Billionaire businessman and activist Tom Steyer, who once self-financed an unsuccessful White House campaign and spent his own money advocating for President Donald Trump’s impeachment, has launched his bid for California governor as a Democrat.
The 68-year-old’s tremendous wealth immediately makes him a notable contender in a free-for-all that includes more than a half-dozen Democrats and two Republicans competing in an all-party June primary, with the top two vote-getters advancing to a November general election to succeed term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Steyer announced his candidacy with a pledge to improve economic conditions and by framing his political record as friendly to consumers, working-class voters and the environment.
“Californians deserve a life they can afford,” he said in a video released Wednesday morning. “But the Californians who make this state run are being run over by the cost of living.”
The approach puts Steyer on a collision course with other candidates like progressive Congresswoman Katie Porter, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
At one time, Porter was viewed as a top contender but the contest is now seen as wide open. Steyer’s personal fortune could give him an advantage in reaching voters through television and digital advertising in an expansive state with nearly 40 million people and multiple media markets. Still, tremendous wealth has not necessarily translated to statewide electoral success in California: Carly Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard CEO, could not unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer in their 2010 matchup. Meg Whitman, a onetime CEO of eBay, spent more than $100 million of her own money in a losing governor’s campaign that same year.
Steyer’s money quickly became a target for rivals in the race.
“Tom Steyer tried to buy the presidency — and he failed. The California governorship is not going to be his consolation prize,” said Democrat Betty Yee, a former state controller.
Steyer nodded to his wealth Wednesday, noting his business enterprises made “billions of dollars.” But he also sounded populist tones.
“The richest people in America think that they earned everything themselves,” he said, before dismissing that notion with an expletive for bovine excrement. “That’s so ridiculous.”
Steyer said he would “make corporations pay their fair share again,” and his campaign cited his previous work on ballot initiatives with similar aims. Steyer was a leading advocate for a 2012 ballot initiative that made it harder for corporations to avoid certain taxes. The new revenue was steered to energy improvements in the state’s public schools.
In other referendum work, Steyer helped lead the 2016 campaign that yielded a $2 per-pack tax hike on tobacco products. The money was steered to state health care programs, including tobacco-prevention efforts. And Steyer was a top opponent of a 2010 ballot initiative that would have rolled back California’s clean air and climate law, which has been viewed as a national standard on climate policy.
In another development Wednesday, Villaraigosa launched a digital ad spotlighting Becerra’s connection to an unfolding Sacramento scandal as the two skirmish over votes, including those of Latinos. Prosecutors allege longtime Becerra aide Sean McCluskie was at the center of a plan that siphoned money from one of Becerra’s dormant state campaign accounts to pad his salary after he accepted a job as Becerra’s chief of staff in Washington. Becerra is not implicated in the indictment but the ad attempts to raise doubts about his judgment and features clips from a TV interview in which Becerra said he knew payments were being made from his account but didn’t know they were being improperly used.
Steyer spent millions of his own money touring the country and pushing for Trump’s impeachment during the Republican president’s first term. He then ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, spending more than $200 million of his fortune and receiving no pledged delegates. After distant finishes in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Steyer doubled-down with an expensive push in South Carolina, only to finish a distant third behind eventual nominee and President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Steyer then ended his presidential bid, and he financially supported Biden’s reelection in 2024 before the Democrat bowed out in favor of then-Vice President Kamala Harris, another Californian.
Steyer’s latest campaign comes amid some Democrats questioning Porter’s candidacy after her combative exchanges with a TV journalist spread online in October. He has long been mentioned, along with Harris and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, as a potential heavyweight candidate who could join the field.
Harris, who is on a national tour promoting her 2024 campaign memoir, has said consistently that she has no plans to run — suggesting instead that any future campaign would be for the presidency.
“I will be voting,” she told The Associated Press on Oct. 17 when asked about entering the governor’s race. Asked whether she was satisfied with the field as Porter faced her most intense criticism, Harris said only that she wanted Democrats to have “the best and the brightest running and winning” and that she was “not actively involved.”
Padilla has said he will remain in the Senate.
