A climate advocacy group that received support from a Swiss billionaire is set to spend $80 million to highlight President Joe Biden’s position on environmental issues, The New York Times reported Monday.
Climate Power will spend the money on advertisements that promote Biden’s record on environmental issues and highlight the perceived positive impacts of climate-related legislation, like the Inflation Reduction Act, according to the NYT. The charitable foundation of Hansjorg Wyss, a Swiss healthcare mogul, bankrolls the Fund for a Better Future, which was the fiscal sponsor for Climate Power until earlier this year, according to the Fund for a Better Future’s 2022 financial statement and a Climate Power spokesperson.
Climate Power has painted itself as an ordinary advocacy group, with an advisory board featuring people like Tom Steyer and former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, according to its website. The Fund for a Better Future is a left-of-center dark money group that has received most of its funding since 2016 from Wyss’s foundation, according to Fund For A Better Future’s 2022 financial statement. (RELATED: A Foreign Billionaire Is Fueling Dems’ Dark Money Machine: REPORT)
The $80 million that will drive the campaign will be dark money, meaning that its donors will not be required to be disclosed under federal law, Lodes told the NYT. However, none of the money for the campaign originates from foreign sources, and any suggestion to the contrary is inaccurate, a Climate Power spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Swiss Billionaire Hansjorg Wyss’ organizations have donated more than $330 million since 2016 to liberal interest groups https://t.co/CP0HUMD41M
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 4, 2023
“There is a huge swath of people who just don’t know anything. There’s also a segment of people that want him to do more. There’s also a swath that thinks he’s gone too far,” Climate Power’s Executive Director Lori Lodes told the NYT. “We need to make sure that the Biden coalition, the folks who got him into office in 2020, sees that he’s delivered on his promises. And he has.”
Climate Power’s advertising blitz will aim to produce a steady flow of television and digital content that will contrast Biden’s sweeping climate agenda and former President Donald Trump’s energy and environmental policies, according to the NYT. Environmentalists have sharply criticized Trump’s policies, which included reducing regulation and withdrawing from the United Nations’ Paris Accords, which Biden promptly reversed in a 2021 decision.
“Climate Power is a critical partner to continue demonstrating to the American people that the president is building a clean energy economy that benefits all Americans,” White House Chief of Staff Jen O’Malley Dillon told the NYT.
The organization describes itself as an “independent strategic communications and paid media operation focused on building the political will and public support for bold climate action,” according to its website. Wyss has given approximately $500 million to a broad range of left-of-center interest groups, including Planned Parenthood and the National Redistricting Action Fund, according to Americans for Public Trust.
The Climate Power advertising campaign is the latest example of external organizations attempting to promote Biden’s accomplishments despite the concerns that many voters may have about his age and fitness for office, according to the NYT.
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