Enviromentalist Billionaire Steyer expects to increase spending in 2016

Environmentalist Tom Steyer — the country's biggest individual political donor during the 2014 election cycle — says he expects to spend even more cash in 2016, focusing on his clean energy-focused super PAC that’s been aggressively organizing across the country, especially in Iowa.  “In 2014 there were some really stark choices, but there was no election as important as 2016,” said Steyer, a Democratic billionaire who spent $74.3 million on the 2014 midterms, according to a POLITICO analysis — including roughly $67 million on his NextGen Climate Action group. The former hedge fund manager, who reported contributing $13 million to the group in 2015, declined to put a number on his future spending, but he indicated that the high stakes of the presidential election — combined with the coming flood of money from the Republicans Charles and David Koch — would spur him to open his wallet even wider for the group that’s now pushing candidates to commit to a goal of 50 percent clean energy powering the country by 2030, having convinced 30,000 Iowans to commit to caucus on Monday for candidates based on their energy plans...more