Although I had received an incredibly supportive welcome from campaign organizers at the San Francisco office, I was happy to move to the simpler tasks of the grassroots campaign, for which I felt much more qualified.
I have been working primarily out of an office in San Rafael, run by two members of Green Core who recently graduated college. I spend my time phone banking, meeting with volunteers and attending rallies in the surrounding area.
San Rafael, being sunny, beautiful, and inhabited by a fair few crunchy, eco-friendly people, is of course not a bad place to be working on an environmental campaign.
Having a fear of phones that makes me avoid calls even with my closest friends, I never thought of myself as a prime candidate for phone banking. Despite my hesitation, it has become one of my favorite activities. Most people don’t pick up, and many that do are clearly not in the mood to talk. The rare person though who seems truly enthusiastic makes up for all the disappointments, and I often find myself full of adrenaline after a successful phone banking session. There is also a camaraderie with the other phone bankers, as you chat together while phones ring.
Obviously phone banking is laborious and slow, but there is a feeling of accomplishment that I found lacking in other activities, a sense of reaching real, live voters (who can otherwise seem almost like mythical creatures, as you discuss them at length but never actually meet them).
I enjoy rallies tremendously, but from the outside of a campaign, I honestly thought they served more as moral boosters for the volunteers rather than influencing voters. My opinion was changed late one night, as I sat phone banking. After only the first few sentences of my “schpiel,” the man on the phone interrupted me, asking if this was the proposition he had seen all the people waving signs for the previous weekend. Having been at the rally he was referring to, I could tell him honestly that it was.
“That’s ok then,” he told me. “We’re voting no. We don’t support big oil. You can call someone else now.”
– Evi Steyer
Tom Steyer is co-Chair, with former Secretary of State George Shultz, of the campaign to oppose Proposition 23 in California, an initiative that would undercut California’s commitment to clean energy.
Evi Steyer is one of Tom and Kat’s four children. She graduated from San Francisco’s University High School in 2010 and is taking a year off to volunteer on the Prop 23 campaign and travel, before starting Yale in the fall of 2011.
They are writing a regular father-daughter, intra-generational blog to share concerns and fears, as well as ideas and hopes about the future of California’s environment.
This is the first installment of what we hope will become a regular father-daughter, intra-generational effort to share concerns and fears, as well as ideas and hopes about the future of California’s environment. – Tom
Tom Steyer:
I was in Sacramento last week to debate Assembly Member and Prop. 23 author, Dan Logue. As part of my role as the No on Prop. 23 Co-Chair, I’m going to be publicly arguing the ‘no’ side of this measure as often as they’ll let me. I’ve been a passionate and practicing environmentalist for a long time now – and I put my money, and my time, where my mouth is.
And so I found myself in Sacramento.
I had spent several days prepping and practicing, making sure I was on top of the information as well as Mr. Logue’s attitudes and beliefs. I’m pretty passionate about this stuff to start with – and after spending a few days really drilling down on just who’s behind Prop. 23 (billion-dollar Texas oil giants, Valero and Tesoro), what their motives are (make even more money) and what it would mean to our environment (don’t get me started), I was ready to do battle.
Turns out, Dan Logue’s a very nice gentleman from the Truckee area, a small businessman mostly concerned with the climate for small business. He clearly cared generally about the issue. But he repeatedly quoted a series of discredited analytical efforts including one from Sacramento State and another from Berkeley, the authors of which have expressly asked him to please stop misquoting their work. It seemed to me that those Texas oil companies are manipulating him as badly as the rest of us.
One of the interesting things about debating this issue in public was that I got an immediate sense of what resonates and what does not. It’s obvious that the fact this initiative is funded by Texas oil companies resonates with everyone. It’s obvious that polluters should not be able to write their own environmental laws, get them on the ballot, and get them passed. The other point that’s obvious is this is a confusing issue for most people. Even the numbers, AB 32 and Prop 23, are confusing. It was necessary to repeat frequently that the pro-environment vote is a NO on 23 vote.
I found it an emotional experience, much like playing a soccer or basketball game. But even more so because it’s so obviously not a game. I left the debate feeling pretty drained – but also even more focused. Valero and Tesoro are going to spend whatever’s necessary to undermine California’s environmental laws. And I’m going to do my damndest to stop them.
Evi Steyer:
The trip from San Francisco to Sacramento, across the bay, over the golden-brown hills, and through the fields of the Valley, put me in a very California frame of mind. After mistakenly making my way to a local neighborhood (wine) press club and bar of the same name, I finally found my way to the Sacramento Press Club, where the debate was being hosted. The street was lined with Yes on Prop 23 advocates and a man dressed as a chicken, a reference to Assemblyman Logue’s feint at backing out of the debate. Late due to my scenic tour of Sacramento, I hustled up the stairs and found a seat at the back of the high-ceilinged room. Two men who resembled Logue himself and seemed to be closely affiliated with him, a couple wearing matching Tea Party t-shirts, and several people wearing Yes on 23 stickers and holding signs, were seated next to me.
As an 18-year old who grew up in a house where conversations about sustainable energy were as common as the morning carpool, I’m proud of California’s environmental laws and think Prop. 23 is deceptive and really, really dangerous.
The facts prove global warming is real, so it was hard for me to react to Mr. Logue’s assertion that the matter remains inconclusive without a certain amount of skepticism. What struck me, more than the arguments presented and the studies cited, was the overall tone of the discussion. Both Mr. Logue and my Dad clearly care about California and its citizens. But Dan Logue most definitely stakes his position on what he believes to be in the best interest of California. The only problem with Mr. Logue’s position though, no matter how passionate he is and how deeply held his beliefs – he’s wrong on the facts.
I was proud of my Dad, not for his debating tactics but for the positive and hopeful stance he presented. The words “innovation” and “creativity” arose frequently in his arguments for AB 32 and against Prop 23. Listening to the debate, I felt fully engaged and excited about the green revolution and the role California will play. I felt hopeful.
Tom Steyer is a successful asset manager, entrepreneur and environmentalist. He founded and is Co-Managing Partner of the San Francisco-based firm, Farallon Capital Management and is a partner at the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman. With his wife Kat Taylor, he created and funded OneCalifornia Bank, which provides loans and banking services to underserved small businesses, communities, and individuals in California. In 2008, Steyer and Taylor made a $40 million gift to Stanford University to create a new research center as part of the Precourt Institute for Energy, the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy.
Steyer is also co-Chair, with former Secretary of State George Shultz, of the campaign to oppose Proposition 23 in California, an initiative that would undercut California’s commitment to clean energy.
Evi Steyer is one of Tom and Kat’s four children. She graduated from San Francisco’s University High School in 2010 and is taking a year off to volunteer on the Prop 23 campaign and travel, before starting Yale in the fall of 2011.
So it’s been over a week since Texas oil refiners (and two of California’s worst polluters) Valero and Tesoro ponied up close to $2 million to launch a petition drive to get an initiative on the November ballot to kill AB 32, California’s nation-leading legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels and encourage job creation in the booming green/clean energy and tech industries. Naturally, Valero, Tesoro and assemblyman Dan Logue (R-Chino), one of the initiative’s primary sponsors, are doing their best to keep Texas Big Oil’s involvement in the petition a secret, refusing to confirm or deny that Valero/Tesoro are actually the sole funders of the signature drive and stand to profit from insuring that Californians continue to breath some of the dirtiest, most unhealthy air in the nation.
Unfortunately for them, the secret is out. Supporters of AB 32, the environment and clean energy started a website, NoOnValero.com, to let Californians know that the effort to kill AB 32 is about Big Oil profits, not saving or creating jobs. They also staged a rally in front of a Sacramento Valero station to tell Valero to mind its own business. Below is news coverage of the event, and you can also visit the No On Valero Youtube channel to hear what the protesters think of Valero’s involvement in trying to kill AB 32.
Not to be outdone, the Teabaggers, America’s favorite racists and climate change/evolution deniers, decided to stage their own pro-Valero rally the next week. That’s right, a rally to celebrate the fact that an out-of-state Big Oil company — a member of one of America’s most hated industries after banks and health insurers — is attempting to further corrupt our political system and compromise the health of Californians. Because apparently Teabaggers, who claim to value what they call “freedom”, think it’s better if unelected Texas CEOs of heavy-polluting corporations write California’s anti-pollution laws. Also, someone may want to tell the Teabaggers that Valero’s involvement in the petition is supposed to be, you know, a secret. And I’ll be curious to hear what Valero thinks of getting the support of a group known mostly for racism, unhinged anger, willful ignorance and irrational, apocalyptic conspiracy theories.
Then again, Valero may need all the support it can get. In a shocking turn, one of the leaders pushing for the anti-AB 32 ballot initiative, conservative Dan Costa of People’s Advocate, is now opposing the ballot initiative due to Valero and Tesoro’s involvement and the seediness of keeping it a secret, possibly in violation of state campaign laws. From the Sacramento Bee:
Ted Costa, of People’s Advocate, said he continues to believe in the thrust of the initiative but that the signature-gathering campaign has been “stolen” by big-money interests that have not identified themselves publicly.
“You ruin the whole organization when you go through this kind of muck,” said Costa.
“I wanted to do a grassroots operation and involve a lot of people,” Costa said. “But they believe they can run this thing out of the country club and to hell with the little people of California. If they have half a million dollars, how come they haven’t reported it?” he asked.
Of course, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to Costa that Logue would be hopping in bed with Valero and Big Oil, even if it seems unseemly or illegal. After all, Logue knows who owns him. From California Watch:
Last year alone, the oil and energy industries donated $14,200 to Logue’s campaign coffers, including $2,000 from Valero. Other Logue donors in 2009 include Chevron, Occidental, and the California Independent Petroleum PAC.
So Big Oil buys Logue through campaign contributions to get him elected, then Logue sponsors a ballot initiative to kill legislation that Big Oil is opposed to, then two Big Oil companies provide the funding to gather signatures for the initiative. Could the dots be any easier to connect? The Circle of Oil continues…
And in another surprise, not only are the authors of the thoroughlydebunked Varshney/Tootelian report claiming that implementing AB 32 would lead to massive economic pain refusing to defend their work from the withering criticism it has received, but apparently they don’t think AB 32 is so bad. From the State Hornet:
“We conducted an independent and unbiased study, and certainly support the spirit of AB 32,” [Dennis Tootelian] said in an e-mail. “Our study estimated the costs, and we have no other comment.”
You’d think he’d have something a bit stronger to say after Tootelian’s co-author on the report, Sanjay Varshnay, received criticism like this:
“For a guy [Varshney] who purports to be a professor, this is an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to [Sacramento State],” said Chris Thornberg, economist and founding principal of Beacon Economics.
Thornberg said the report committed fatal flaws in basic statistical analysis. The authors used regression analysis, a statistical technique used to test one variable while controlliing for many others. The report looked at state output, but did not control for the number of workers and amount of capital in California.
“The results are so screwy and crazy,” Thornberg said. “It’s so bad that if a freshman student handed this to me, I wouldn’t even give him an ‘F,’ I would call it incomplete and hand it back to them.”
With only a month to get almost 434,000 signatures, the anti-AB 32 petition drive is off to a pretty rocky start. But one thing that’s for sure is that you should never, ever count the republicans out. They never give up and will fight to the end using the dirtiest tactics, the biggest lies and the most outrageous scaremongering imaginable. Plus, the anti-AB 32 movement was handed a gift this week in the form of a new report by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office claiming that AB 32 will result in short-term job losses, even though the Union of Concerned Scientists pointed out that the report admits that predicting job losses or gains from AB 32 is extremely difficult, provides no independent research to back its claim of overall job losses, and fails to mention the numerousstudies that have found that AB 32 would be a net job creator with little or no impact on small businesses.
With California’s reputation for setting precedents that the rest of the country often follows, you can bet that powerful players are gearing up for a fight that will only grow in intensity as the days tick down until the petition signatures are due on April 16.
Lots of posts in the California blogs in the last 24 hours, almost all of them on Bush commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence (it’s good to be the king — or his friend). Actual California stuff I found below the fold. As always, if I missed something, post it in comments.
Incidentally, I noticed that for some reason the links sometimes appear as plain text in the RSS feed. They do seem to show up as hyperlinks in the emailed roundup. I’ll see what I can do about that. Until then, just click through for hyperlinking.
Not Working Californians
or California Progress Report
[Originally posted at NorCal Politics on January 31, 2006]
I don’t know enough about the politics of the Public Utilities Commmission to know exactly how this happened (note to self: learn more about PUC), but it seems that they’ve done something good:
