This week’s Q&A is with Tom Matzzie, chair of the Invest in Tomorrow Coalition – a pro-renewables Super PAC fighting lawmakers of both sides of the aisle who spurn the sector. The Super PAC won quite a few victories during the primary season, successfully boosting challengers to hardline conservatives in the U.S. that fought for cuts to the Inflation Reduction Act and are no longer going to serve in the Lower Chamber. Matzzie, also CEO of solar firm CleanChoice Energy, is intent the sector must go on offense to win more public bipartisan support and survive the Trump 2.0 era.
I chatted with Matzzie to hear how he’s looking at the general election season. The conversation revealed to me they want the renewables industry to be seen as politically lethal. And they’re paying close attention to the Wisconsin gubernatorial race.
The following conversation was lightly edited for clarity.
So first of all, how is your role going to change as we go into the general elections?
We’re focused on accountability for elected officials who decide they want to attack the clean energy industry, making it harder for us to exist. We have elected officials who say they want to kill projects. Our industry employs hundreds of thousands of people, and we also deploy hundreds of millions in capital, so we look at the attacks on the industry as something that needs accountability.
It’s not about people we just disagree with. It’s about the worst of the worst. And that will continue to be the focus.
We’re not announcing the new races as of yet. But if you look at what we did during the primary season we focused on members of the House Freedom Caucus who had a history of attacking the industry for their own political gain. We also supported a Republican during a primary who was being attacked by the chief NIMBY in her district.
Our M.O. will continue to focus on the House Freedom Caucus and people like them. These ideological trophy hunters on the far right are extremists.
By the end of the month, we’ll announce for sure. It’ll be a five-or-six week campaign towards Election Day.
How many candidates will be targeted?
No more than ten. I feel confident saying that.
Walk me through how you decide the message against these candidates?
The important thing is, we’re crafting a message about the industry. We’re telling a story about us. Whether we’re stronger or to be feared or to be ignored. So to that regard, the effectiveness and lethality of our political apparatus matters a lot.
While many voters care about our issues, in most elections, we’re not the top issues. There’s other things that would be more effective attacks on the incumbent or a way to build up a challenger. We go in, we do message research, we figure out the most efficacious way to move the voters we want to move, and this is the best practice in modern politics is to use data-driven approaches to targeting both voters and the message. What media they consume, how you reach them.
We’re telling a story about us, not just our issues.
As you determine what races to get into, how are you taking into account the whole “data center trojan horse” situation, like what’s happening in Wiscons–
So absolutely, we’re paying close attention to [GOP gubernatorial candidate] Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin, and his smear that every data center means 100,000 acres lost [for solar]. Which by the way, 100,000 acres of solar could probably power most of the upper Midwest. So yeah, we’re paying attention to what Tom Tiffany is saying in his race.
That’s the short way of saying it.
How is the data center backlash and the role it's playing in the midterms affecting your decision-making?
It’s not. We use a data driven approach on what to say, and you follow that approach without much concern because the data is better than rumors on the internet, for lack of a better term.
What we do know is that data centers that embrace solar and wind have received more popular support in those communities. Data centers that have community benefit agreements and more responsible purchase development have received better receptiveness.
If they’re concerned about a data center, they’re going to be even more concerned about natural gas on site. But we don’t see it showing up in the research at this point.
There’s a lot of research [showing] voters care about data centers but affordability is the primary thing showing up in the research as what voters are concerned about.
