Steyer Spends Big in Bid to Control Colorado

Tom Steyer

Simon Lomax of The Complete Colorado, the state’s conservative media aggregator, has been tracking the expenditures of California billionaire Tom Steyer. Steyer’s expenditure for so-called research in Colorado approaches a million dollars. Colorado has been vulnerable for many years as an inexpensive state to promote causes, mount ballot issue campaigns and simply take over the state. Democratic money and interest groups took over it in the early 2000s with their Blueprint. Now, it looks like Steyer has joined their forces and amped up the money to make the state a platform for anti-fracking, anti-hydro carbon politics and policy.

Ciruli’s analysis:

“It’s an extraordinary amount of money for research and polling, which is typically a modest percentage of your overall campaign spending,” pollster and political analyst Floyd Ciruli said in an interview. “He’s getting into the granular kind of research that could be used in different races up and down the ballot, including the state legislature and congressional seats.”

“If you’ve heard of the Blueprint, this could be the Greenprint,” Ciruli said.

According to Ciruli, Steyer’s spending on Colorado research and polling – almost $800,000 so far this election cycle – will more likely be used to support candidates than a series of proposed anti-fracking initiatives for the statewide ballot this year.

“With that amount of money, he’s looking for vertical control of the ballot, taking over the state for his environmental agenda,” Ciruli said. “And it’s a pretty extreme agenda. It is anti-hydrocarbon, it is anti-growth in general.”

See:
The Buzz: Environmental Initiatives Struggle – It’s Not 2014
Inside Energy: CO Oil and Gas Industry Raises $6 Million to Fight Ballot Measures