At EDF Action, uniting climate voters to support great candidates is a key part of our work to advance the policy priorities of the Environmental Defense Fund. This year, we expanded our efforts to counter climate and clean energy misinformation, educate voters about what’s at stake, and motivate EDF Action members to engage in the political process. The year has also been marked by greater participation than ever before from Clean Air Moms Action, the c4 partner to Moms Clean Air Force. This report covers the collective activity of EDF Action, EDF Action PAC, and Clean Air Moms Action.
EDF Action has made a strategic decision that its grassroots electoral activity is most impactful if it is done on the coordinated side, so that we can engage directly with candidates and candidates can inspire our members and volunteers to join them. To find out more about activity by EDF Action Votes, an independent expenditure committee whose paid communications efforts support the goals of EDF Action, see the EDF Action Votes memorandum.
Climate Voters, Unite!
“Climate Voters, Unite!” is more than a catchy EDF Action slogan – it’s an organizing principle.
We know that when climate voters show up to support candidates, their active participation gives those candidates a critical volunteer boost. Equally valuable, having climate-focused volunteers in campaign offices, on the phones, and at the doors helps create positive conversations about climate and reminds the candidates, their campaign teams, and other volunteers about how important the issue is to their constituents.
That’s why EDF Action and EDF Action PAC this year mounted the largest effort in the organizations’ history to put staff in the field and mobilize members to volunteer for climate champion candidates.
We began sending election-related content to EDF Action members in the summer, including a special Voter Guide delivered to members’ mailboxes that laid out the clear choice at the top of the ticket for climate voters, highlighted key House and Senate races, and offered members a voter action checklist.
We continued motivating EDF Action members to volunteer after Labor Day at several in-person volunteer kickoff events and a well-attended virtual volunteer kickoff event with Pete Buttigieg. Throughout the cycle, we encouraged our members to sign up to volunteer directly with candidate campaigns through our EDF Action PAC volunteer portal.
And we put 12 field organizers on the ground in key states from Labor Day through Election Day, and more than 60 additional staff – including organization leaders Fred Krupp, Amanda Leland, and David Kieve – took temporary assignments to work directly with priority campaigns and encourage EDF Action and Clean Air Moms Action members to volunteer, ultimately filling thousands of get-out-the-vote canvassing and phone banking shifts.
Validating our commitment to working directly with candidate campaigns, many of our staff and volunteers connected directly with the candidates in campaign offices and at canvass launches.
Top l-r: Congressional candidate Janelle Stelson with EDF Action members; Michigan field organizer Elizabeth Hauptman with senate candidate Rep. Elissa Slotkin; EDFers in the field with Rep. Yadira Caraveo.
Bottom l-r: Rep. Susie Lee with EDF Action volunteers and Nevada field organizer Mark Peckham; Congressional candidate George Whitesides with EDF Action’s Sophie Osborn.
We are hitting send on this document before the polls close on Election Day because we have a good sense of what we’ve done and that our work has made a difference. Rest assured that EDF Action, EDF Action PAC and Clean Air Moms Action will continue working until the final polling location has closed on November 5.
Breaking through to communicate the stakes and educate voters around the 2024 election
In addition to grassroots engagement, EDF Action led the charge over the spring and summer to push back against misinformation and disinformation around electric vehicles (EVs), countering false narratives from big polluters claiming that Biden and Harris would ban gas vehicles. This truth was affirmed by PolitiFact and the Los Angeles Times editorial board, and National Public Radio weighed in with more facts supporting our assertions. We took our message on the road as well and led media events in Las Vegas and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, speaking to the benefits of EVs alongside elected officials and partners including the IBEW.
We shifted gears in the fall to Donald Trump’s Project 2025 and its promise to gut agencies including NOAA and FEMA that bring life-saving information and resources to Americans in their time of greatest need. We took editorial meetings with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times and saw our perspective reflected on the editorial pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald and Charlotte Observer, all calling out Project 2025 for the disastrous impact it would have on our climate.
Throughout the summer and fall, we leveraged our messages on social media channels including Instagram, You Tube and TikTok and saw grassroots engagement zoom, with our member rolls now totaling over 110,000 EDF Action members. Our continued pushback on Trump’s Project 2025 saw us launch a multi-platform effort on the web and via paid and organic social media.
State Spotlight: Pennsylvania
LNP/Lancaster Online published an op-ed from David Kieve on Central Pennsylvania’s progress in the clean energy transition and the threat posed by Donald Trump and Project 2025 in their Sunday edition on October 20. Lancaster is the third largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania and its newspaper has the third-highest circulation in the state. The central argument of the piece is excerpted below:
Making progress on environmental issues used to be difficult because people bought into the argument that you could do the right thing for the economy or the environment. Yet the clean energy transition is working: As the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission reported in conjunction with the state Department of Environmental Protection, “nearly 95,000 Pennsylvanians are employed in the five broad areas defined as clean energy jobs: clean energy generation, clean grid and energy storage, energy efficiency, alternative transportation, and clean fuels.” And more jobs are coming.
Trump, Vance and Project 2025 are so beholden to oil interests they’re willing to harm our economy and our environment to the detriment of Pennsylvanians. A new study by the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation found that enacting the Project 2025 agenda would cost the commonwealth more than 37,700 jobs; decrease Pennsylvania’s gross domestic product by $7.57 billion; and raise energy prices for the average Pennsylvania family by nearly $170 a year by 2030. By 2035, those numbers would be much worse.
In other news from Pennsylvania’s midstate, EDF Executive Director Amanda Leland represented EDF Action as she led a group of our members to Harrisburg to canvass for Janelle Stelson, a candidate who offers a solid chance of defeating Scott Perry, an insurrectionist and obstructionist member of Congress who has been consistently awful on our issues.
Across the state in Philadelphia, Clean Air Moms Action organizer Brooke Petry, who has been working on the ground since just after Labor Day, was recognized for her efforts by being invited to a special reception with Vice President Kamala Harris and the campaign’s strongest volunteer supporters. The Vice President told Brooke and the other assembled guests that the work they were doing would impact the lives of people they were unlikely to ever meet. It’s on this inspiring note that we are collectively charging toward the finish line.
Candidates Supported with EDF Action PAC Contributions
★ EDF Action or Clean Air Moms Action field organizer
★ EDF Action GOTV staff deployment
★ Other EDF Action PAC contribution
Arizona ★★★★★★★★★★★
Senate: Ruben Gallego
House: Amish Shah (CD 1)
Jonathan Nez (CD 2)
Yassamin Ansari (CD 3)
Greg Stanton (CD 4)
Katrina Schaffner (CD 5)
California ★★★★
House: George Whitesides (CD 27)
Dave Min (CD 47)
Colorado ★★★★★★
House: Adam Frisch (CD 3)
Yadira Caraveo (CD 8)
Connecticut ★
House: Jahana Hayes (CD 5)
Florida ★★
Senate: Debbie Mucarsel-Powell
House: Whitney Fox (CD-13)
Jared Moskowitz (CD 23)
Georgia ★
House: Hank Johnson (CD 4)
Illinois ★★★
House: Nikki Budzinski (CD 13)
Lauren Underwood (CD 14)
Eric Sorensen (CD 17)
Kansas ★
House: Sharice Davids (CD 3)
Maryland ★
Senate: Angela Alsobrooks
Michigan ★★★★★★
Senate: Elissa Slotkin
House: Curtis Hertel (CD 7)
Carl Marlinga (CD 10)
Haley Stevens (CD 11)
Montana ★
Senate: Jon Tester
Nevada ★★★★
Senate: Jacky Rosen
House: Dina Titus (CD 1)
Susie Lee (CD 3)
Steven Horsford (CD 4)
New Hampshire ★★★
Gov.: Joyce Craig
House: Chris Pappas (CD 1)
Maggie Goodlander (CD 2)
New Jersey ★
Senate: Andy Kim
New Mexico ★★
Senate: Martin Heinrich
House: Gabe Vasquez (CD 2)
New York ★★★
Senate: Kirsten Gillibrand
House: Mondaire Jones
North Carolina ★★★★★★★★
Gov.: Josh Stein
House: Deborah Ross (CD 2)
Valerie Foushee (CD 4)
Chuck Hubbard (CD 5)
Alma Adams (CD 12)
Ohio ★
House: Marcy Kaptur (CD 9)
Oregon ★
House: Andrea Salinas (CD 6)
Pennsylvania ★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
Senate: Bob Casey
House: Brendan Boyle (CD 2)
Dwight Evans (CD 3)
Madeleine Dean (CD 4)
Mary Gay Scanlon (CD 5)
Matt Cartwright (CD 8)
Janelle Stelson (CD 10)
Summer Lee (CD 12)
Chris Deluzio (CD 17)
Texas ★
House: Jasmine Crockett (CD 30)
Utah ★
Senate: John Curtis
Wisconsin ★★★★★★★★
Senate: Tammy Baldwin
House: Mark Pocan (CD 2)
Rebecca Cooke (CD 3)
Gwen Moore (CD 4)
Kristin Lyerly (CD 8)
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Paid for by EDF Action (www.edfaction.org) and EDF Action PAC and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.