2014 Election

Despite mixed returns at the polls, the billionaire businessman remains bullish his climate campaign can change politics

In 2014, Tom Steyer emerged as the Democratic Party’s great green hope. The billionaire financier pledged to sink a chunk of his fortune into a campaign to make climate change a central issue in the midterm elections, and he delivered on his promise. Steyer’s political-action committee, NextGen Climate, spent some $65 million during the 2014 cycle. It ran ads in seven hand-picked states, assembled a sophisticated field organization and built a sprawling database of committed supporters.

Was it money well spent? If you measure success at the ballot box, Steyer’s return on investment may seem skimpy.

Just three of the seven candidates NextGen supported were victorious on Tuesday. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen fended off a challenge from Scott Brown in New Hampshire; Democratic gubernatorial nominee Tom Wolf coasted to victory in Pennsylvania; and Democratic Senate candidate Gary Peters won an open seat in Michigan.

But Steyer’s group lost competitive Senate races in Colorado and Iowa, states into which it poured nearly $12 million, and which may prove the difference in the battle for control of the chamber. (Not all ballots have been counted in the Alaska Senate contest, and Louisiana is headed for a December runoff.) NextGen also came out on the wrong side of tight gubernatorial races in Florida and Maine, despite heavy investment to dislodge incumbent Republicans Rick Scott and Paul LePage.

But Steyer is sanguine about the election’s outcome. In an interview with TIME on Thursday, he pointed to NextGen’s ability to push climate issues toward the forefront of campaigns, as well as its efforts to begin the construction of a political machine that can become a powerful force in coming years.

“In terms of the things that we can control, we felt like wow—we way over-performed our expectations,” Steyer says, noting that the group surpassed its target of amassing a quarter-million climate-driven voters by 100,000 and beat its goal by building an email list of a million names. “Climate was a top-tier issue in every one of the states we were working on,” Steyer says, “Which is a huge change—very different from 2012, very different from 2010.”

NextGen forced Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst to defend her climate position in Iowa, and Colorado Republican Senate candidate Cory Gardner was sufficiently cowed to run ads touting his support for wind energy in the state. But both GOP candidates prevailed. And in both states, voters declined to rank climate in the top quartet of issues, according to CNN exit polls, instead listing foreign policy, healthcare, the economy and illegal immigration as their top priorities.

In Florida, Scott made only fleeting gestures to the environmental community, and in Maine Steyer’s group failed to oust LePage, who calls climate change a hoax. NextGen’s efforts may have put Republicans on the defensive, but that’s a relatively modest achievement for tens of millions of dollars.

With the GOP poised to take control of Congress in January, the prospects for positive legislation on environmental issues have dimmed. Republicans are preparing a push to approve the Keystone XL pipeline—”a terrible idea,” especially amid plunging oil prices, Steyer says—as well as a likely effort to green-light drilling on public lands. But Steyer says that while NextGen will stay focused on educating people about the economic and environmental benefits of pursuing progressive energy policy, he’s conscious of the limits of its power to affect the legislative process.

“Do I think it’s possible for us to educate people about the facts on the Keystone XL pipeline and influence their thinking by making them aware of what the underlying issues are? Sure,” he says. “But we definitely can’t control this issue” in Congress.

The same goes for this week’s outcome at the polls. Steyer chalks up the defeats in close races to the headwinds of waging a campaign in an off-year cycle, when a second-term president with foundering approval ratings buffeted Democratic candidates. “There was a Republican wave that has nothing to do with us, and in certain of those races, it swept over us,” he says. “It’s something we can’t control.”

And so Steyer hasn’t wavered in his political or financial commitments. NextGen is “not a drive-by super PAC,” he says. “We’re going to build political assets, we’re going to build an organization, we’re choosing states that have national significance. All those things are [still] true … regardless of the outcome. So I feel really good about what we did, and I feel really good about where we’re going.”

Issues ranging from abortion to gambling to medical marijuana go before voters

Big money was a boon to groups fighting for and against ballot measures across the states on Election Day.

In 21 of the top 25 most expensive state ballot measure races in terms of television ad spending, groups that won the war on the airwaves also won at the ballot box, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of unofficial election results and preliminary data from media tracking service Kantar Media/CMAG.

But surprising upsets also showed that in the wild world of direct democracy, money isn’t everything.

“The relationship is more complicated than just ‘spending more [means] having greater success.’ There are a lot of other factors in terms of the electoral environment,” said Daniel Smith, a University of Florida professor and expert on such initiatives. “Ballot measures generally are easier to defeat than to pass.”

More than $196 million was spent in 2014 on TV ads touting and trashing this year’s crop of 158 statewide ballot measures; another $19.7 million was spent on local measures. TV ads are well known as an effective way to get a message to voters, and this year, many corporations and national advocacy groups lined up to have their say on the airwaves about the initiatives.

Groups backed by doctors and health insurers spent nearly $60 million to air TV ads to oppose Propositions 45 and 46 in California, putting them at the top of the TV spending pile. They got their way, as voters rejected the two measures, which would have required drug testing for doctors and special approval for insurers to raise rates.

The health care industry outspent Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, and trial lawyers, who backed the measures, by 7-1 on the airwaves.

Examples where big ad spending paid off for groups working to pass or block initiatives at the polls were plentiful. Some of the winning groups appeared not to face any opposition on the airwaves at all: Of the 21 groups that won both ad and ballot wars, 13 faced no ads aired on the other side of the issue.

In Massachusetts, voters chose not to ban gambling after a casino-backed group ran about $5.7 million worth of ads claiming gaming was good for the economy. No ads ran in support of the ban.

And in Democratic California, Gov. Jerry Brown led a group of supporters who together put nearly $21 million worth of ads on TV to support Propositions 1 and 2, which encompass a series of provisions to shore up California’s water supply and create a state rainy day fund. The measures faced no opposition on the airwaves, and passed handily.

Ballot measures can have broad, bipartisan support to begin with, especially if a legislature puts them on the ballot, said Smith.

Supporters of legalized marijuana won in Oregon and Alaska. Groups spent $2 million supporting the Oregon measure on the airwaves, and just $60,000 in Alaska. Voters also approved a measure legalizing the possession of the drug in the District of Columbia, despite no pro-pot ad spending.

But in Florida, a measure to allow medical marijuana failed, barely. It needed 60 percent approval to pass and only got 58 percent. The Drug Free Florida Committee, armed with millions from Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, spent $5 million on TV ads against the measure, compared with just $1.9 million spent on the airwaves by supporters.

The “No on 2” campaign was more sharply focused in its attacks on the medical marijuana measure, raising a host of claims that raised doubt in Floridians’ minds,” Smith said.

Among some other high-profile ballot battles:

• Planned Parenthood-backed organizations won on abortion-related issues in North Dakota and Colorado and lost in Tennessee, which passed a measure that declares that the Tennessee Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion, reversing an earlier court ruling.
• Measures that would have required labeling of genetically modified foods failed in Colorado and Oregon in the face of opposition from groups backed by big food companies such as Pepsi and Monsanto.
• In Maui County, Hawaii, a ban on the growth of genetically modified plants passed, despite a Monsanto-backed group buying TV ads worth about $2.7 million — or about $30.42 per registered voter — to oppose it.
• Coloradans voted against an expansion in gambling despite $7.8 million in ads arguing that it would put millions into the state’s schools. The ads were backed by an out-of-state casino company, Twin River Casino. A Colorado casino group spent about $6.7 million on TV airtime opposing it.
• Washington voters approved a measure to require background checks for all gun purchases, a measure backed by Microsoft elites and Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety Fund.”
• A San Francisco initiative to tax sugary drinks became the most expensive local measure in the nation in terms of TV ads when a soda-industry-backed group spent $3 million on ads. The soda lovers claimed victory, as the measure fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass.

Teachers groups faced losses across the board

Correction: Appended, Nov. 5.

Despite shelling out more than $60 million this election cycle—substantially more than they have spent in the past—the national teachers unions watched with disappointment on Tuesday as their candidates in Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Illinois were roundly defeated. Many union-backed state and local initiatives on issues like pre-K education and better child-care salaries also went down in flames.

The battle over education at the federal level matters more these days, with major government-backed initiatives, like the Common Core standards, funding for new teacher evaluations, and student loan forgiveness programs, hanging in the balance.

While American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten dismissed the trouncing as an unfortunate side effect of a larger Republican referendum on President Obama’s record, education reformers were quick to chalk up the results as a repudiation of the educational establishment.

“Union-backed candidates embracing a one-size-fits-all, status quo education system for our children were soundly rejected by voters,” said Kevin Chavous, executive counsel of the American Federation for Children, a conservative reform group that supports charter schools, vouchers, and other school choice programs. The AFC and its partner PACs spent $4.5 million this election cycle.

“This election marks the beginning of the end for the education establishment; no longer can unions expect to buy the outcome of elections,” he added. “Voters at every level have rejected an antiquated education establishment agenda and system.”

In a statement Wednesday, Weingarten refuted that interpretation, pointing to a handful of victories, including the passage of school levies across the country. In Pennsylvania, voters elected union-friendly Democrat Tom Wolf over incumbent Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, who had waged war against the unions and cut public school funding. In California, the unions also celebrated the reelection of state schools chief Tom Torlakson, who fought a vicious—and wildly expensive—battle against the reformer-backed Marshall Tuck.

Weingarten also insisted that in places like Florida, where Republican Gov. Rick Scott won over union-backed Charlie Crist, it was a tight election and Scott “ran on funding schools, not his record.”

In a video statement released Wednesday afternoon, National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen Garcia said that while many banner races were lost, voters’ support for state and local initiatives on minimum wage, school safety and women’s health should be taken as a good sign. “They chose to support kids and their families,” she said.

But in most races, including Florida, where the AFT and the NEA spent generously on TV ads and where both Weingarten and Eskelsen Garcia personally stumped for more than a dozen candidates, the union-backed choices were largely aced out. Democratic gubernatorial candidates Mary Burke in Wisconsin and Mark Schauer in Michigan, both of whom campaigned with Weingarten and Eskelsen Garcia, both lost Tuesday.

In Kansas, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback beat Democratic challenger Paul Davis, despite the NEA Advocacy Fund’s ad campaign attacking Brownback’s “failed experiment” in education. And in North Carolina, Republican Thom Tillis beat out Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan for her Senate seat, despite the NEA slamming Tillis for his record on education. In Arkansas, union-backed Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor lost to Republican challenger Tom Cotton.

In Arizona and Georgia, radical opponents of the Common Core State Standards came to power over union-friendly candidates who would see a more moderate implementation of the standards, and in Nevada, a ballot measure raising taxes on corporations to fund public schools failed to pass. In Seattle, an effort to expand pre-K education and raise wages for child care workers failed, and in Washington state, voters rejected an effort to reduce class sizes and increase the number of teachers hired.

But Eskelsen Garcia, while admitting to a “heavy heart” today, laced her statement with an implicit threat. “Candidates across the spectrum made statements claims and promises of what he or she is going to do for public education. We will soon know if they were telling the truth,” she said. “And for those that weren’t, we will be the watch dogs.”

Correction: The original version of this story misstated the amount teachers spent during the 2014 election cycle. It was more than $60 million.

Funding the government, fighting ISIS and Ebola at the top of the list

After a stinging defeat last fall, the Republican Establishment seized control of the party and steered it to victory

For the Republican Party, Tuesday’s Senate triumph had roots in regret.

Last November, the GOP found itself perched on a political precipice. Its poll numbers had cratered, its demographic future was murky and the government shutdown had proven disastrous. Looming on the horizon was a year of bitter primary squabbles, which strategists feared would produce shoddy candidates capable of hobbling its quest to reclaim the Senate.

Twelve months later, Republicans notched sweeping victories, paced by a banner class of recruits and propelled by the money and muscle of an Establishment wing that finally snatched back the reins of the party. The GOP could not have defeated the Democrats without first dispatching its insurgents. And so the story of its decisive victory on Tuesday begins not in the corridors of the Capitol or on the stump in a swing state, but rather deep in Republican territory, with a sleepy special election in southwest Alabama.

In the wake of the shutdown debacle last fall, a mainstream Republican named Bradley Byrne was struggling to beat back Tea Partyer Dean Young for a seat opened by a congressional retirement. Young was the sort of insurgent the Establishment had grown to loathe. Incendiary and unpolished, he called Ted Cruz a model legislator and vowed to go to Washington to “shut it down again.” Party elders saw the race as their first chance to reshape the party in the wake of the shutdown. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose policy had long been to stay neutral in primaries, led a brigade of business lobbies into the district. The strike was a sneak attack. Eschewing TV ads, the Chamber quietly shelled out some $200,000 on the race, dropping direct mail around the district. Byrne won in a nail-biter.

It was the first time that the party’s establishment wing had directly confronted the Tea Party movement, and it set the tone for the battles to come. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell visited a Chamber board meeting the day after the race, and declared the sleepy special election the most important contest in the country, on a night that also saw Chris Christie win a decisive victory in the New Jersey governor’s race. It was a token of gratitude toward the Chamber, which would playing a leading role in the Establishment revolt, spending about $70 million on 2014 races and winning 14 of the 15 primaries it entered. “We don’t have anything against the Tea Party,” says Scott Reed, the Chamber’s chief political strategist. “But when a handful of bad actors hijacked the movement, that’s when we decided to step in.”

The goal, party strategists say, was to avoid the kind of disastrous candidates—the Todd Akins, the Sharron Angles, the Christine O’Donnells—whose extreme positions and outré remarks hampered the GOP up and down the ballot in past Senate stumbles. The plot to crush the Tea Party proved a smash success. For the first time since 2008, not a single incumbent Republican senator lost in a primary.

After Alabama, the emboldened Establishment moved quickly. Party committees blacklisted a Republican ad firm called Jamestown Associates, causing it to lose a series of lucrative contracts. Jamestown’s sin? Working with a group called the Senate Conservatives Fund, which was part of a passel of Tea Party groups who infuriated party bigwigs by egging on the shutdown. McConnell spread word that the leaders of these groups, whose organizing principle was fiscal discipline, were taking bloated salaries. The Senate Conservatives Fund, McConnell aide Josh Holmes, told the New York Times, “has been wandering around the country destroying the Republican Party like a drunk who tears up every bar they walk into. The difference this cycle is that they strolled into Mitch McConnell’s bar, and he doesn’t throw you out, he locks the door.”

In a series of key contests, the Establishment’s money and muscle helped lift struggling candidates out of crowded primary fields. In May, a coalition of center-right business groups boosted Thom Tillis, the North Carolina House speaker, over the 40% threshold to avoid a runoff, saving GOP forces around $20 million in the process. The next month, it did the same in Iowa for Joni Ernst, who went on to topple Democrat Bruce Braley in one of the year’s decisive Senate races.

Ernst also got a much-needed assist from a GOP research firm called America Rising. Launched by three top party operatives after 2012, the group had a mandate to erase the opposition research edge Democrats enjoyed in past cycles. The investment paid dividends early on a cold, dark March morning. Tim Miller, the group’s executive director, was reviewing the latest clips compiled by his team of twenty-something research junkies when he came across something so juicy it might just alter the balance of the Senate. “Holy s—!” he shouted. It was a video of Braley, standing before a half-dozen bottles of liquor at a Texas fundraiser, disparaging Sen. Chuck Grassley as a farmer who “never went to law school.”

Miller’s group leaked the video to an Iowa television reporter, hoping to assure at least a single airplay on local television, which would allow it to be aired in future ads. Instead it spread like wildfire. The clip cast Braley as out of touch with his agricultural state and proved a body blow to Braley’s Iowa hopes. In the final Des Moines Register poll, 39 percent of Braley’s own supporters said his comments about Grassley were a crucial mistake.

In all, dozens of research hits unearthed by America Rising would make their way into ads aired by candidates and allied groups. “One of our big takeaways from the last cycle was the Democrats did a better job of investing in tracking and opposition research,” says Miller. “This time we needed to invest in that in order to make our paid media more effective.”

Meanwhile, Republicans were expanding the political map by putting unexpected states into play. In March, prized recruit Cory Gardner coaxed potential challengers to let him run opposed against Democratic Sen. Mark Udall. In Virginia, former RNC chair Ed Gillespie launched a bid against Democratic Sen. Mark Warner. Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown moved to the Granite State to challenge Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in early April. Gillespie and Brown lost, but ran strong campaign that forced Democrats to funnel precious time and money into defending territory.

The next big moment came in a June, when GOP bigwigs scrambled to save Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran in a runoff against Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel. Back in Washington, strategists saw McDaniel as a ticking time bomb. The GOP was so determined to be gaffe-proof in 2014 that it dispatched staffers to harass Senate hopefuls at a Washington airport in hopes of steeling them against surprise encounters with hostile trackers. McDaniel was the kind of firebrand they feared.

The establishment, led by former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and his allies, pulled out every trick in the bag to snuff out the threat. In a tight runoff, they expanded the electorate by courting black voters. The Chamber enlisted Mississippi icon Brett Favre to cut a memorable ad for Cochran. They later repeated the tactic in North Carolina, where Nascar driver Richard Petty appeared in an ad for Tillis, and in Georgia, where hometown Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker made a Senate endorsement.

“If we had come up short in Mississippi, it would have had a domino effect” all summer, Reed says. “Beating McDaniel was a key turning point. It allowed us to turn the page on the primaries and focus on the general.”

As the Chamber led the way in the primaries and America Rising handled the research, the vaunted Koch network was laying the groundwork for November. The Kochs were the biggest spenders on the right on the 2014 election, with a hand in everything from the party’s ground game to its attack ads to its tech tools.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a Koch-based network of state-based activists, shelled out more than $125 million to boost Republicans. About half that sum was plowed into a robust ground game powered by some 550 field staff. AFP ran its first ads the week of Labor Day 2013, with a million-dollar buy against Kay Hagan in North Carolina. The campaign slowly chipped away at the incumbent’s s approval rating, which hovered around 55% as 2014 dawned. “The earliest and biggest strategic decision we made was to go early,” says AFP president Tim Phillips. As November drew near, other members of the Koch network switched up tactics. The super PAC Freedom Partners Action Fund began running “express advocacy” ads, spending some $25 million to boost candidates that helped Republicans reclaimed the Senate. The move forced the group to disclose donors, which it had long resisted. “That was a big decision for the Koch network,” says Phillips.

All these changes—better candidates, better research, smarter spending—coalesced on Tuesday, when Republicans picked up at least 7 Senate seats to seize control of the upper chamber for the first time since 2006.

With reporting by Zeke J. Miller

The President will speak about the midterm election results, which saw Republicans gain control of the Senate and maintain control of the House of Representatives, at a press conference set to begin at 2:50pm ET. Watch live here

New Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is hosting a press conference at 2pm ET. Watch coverage live here