California Gov. Jerry Brown’s effort to extend California’s cap-and-trade program through 2030 prevailed in mid-July, when both legislative chambers approved Assembly Bill 398 with a two-thirds majority. Energy interests weren’t necessarily on the losing end of this fight: AB 398 contained a number of business-friendly provisions, including a prohibition against local independent emission reduction rules and price ceilings for emission credits. This riled liberal factions and accentuated fissures within the Democratic Party, adding to questions about the energy industry’s influence in California.
The National Institute on Money in State Politics discovered that donors in the energy and natural resources sector—those with a lot at stake in a program to limit greenhouse gas emissions—had become far more generous to California Democrats following the establishment of the cap-and-trade program in 2006. Since 2016, energy and natural resources donors have been especially generous to committee members who serve as the gatekeepers for AB 398.
Energy and natural resources contributions to California legislative candidates have increased in every election cycle since 2008, the first full election cycle after the cap and trade bill was signed into law. In 2016, the sector’s total reached $5.2 million, a 15 percent increase from 2014. The increase was due to the sector giving more to Democrats, who secured a supermajority status in 2012 and 2016. In 2008, Republicans collected $1.7 million from energy and natural resources donors, which was $329,868 less than the Democrats received in that cycle. In the 2016 election campaigns, Democrats received $3.6 million from that sector, which was 131 percent more than Republicans collected.
Figure 1: Energy & Natural Resources Contributions to State Legislative Candidates in California, by Party Affiliation, 2000-2016
A review of the data using the Institute’s new Anomaly Detection Tool reveals that energy and natural resources donors prioritized legislators serving on two key committees1 in the AB 398 debate. Members of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee averaged $20,156 from the energy and natural resources sector since 2016, which is 93 percent more than the average to all California legislators ($9,928). Similarly, members of the Senate Appropriations Committee averaged $19,043 from that sector since 2016.
Figure 2: Average Energy & Natural Resources Contributions to Members of the California Senate Appropriations and Environmental Quality Committees, 2016-2017
Nationally, the energy and natural resources sector tends to support Republicans, but that is not the case in California. Since the passage of the cap-and-trade legislation, the energy and natural resources sector has ramped up contributions to Democrats, who are not only in the majority in the California State Legislature, but also have a mandate to administer the cap-and-trade program.
- 1. The original version of the bill, heard by two assembly committees, was not an extension of the cap-and-trade program. Gov. Brown and other California Democrats substituted the language of the bill with their proposal after it was introduced in the senate. Therefore, only the senate committees are included in this analysis.
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