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- An AI-powered platform generated at least 20,000 emails that helped defeat a proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances in Southern California, records show.
- Experts said the use of AI for civic engagement is growing and could make it harder for elected officials to engage in earnest with the public.
- The defeated rules would have added a surcharge to gas appliances in an effort to cut air pollution, including smog-forming nitrogen oxides.
The opposition appeared overwhelming: Tens of thousands of emails poured into Southern California’s top air pollution authority as its board weighed a June proposal to phase out gas-powered appliances. But in reality, many of the messages that may have swayed the powerful regulatory agency to scrap the plan were generated by a platform that is powered by artificial intelligence.
Public records requests reviewed by The Times and corroborated by staff members at the South Coast Air Quality Management District confirm that more than 20,000 public comments submitted in opposition to last year’s proposal were generated by a Washington, D.C.-based company called CiviClick, which bills itself as “the first and best AI-powered grassroots advocacy platform.”
A Southern California-based public affairs consultant, Matt Klink, has taken credit for using CiviClick to wage the opposition campaign, including in a sponsored article on the website Campaigns and Elections. The campaign “left the staff of the Southern California Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) reeling,” the article says.
When staffers at the air district reached out to a small sample of people to verify their comments, at least three said they had not written to the agency and were not aware of any such messages, records show.
But the email onslaught almost certainly influenced the board’s June decision, according to agency insiders, who noted that the number of public comments typically submitted on agenda items can be counted on one hand.
The proposed rules were nearly two years in the making and would have placed a fee on natural gas-powered water heaters and furnaces, favoring electric ones, in an effort to reduce air pollution in the district, which includes Orange County and large swaths of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Gas appliances emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx — key pollutants for forming smog.
In voting to deny the measures, AQMD board member Janet Nguyen said the rule would unnecessarily penalize people by raising the cost of household appliances.
The implications are troubling, experts said, and go beyond the use of natural gas furnaces and heaters in the second-largest metropolitan area in the country.
For years, companies have employed bots or orchestrated fake “astroturf” campaigns to create the appearance of grassroots opinion on an issue, but the introduction of AI technology could make it even harder for elected officials to engage in earnest with the public.
“What we’re seeing with AI is absolutely the next step in digital astroturfing,” said Samuel Woolley, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh who studies disinformation and the use of emerging technology in politics.
On its website, CiviClick offers several tools including “state of the art technology and artificial intelligence message assistance” that can be used to create custom advocacy letters, as opposed to repetitive form letters or petitions. Officials at the software company initially did not respond to requests for comment about how AI was used in this campaign.
After publication of this story, CiviClick chief executive Chazz Clevinger reached out to The Times and said that AI was not used to write the letters in this campaign. However, he said the tool is actively being used on other campaigns now. He also said there are “multiple places in the back-end of the product that use AI to help clients create descriptions for actions pages and things of that nature.”
Clevinger said he could not provide additional details about how the 20,000 comments to the air board were generated — or how constituents were identified and contacted — due to confidentiality agreements.
Klink, the public affairs consultant who ran the campaign, said he was not available to speak with The Times. In an emailed statement, he said the campaign “was an important part of a larger outreach effort that saw almost 40 local governments, a 2026 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, and almost 100 business and community groups oppose the regulations.”
“Because AQMD staff did a poor job of informing and educating millions of people in the air district’s four-county service area about the rules’ high cost, we used a trusted partner, CiviClick, to engage with constituents, to educate them about the problematic regulations, and to make it easy for them to voice their concerns directly to board members,” Klink said.
He did not respond to questions about who paid for the campaign or how much it cost. Klink runs his own firm, Klink Campaigns, and is also a partner at California Strategies, one of the largest public affairs and lobbying firms in the state. The latter’s more than 100 clients include the California Apartment Assn., various energy groups, and Sempra, which owns the Southern California Gas Co., according to 2025 lobbying data filed with the California secretary of state.
The South Coast Air Quality Management District is poised to vote on regulations that would limit emissions of nitrogen oxides — the key pollutants that form smog.
Rules 1111 and 1121 would have imposed fees on manufacturers, distributors and installers of new gas-powered furnaces and water heaters in the air district. They also would have set targets for the sale of electric space and water heaters. This carrot-and-stick approach would have affected an estimated 10 million units across the region, the majority in houses and apartments.
The fees began at $100 for gas furnaces and $50 for gas water heaters. Once fully implemented, the rules were expected to prevent the release of 6 tons of NOx each day, roughly the amount released by two natural gas power plants. The air district estimated nearly 2,500 premature deaths would be averted as well as more than 10,000 new cases of asthma.
Public opponents of the rule included the Southern California Gas Co., the Cost of Living Council and several local Realtor associations and chambers of commerce. Supporters included California Environmental Voters, the Coalition for Clean Air and various groups geared toward decarbonization, electrification and environmental justice.
Clevinger told Campaigns & Elections that the opposition campaign generated more than 20,000 messages to the air district. “To hit these numbers, we conducted aggressive omni-channel outreach to an audience of over half-a-million people in the region from our database of advocates. It was grueling work at times, and required meticulous planning and execution,” he said.
The flood of emails raised suspicions internally at the AQMD. The agency’s cybersecurity team reached out to a small subset of people to confirm that they had submitted comments, or had authorized another party to send an email on their behalf. Only five responded. Two confirmed they had sent a message, while three others said they had no knowledge of the letters.
When asked about the finding, Clevinger told The Times he was not surprised, and suggested they might have forgotten. “This isn’t exactly the kind of thing that someone would generally remember or not remember” nearly a year later, he said.
In a statement, air district spokeswoman Nahal Mogharabi confirmed the volume of comments was unusual and the agency was concerned about their authenticity, but said they did not receive enough responses to their inquiry to draw a definitive conclusion. “South Coast AQMD takes pride in its robust public process,” Mogharabi said. Public feedback and participation are important for making new rules, she said. However, she could not comment on whether the campaign influenced the board, which is made up of independently elected and appointed members.
The Justice Department said natural gas bans in Petaluma and Morgan Hill drive up costs and conflict with federal policy. Both cities said they have not enforced their bans in several years.
Dylan Plummer, acting deputy director of building electrification at the nonprofit Sierra Club, supported the proposed rules. “CiviClick’s engagement at South Coast is deeply disturbing and calls into question the validity of the opposition to the agency’s common sense clean air rules,” he said.
He described the use of AI-powered campaigns as an “emerging fossil fuel industry playbook” that threatens the integrity of policymaking nationwide. He pointed to a campaign in North Carolina last year that used CiviClick emails to support a local gas pipeline expansion. In the Bay Area, another campaign is underway using a platform called Speak4, which also advertises its use of AI, to send comment letters on air district rules, he said.
“This is just the beginning,” he said.
A few states have enacted legislation addressing astroturfing and campaign technologies, including California, which passed the 2019 Bot Act that requires automated online accounts to disclose that they are bots if used to influence people about political or commercial matters. But the law doesn’t mention artificial intelligence, which has exploded in recent years with the use of ChatGPT and other tools.
“These advances in AI really risk degrading the connections between politicians and political bodies and regular people,” said Woolley, of the University of Pittsburgh, because they can “make it look like people want things they actually do not want. And the systems simply aren’t set up to deal with these things.”
Other factors may have played into the air district’s decision. In 2019, Berkeley passed a first-in-the-nation ban on natural gas in new low-rise buildings and homes. It was struck down by a federal appeals court in 2023 following a lawsuit from the California Restaurant Assn.
President Trump has also targeted Biden-era electrification initiatives and sought to maximize the development of oil, gas and coal. Last month, the administration sued two California cities, Petaluma and Morgan Hill, over their natural gas bans, even though both cities said they were not enforcing them.
In the weeks leading up to the vote in Southern California, U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, a Trump appointee in California, warned the air district’s board that any effort to enact bans or penalties on gas appliances would face a legal challenge from his office.
A three-judge panel sided with the California Restaurant Assn. against a Berkeley policy that ‘prohibits the installation of natural gas piping within newly constructed buildings.’
Such bans have also proven divisive among Californians. In addition to the thousands of emailed comments submitted through the CiviClick campaign, about 250 people joined the June 6 board meeting online and in person to weigh in. Many opposed to the rules were concerned about cost — including the need for home upgrades to support new electric appliances — and strain on the region’s power grid.
Others described it as a mandate, which officials said was not accurate because the rules wouldn’t have prevented consumers from purchasing gas appliances if they wanted to.
Others rallied in support of the proposal, noting that it was an opportunity for Southern California to address air quality issues, combat planet-warming emissions and rebuild responsibly in the wake of last year’s Los Angeles wildfires. Some held signs reading “Clean Air Saves Lives,” “Delay Is Deadly” and “Healthy Homes.”
“There’s no rule that we have discussed that will have as much impact on the air that people are breathing in this region than this rule that we are considering,” board member and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman said during the meeting. “It would be a grave error not to move this forward.”
The board rejected the proposal 7-5.
Updates
2:59 p.m. Feb. 26, 2026: This story has been updated with comment from CiviClick chief executive Chazz Clevinger that he provided after the story was first published.
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