LCV shared big news this week: Pete Maysmith will step up as the organization’s new president next month. As LCV prepares for the transition, here are the key things to know about Pete and his vision for our next era of fighting to protect people and the planet.
Pete will fill the shoes of outgoing President Gene Karpinski, who has spent the last 18 years building LCV into the organization it is today.
Pete is no stranger to LCV: he has served as the organization’s senior vice president of Campaigns since 2017. In that role he has led teams that run organizing, advocacy, electoral, and leadership development programs on the ground, often in partnership with LCV’s state affiliates across the country.
But Pete’s work with LCV goes back even further. He first joined the Conservation Voters Movement network as the head of LCV’s Colorado affiliate in 2009, and became the founding executive director of Conservation Colorado when two organizations merged in 2012. Given his long history with LCV as a state and national leader, Pete knows the organization inside and out and is ready to lead as we face unprecedented times under the Trump administration. Pete shared a little about himself and his thoughts on how LCV is meeting the moment as we continue to fight for people and the planet.
Q&A with Pete Maysmith
Q: Tell us why you got into this work.
A: The reason I do this work is my mother. She taught me how to challenge power, which is what we’re doing at LCV – we’re challenging established power and trying to create change in this country, to protect our planet and the people on it.
When I was in elementary school, during the peace movement, the Soviet Union and the U.S. were at odds. During that time, my mom opposed a nuclear weapons facility. One morning, she woke me and my younger sister up in the pre-dawn hours to drive an hour away to a protest. There, we linked arms with others around a weapons facility that she didn’t think should exist. While I didn’t remotely understand geopolitics and the arms race, what I did get was that collective action matters.If something isn’t how we think it should be in the world, we should do something about it. And so that’s how I look at the world. We need to build power, and we do it with people.
Q: What made you want to lead LCV?
A: I love LCV and the Conservation Voter Movement. If we’re going to stop the climate crisis, we have to build and utilize political power. These are dark and deeply disturbing times but it is also true that the work LCV does is fantastic. We will continue all that makes us exceptional. Our close collaboration with our state affiliates and political work are core to LCV’s success. We organize in communities and have strong relationships with lawmakers. We communicate with people in powerful ways. And internally, our organization is strong.
But just continuing our excellent work is not enough. We also have to evolve as an organization. The moment we’re in demands that we think about how to do things differently and how to try new things. We need to be testing and experimenting. If we’re not asking ourselves, “is there a different way to do something? Is there a new thing that we ought to be trying?” and then testing it and seeing if it works, then we’re missing the moment. Leading LCV in 2025 and beyond means continuing the really stellar work that we do and bringing change as well.
Q: What is your vision for LCV?
A: We have to stand strong with LCV’s values. Take racial justice and equity, for example. It is part of who we are as an organization, as a movement. We’re at this unbelievable point where the very notion of addressing racial inequality in this country is being challenged in the halls of Congress and by the administration. We will stand strong. We’re not going to compromise our values. But we do need to understand how to move this fight forward.
Secondly, we’re not connecting with nearly enough people in this country. We need to matter to people’s everyday lives more. We need to show up as an organization and a movement that is fighting to make people’s lives better by raising incomes and bringing costs down. The good news is that building and using clean, renewable energy does exactly that. And of course that is how we cut carbon emissions and beat the climate crisis.
A: Obviously it’s quite challenging right now, but at our core, our role is to protect people and the planet. Unfortunately there are far, far too many things that need to be resisted. One of our priorities is to defend the affordable clean energy plan and other critical programs from the Inflation Reduction Act. These programs bring clean energy to communities and lower energy prices for families. Trump promised to bring energy prices down during his campaign, and he’s broken that promise because he wants to reward billionaires with more money. These things matter to people’s lives across the country – all people, not just Democrats or Republicans – and we need to defend the policies that actually do help people.
Q: How does democracy fit into this fight?
A: In addition to LCV, I worked with Common Cause, an organization focused on democracy issues, for a long time. Working to protect and expand democracy is core to how we create social change in this country. Obviously our democratic institutions are under assault, and in some instances, they are buckling. The people who are impacted first are often those most affected by the climate crisis. LCV’s democracy work is vital to protect our democratic institutions and norms.
