No one has ever won a major statewide race, let alone a presidential nomination, with a single-issue, climate-focused candidacy. But Jay Inslee is about to try. <\/p>\n
The Washington state governor launched a White House bid Friday that stands to have a significant effect on the electoral politics surrounding climate change.<\/p>\n
For years, despite scientists\u2019 warnings of the calamitous consequences of a warming world, climate change was relegated to a backwater in America\u2019s political campaigns. Presidential candidates rarely mentioned the issue in debates or put money behind it in campaign ads. Even politicians supportive of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions largely skirted the issue, convinced it resonated less with voters than health care, education or other concerns.<\/p>\n
But while Inslee barely registers in presidential polls, the issue that the Washington governor is attempting to corner is showing new signs of traction with likely primary voters. The subtle <\/b>shift \u2014 expressed in public opinion polls and in renewed focus on climate change in the Democratic-controlled House \u2014 is providing Inslee a small opening. And it is forcing other, higher-profile Democratic presidential contenders to address climate change more explicitly than in any previous presidential campaign.<\/p>\n
Politically, climate change is \u201cin a completely different place,\u201d said Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist and Democratic activist who announced in January that he would not run for president. \u201cThere was one question asked about climate in the Democratic primary debates and zero in the general election debates in 2016. Are we in a better place than that? \u2026 A million times.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent weeks, the introduction of a \u201cGreen New Deal\u201d in Congress \u2014 a 10-year plan to decarbonize the American economy \u2014 refocused public attention on climate change. While Republicans lambasted the nonbinding resolution and welcomed debate on what they framed as a far-left overreach, several Democratic presidential contenders quickly signed on, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York mayor, has made climate change and gun control the pillars of his platform as he considers a run.<\/p>\n
Recent polling suggests Democrats have good reason to campaign on climate \u2014 especially in a contested primary. While climate change continues to rank low among concerns of registered voters overall, liberal Democrats listed environmental protection third and global warming fourth among issues of importance in the midterm elections last year, according to a survey by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very different environment now than we\u2019ve seen in well over a decade,\u201d said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. For liberal Democrats, he said, climate change \u201cis a top-tier issue, and that is the base of the Democratic Party.\u201d<\/p>\n
For climate change activists, the timing of the 2020 campaign appears fortuitous. Trump infuriated Democrats when he announced plans to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. But the formal withdrawal will not occur until immediately after the 2020 general election, likely forcing the issue back into the presidential debate.<\/p>\n
Because of the timing, said R.L. Miller, founder of the super PAC Climate Hawks Vote, \u201cThis will literally be a referendum on the place of the United States on climate change in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
If he qualifies for the first Democratic primary debates \u2014 likely, given the Democratic National Committee\u2019s relatively low threshold for appearing on stage \u2014 Inslee will press the issue. He has laced climate change into every aspect of his campaign \u2014 from staffing to finance to policy. <\/p>\n
Two of his political advisers \u2014 Sky Gallegos and Ben Unger \u2014 spent time working for Steyer\u2019s NextGen America group. Some of the major early donors to Inslee\u2019s federal political action committee, Vision PAC, come from the green energy or environmental industry. And where other candidates have written autobiographies, the book Inslee wrote while in political office, \u201cApollo\u2019s Fire: Igniting America\u2019s Clean Energy Economy,\u201d is about the environment.<\/p>\n
And it is not just Inslee raring for a climate debate. A super PAC supporting Inslee, Act Now on Climate, is set to back the Washington governor and emphasize the environment and climate change. But if Inslee drops out of the race, the PAC plans to shift to pressuring other candidates to focus on the issue.<\/p>\n
Steyer, a major Democratic donor, said \u201cthere\u2019s no way we\u2019d support somebody who wasn\u2019t absolutely crystal clear and credible on climate. If they\u2019re not a climate warrior, we\u2019re not for them. Period. Period, the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inslee met recently with former California Gov. Jerry Brown, a longtime champion of efforts to address climate change who has run for president three times himself. Ahead of the 2020 election, Brown said he plans to \u201cdo some things, do writings and maybe appearances to wake people up and get the topic on the presidential campaign \u2026 I do want to get this topic injected into the debate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown <\/b>said the timing for climate change as an electoral issue is \u201cgetting better because the science keeps getting clearer and more ominous, and more people are responding.\u201d Still, Brown said, climate change is \u201cnot the main story yet \u2026 No one other than Bloomberg and the governor of Washington have highlighted it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWill the presidential candidates just concentrate on other stuff?\u201d he asked. \u201cTrump and race and gender and single-payer and inequality \u2014 those are all issues that are worthy of discussing. But climate change is going to make all of them worse. So, I will do what I can to get it on the agenda. It kind of boggles my mind that it\u2019s getting the rather minimal treatment that it\u2019s getting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Inslee is likely to bring a singular focus to the issue. As part of his campaign roll out, Inslee is laying out principles on the environment and climate change that he plans to support. He\u2019s supportive of the principles of a Green New Deal, and Inslee aides are eager to mix his positions on climate change with his tenure as the only sitting governor <\/b>running in the Democratic primary.<\/p>\n
Inslee\u2019s team points out that under his leadership, Washington significantly increased wind and solar energy in the state and quadrupled the number of electric vehicles on the road while overseeing a $100 million investment fund in clean energy development and deployment.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis credentials on the issue are better than anybody else\u2019s,\u201d said Ron Dotzauer, a Democratic strategist who is based in the Pacific Northwest and is not affiliated with Inslee. \u201cOn the environment \u2014 not just climate change but on the environmental issues, the green economy, Jay\u2019s been there. He was there before it was politically fashionable.\u201d<\/p>\n