means climate is a really wide lens as it is, like, just thinking about our policy priorities.
Huge problem for climate: Vehicle miles traveled. Okay. All of a sudden, you're having a housing conversation, and housing is really intersectional. We need housing to be cheaper in the US. We need housing to be more accessible in the United States. These are all true things. Public transit, you shouldn't have to buy an expensive vehicle to participate in the modern economy. That's an extremely powerful argument for an issue that is public transit, which is deeply in my heart as something that we should and need to be investing in to solve climate change. So, it's just so interesting.
Like, I hear what you're getting at, and also the national conversation just is so fundamentally different than the conversations we're hearing on the doors with voters and with candidates. I was just on a call this morning, and we were talking about how there's a lot of kind of historic and traditionally meaningful winter festivals in Minnesota that are getting canceled because there's no more — the pond literally isn't frozen.
David Roberts
Oh, yeah, right.
Caroline Spears
Yeah, and so people are really worried about electricity bills spiking and the power keeps going out in the state of Michigan. Like, that's really on people's minds. And that's a deeply intersectional issue. It's just something that shows up really differently in a state context.
David Roberts
You never had a situation where you endorse a candidate because of climate stuff, and then some other group approaches you and said, "Hey, this candidate you endorsed is crappy on our issue, you're not being a good ally." That type of stuff has not come up much?
Caroline Spears
You know, not that I — I think there's always dissension about candidates that we support. We just truly, like, when I think about the candidates that we support, when I say Vanguard ETF — it's truly a diversified portfolio.
David Roberts
Right.
Caroline Spears
We have candidates running in really different districts across the country. So actually, the answer to your question is yes: I have had folks call me and say, "I really disagree with this. You know, here are my priors about the political ecosystem. I really disagree with your choice here." And we've absolutely had conversations like that, and the reality is, we have candidates running, yeah, in really different communities across the US, and our goal is climate. So that's what we focus on.
David Roberts
Well, I've put this off way too long, but I'd love to hear about some of the races that you're really interested in, that you think are really high profile this year, that maybe people might not be clued into.
Caroline Spears
Great. So, we talked about the June 4 New Mexico primaries coming up. Track it. Get on Twitter day-of, if you're still on that interesting website. Maybe you know what, actually subscribe to a New Mexico newspaper.
David Roberts
Yeah. Right.
Caroline Spears
That's what I'd actually recommend to track how those elections go in terms of November 5. I mean, our 150 candidates are in multiple states. I would say the ones to keep top of mind really are — we talked about Minnesota and the incredible legislation that they passed. I'd really keep them top.
David Roberts
Yeah, that's really super significant what they've done with that majority. And the majority is very small and very fragile, one that I spent a lot of time fretting about.
Caroline Spears
Yep. It's a one-seat majority. So, that's going to be absolutely critical this November. Michigan, our top four states are all three or fewer seats away from a chamber flipping in either direction. Yeah.
David Roberts
Are they swing states mostly?
Caroline Spears
Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Pennsylvania? Yeah, I don't know. Have you heard of them?
David Roberts
Yes, I've heard some talk. What about, briefly, Arizona, the Corporation Commission? So, Arizona, their public utility commission, the regulator of the utilities, is called the Arizona Corporate Commission. Is that right? Am I getting that right?
Caroline Spears
Corporation Commission.
David Roberts
Corporation Commission. Right. Tell us a little bit about what that situation is.
Caroline Spears
So, that's a wild race. It's one of just a handful of elected public service commissions across the country. In most states, people don't go to the ballot box and elect the people who regulate the electricity sector.
David Roberts
And really, on what basis would they do so? What do they know that's such a goofy thing to be elected.
Caroline Spears
Well, and talk about campaign finance.
David Roberts
Right.
Caroline Spears
So, now you know who they regulate.
David Roberts
Yeah. Who is engaged? Who does care about those races?
Caroline Spears
You know, guess who deeply cares and is a primary funder of all of the battle climate candidates for that race? The utilities themselves, who are regulated, is a recipe for regulatory capture. And we've seen that they've pushed through several rate hikes over the last few years and they've taken terrible votes on solar. So, you know, that's a huge focus.
David Roberts
And there's three of them, right?
Caroline Spears
Three seats, three people, we got.
David Roberts
And there are three Republicans right now?
Caroline Spears
Currently, the state of the board is five people. There are four Republicans, one Democrat. That Democrat is retiring.
David Roberts
And, is there, I mean four v one and one is retiring. Is there any real prospect of getting a pro-climate majority on that this year? Is that, I'm guessing, that's a long shot?
Caroline Spears
I would put that in our build year. I think we're looking at a two-cycle play for the Arizona Corporation Commission.
David Roberts
Interesting.
Caroline Spears
You know, I did say that on some of our races in 2022 that we won. So, there's a reason we're investing. Right. If there's a chance to flip in as really big climate impact, we'll be there. But the biggest thing to think about when you think about the Arizona Corporation Commission is down-ballot drop-off. For reasons that probably make sense to everybody on this call who's ever filled out a ballot, by the time you get to like the second page and you're looking for all these people you don't know about.
David Roberts
And you don't even know what the Arizona Corporation Commission is. I bet the majority of Arizonans don't even know what it is.
Caroline Spears
Exactly, the Corporation Commission? And so, the amount of down ballot drop off and roll off that we get is huge. This is a great example of we'll talk to folks and be like, "Joe Biden." In addition to these races being high ROI per dollar, they're good investment opportunities. The other way to think about this is, the Biden campaign is going to be in Arizona this year.
David Roberts
Right?
Caroline Spears
A bunch of congressionals are running. We've got a Senate race there. They're going to be really working on those persuadable voters. But guess where our margin lies? In the Arizona Corporation Commission. It's actually Democratic voters who don't vote the whole ticket.
David Roberts
Interesting.
Caroline Spears
So, the voter targeting universe of some of our races is actually demonstrably different than the voter targeting universe that a presidential campaign, a congressional campaign, or a Senate campaign will target.
David Roberts
And so, you're just trying to persuade Democrats to keep on voting down on page two. Like, I guess that's just educational. Like, it's, you're just trying to raise the salience of that race. You know, how do you get voters engaged on the Arizona Corporation Commission race? What is it? What does that messaging look like?
Caroline Spears
I think the campaigns are testing things out right now. I'm excited to see what Ylenia Aguilar, Joshua Polacheck, and Jonathon Hill, our three candidates for that this year, I'm excited to see what they come up with. And I know it's an active point of discussion for the year. It'll be interesting to see what they go with.
David Roberts
What a fascinating experiment.
Caroline Spears
Yes.
David Roberts
One other question about 2022, and then we got to wrap up. But the sort of conventional wisdom on 2022 is that Democrats sort of outperformed expectations. They did really well. Even though all the pundits were forecasting doom, as they are.
Caroline Spears
You're going to ask me a polling question?
David Roberts
As they are, once again, I'm just curious. Like your 2022 slate, did you do better than you expected to do?
Caroline Spears
Absolutely. Every year, I try to hit about a 50% win rate. Our incredible data team goes through and actually — they have built a tech stack that will tell you the result of every election in that geographic boundary over the last eight years. Which means we're actually — this is super wonky, but if we can go really wonky for a second — it means we're protected during redistricting. So, 2022, one of our big benefits that we had is we have a redistricting-proof political vulnerability map. So, everyone was kind of like, "We don't know. We don't have any data for this race," and we were able to, using data science, understand what the top targets were.
And Caleb, our great data engineer, can do that about three to five hours after new maps drop, we'll know what our targets are. So, because of that, we're always going for a 50% win rate, and that's a year in which I would expect everybody with good targeting to overperform their baseline, because, truly, it was the best midterm election for a president's party since 1936. And if anyone predicted that, I want to talk to them and see if they can do it again. But most folks didn't. They thought it would be like, you know, worse than 2018, incomparable with 2020, and it just wasn't.
David Roberts
All right, well, we're out of time. So, maybe just tell people, you know, obviously they can give you money. Are there other ways that people can get engaged in this? If they're like, "I want to do something, but I want to know that somebody's thought through how efficacious it will be. I don't just want to go out and do something to make myself feel better. I want to do something that somebody's figured out will have high ROI," and they're attracted by this model. How can people get engaged?
Caroline Spears
Our website is climatecabinet.org. You can go there. You can check out candidates. You can sign up for our newsletter where we're always informing folks about, "Hey, here's really where we recommend focusing right now." It's a constantly refreshed kind of feed on what's going on with climate, policy, and politics through 2024. I would sign up for the newsletter. I would go through the candidates and honestly, in about one month, we will have all of our top priority candidates on our website for the year. All of these candidates, like we've talked a lot today about Moneyball, the idea that money can go farther in these races.
It also means that your volunteer hours also go so much farther.
David Roberts
Right.
Caroline Spears
So honestly, if you're living in any of our top states, but if you're living across the country and going and volunteering for a state ledge campaign, you will have so much impact for your hours spent and I can't recommend it enough. And talking to voters, always a good ground truth to talk to voters on what voters are actually thinking about. And like, I, you know, if you're listening to this podcast because you came from our newsletter, thank you for being on our newsletter, David. I think you do a really good job of giving people a full stack understanding of all of the things to think about when you think about climate.
So, if you're not on Volts, go get on Volts.
David Roberts
Well, thank you.
Caroline Spears
It's really hard to stay up to date. We are in a rapidly expanding field. The climate space, I find fun and exhilarating because it's always changing. But the cost curves are changing on exponential curves. Climate is a classic case of a nonlinear ecosystem and finding good sources to get up to date on, from industrial policy to communication strategies to policy. Like, it's hard to find sources like it. So, thanks for doing it, Dave.
David Roberts
Well, thank you, and thank you for what you're doing. And yeah, go to climatecabinet.org and figure out how you can get involved. Don't just sit around tweeting futilely into the atmosphere filled with rage like some people do.
Caroline Spears
Listen, every time you go on FiveThirtyEight, you have to do a volunteer shift for a local candidate. That's my ask for everybody.
David Roberts
Offsetting. You have to offset your poll obsession.
Caroline Spears
It's a carbon offset. For every time I make, I actually, honestly, I make myself do this. I'm like, every time I doom-scroll FiveThirtyEight, I have to do a phone bank. I have to knock doors. I have to go support a candidate. I do it personally.
David Roberts
That's great. That's great. All right, well, thank you so much, Caroline. Thanks for coming on today.
Caroline Spears
Thank you so much for having me. Have a great rest of your day.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf, so that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much, and I'll see you next time.
Using a Moneyball approach to elect state & local climate champions