Campaign News

Save the dates and upcoming events

• Just confirmed! On W Sept 28 in Seattle with UW meteorologist Cliff Mass we will have a wine-and-cheese reception in Kane Hall followed by a lecture; details TBD but save the date!
• Coming soon, RSVP now! On T August 30 in Seattle we are hosting a BBQ at Gasworks Park from 6:30-8:30pm. Bring your family and friends and please RSVP on Facebook or on our events form.
• This Sunday in Spokane: Join campaign co-director Kyle Murphy and volunteers at a campaign meetup at 11am at Atticus Coffee; email Kyle if you need more details.
• On the horizon: W Sept 14 in Spokane we’ll be part of a State of the Green Economy discussion; F Sept 16 in Oak Harbor I’ll be speaking at the Rotary Club; Th Sept 22 in Seattle we’ll be hanging out with tax lawyers; W Oct 5 in Seattle with Seattle 4 Rotary; and Th Oct 20 in Pullman and Spokane, details TBD. Email us if you have other ideas to fill up the calendar and get the word out!

 Endorsement update

People said we’d never get any Republican legislators to endorse I-732, but Joe Fain (R-47th, Auburn/Kent/Renton) has now joined Steve Litzow (R-41st, Mercer Island, up for re-election this year) and Mark Miloscia (R-30th, running for State Auditor). Thank you Senator Fain!

Videos: grassroots and Seattle Times ed board

Please watch and share this insanely fabulous 30-second video created by I-732 supporter Lou Daprile. (Thank you Lou!!) And if you have a bit more time on your hands-like an hour-here’s the Seattle Times editorial board interview/debate that took place last week; we think we have a shot at getting their endorsement so keep your fingers crossed and stay tuned for an editorial one way or the other in the weeks ahead. (PS. If you want to volunteer to transcribe the ed board debate please email me, thanks!)

Strategy update

We’ve got our noses to the grindstone (see last week’s email blast for how you can help!), but I want to step back for a minute and provide a strategy update, starting with a reminder of the two main advantages of our approach to climate action.

The first advantage of our approach is that I-732 is a great policy. Any substantive questions on that front were addressed by the independent analysis from Sightline Institute (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), which concluded that “Initiative 732 does exactly what the scientists and economists prescribe: it sets a science-based, steadily rising price on pollution. The citizens’ initiative covers most of the state’s climate pollution, makes the tax code more progressive, and is administratively elegant.”

The second advantage of our approach is that it has appeal to voters across the political spectrum and to businesses: Sunday’s Seattle Times article inevitably focused on the in-fighting with the Alliance, but also shared a story about a Trump supporter who cares about climate change and is getting an I-732 yard sign (!), so we know we can reach voters across the political spectrum. The other big news in the article was the neutral position on I-732 (“We don’t support it and we don’t oppose it”) taken by the Western States Petroleum Association. This wasn’t all that surprising to us—two years ago we made the case that WSPA should support properly designed market-based policies because that’s what it says on their website—but it should be big news to everyone who thinks that tens of millions of dollars in oil company opposition spending is inevitable.

Our campaign is therefore almost exactly where we hoped it would be. Recent polling (on the ballot title alone, without any explanation) shows a situation similar to what we described in December, with a huge number of undecided voters and a path to victory if we can convince voters who are “extremely concerned” about climate change to vote Yes on 732. What our staff and volunteers have found from door-to-door canvassing is that almost 70% of people we talk to want to support 732 after a short conversation. For those who are unsure, when we remind them that we’re running out of time to combat climate change, they tend to support 732; when we talk about the boost to clean energy the measure will create, they tend to support 732; and when we let them know how the measure helps reduce emissions without harming the economy or household budgets, they tend to support 732. We are thrilled to have Audubon Washington on board and will continue to campaign vigorously across the state… but we need your help to get those undecided voters on our side by reaching out to one million voters and sharing our message that we have a moral responsibility to act on climate change.

All we need to do now is execute our plan and raise the money we need to execute our plan. That’s our strategy. Let’s go make it happen! (See last week’s email blast for how you can help with your time, and see below for how you can help with your money!)

Matching fund drive for $5,700

Kyle’s message last week about how few days are left before ballots go out was off by a few days (sorry!) but it was right on in spirit, and in keeping with that spirit a generous donor has offered up a matching challenge to raise $5,700 by next Thursday, at which point there will be 57 days left until ballots go out on F Oct 21. Help us make it happen and double your money by donating now. Thank you!

In the news

On the business front check out Mike Vaska’s op-ed in Seattle Business magazine and AP Hurd’s op-ed in the Puget Sound Business Journal. And congratulations and thanks again to Steve Ghan for his op-ed supporting I-732 in the Tri-City Herald. (The link I sent out about this last time may not have been the right one.) And thanks and congrats for LTEs from Frank Turner in the Olympian, Sara Cate in the Yakima Herald, and John Selby in the Tacoma News Tribune. (Please email us if you’ve got an op-ed or a Letter to The Editor or you want help writing one!) Elsewhere, Robert Kahn from the Northwest & Intermountain Power Producers Coalition has an op-ed on “Competition in energy brings innovation”. (We’re part of a panel discussion on climate policy at the NIPPC conference on Sept 26.)  Nationally, the NYT has “Flooding in the South Looks a Lot Like Climate Change“ (see also Chris Mooney in the Washington Post) and Gretel Kaufmann in the Christian Science Monitor has “As Earth warms, Americans more polarized than ever on climate”. And in news from California, Melanie Mason in the LA Times has an article on “the budgeting black hole of cap-and-trade” and UC Berkeley economist Severin Borenstein has a post on “Fixing a major flaw in cap-and-trade”. (It’s not as bad as it sounds; even less dismally, recall the op-ed by RFF economist Dallas Burtraw in the LA Times.)

Let’s win!

Yoram and the Yes on 732 team