Tom Steyer wants to turn the state further to the left.
Tom Steyer wants to turn the state further to the left.
M ichael Bloomberg, the billionaire media mogul and former New York City mayor, became infamous for spending more than $1 billion on his 2020 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. He dropped out having won only one party delegate.
There was another billionaire who went bust in the 2020 Democratic primaries. California hedge fund founder Tom Steyer spent $345 million of his own money, $4,600 for every vote he received, and won no delegates.
Bloomberg has, wisely, retired to run his philanthropic empire. But the 68-year-old Steyer is still burning with political ambition and fanaticism over the perils of climate change. This fall, he spent millions on ads in support of California’s Proposition 50, which proposed to override the state’s independent redistricting panel map and replace it with a Democratic gerrymander, and which ended up succeeding.
Within days of Proposition 50’s passage, Steyer announced his candidacy for the governor’s office, which will be vacated by the term-limited Gavin Newsom in January 2027. In his announcement video, the billionaire promised to make “corporations pay their fair share” and to curb the “monopolistic power of utilities.” He claims that “affordability” is his main issue, and he pledges to “launch the largest drive to build homes people can afford in the history of California.” Details of how this magic trick will be pulled off are to come.
But, judging from Steyer’s abortive run for president in 2020, he will likely make climate change hysteria a key part of his platform. To that end, he promises to use executive orders to impose energy efficiency standards and “give Congress 100 days to pass a Green New Deal.”
The former hedge fund manager is certainly willing to pay up to spread that message. He was the single biggest individual donor of the 2016 election, spending tens of millions to warn voters about climate change.
In his approach to the issue, he is less happy warrior and more “the last angry man.” He believes that “climate change deniers” must be crushed. “The goal here is not to win. The goal here is to destroy these people,” Steyer told The Hill in 2013. Nor does he believe in debate. “We’ve got to stop talking about this,” he said of global warming in a 2019 interview. “We have to turn the page to action and we should do it Day One by calling it a state of emergency.”
Steyer joins a crowded field of Democrats, which is no surprise given that no Republican has won California’s gubernatorial race since Arnold Schwarzenegger won a second term in 2006. Katie Porter, a former congresswoman from Orange County, and Xavier Becerra, the former health secretary during Joe Biden’s presidency, are the front-runners. But former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Bay Area Congressman Eric Swalwell are also in the mix.
Last month, a poll by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that 44 percent of voters are undecided on whom they want for governor. Besides Steyer, none of the Democratic aspirants is independently wealthy. According to Democratic political consultant Darry Sragow, that means that they will be forced to spend much of their time fundraising — “24 hours a day, seven days a week.” That, Sragow says, gives Steyer an opening. None of Steyer’s opponents “is really on anybody’s radar.”
But other candidates may yet exploit Steyer’s Achilles’ heel, if they are brave enough to anger portions of the environmental lobby.
Steyer plans to make the fact that California has “the second-highest electricity rates in the country” (behind only Hawaii) a major issue of his campaign. Indeed, California’s rates are now 80 percent higher than the national average. That’s in large part because, back in 2010, the state’s voters defeated Proposition 23, a measure that would have repealed the state’s cap-and-tax program and its renewable energy standards. The largest single donor to the “No” campaign was Tom Steyer, who chipped in over $5 million ($7.6 million today). “Proposition 23 failed in no small part thanks to Mr. Steyer’s moneybags,” concludes the Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley.
California’s economy is clearly faltering under excessive environmental regulation and a Rube Goldberg carbon emissions scheme. Since Steyer helped defeat Proposition 23 in 2010, California has lost 30,000 manufacturing jobs; during the same time, the U.S. added some 1.2 million.
With the liberal consensus on climate change fraying (see Bill Gates’s about-face last month), a Democrat who ties Steyer to the state’s high cost of living could gain traction. And if Steyer does make the general election ballot for governor next year, even a Republican candidate might be able to beat him with a powerful message: “Don’t let a billionaire turn the Golden State into the Blackout State.”