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By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Boston Red Sox fans streamed into Fenway Park last April for an early-season baseball game, a small plane circled above, towing a banner that read \"Steve Lynch for Oil Evil Empire.\" Downtown, truck-mounted video screens looped attack ads against the Democratic congressman, who was running for a Senate seat. The man footing the bill for this sharp-edged campaign, San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, called Lynch \"Dr. Evil\" in a local TV interview because he did not oppose the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to the United States, which environmentalists say would worsen climate change. When Lynch, a former steel worker, lost the Democratic primary to environmentalist Ed Markey, politicians across the United States were served notice: a deep-pocketed activist was willing to punish them if they did not tackle climate change. Steyer's take-no-prisoners stance on Keystone, an issue that divides Democrats, and his willingness to spend millions of dollars to aggressively push his agenda, has raised questions about whether he might undercut the party's chance to retain control of the Senate in the Nov. 4 congressional elections.
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