As soon as enough votes were counted to officially knock Tom Steyer out of the California governor’s race, the anti-billionaire schadenfreude kicked in.
Social media and legacy media, conservative and liberal, all seemed to have a rare melding of the minds, delivering endless variations of, “How dare he try to buy elected office! We showed him.”
“I hope you received the message from California that a power-hungry communist billionaire cannot buy the state!” wrote one detractor on social media. “How much money did you waste spamming Californians? Do you know how many hundreds of millions of dollars you wasted?”
“What a waste,” screamed a New York Times headline, slamming Steyer for not donating that money directly to building houses or funding Planned Parenthood — one-off actions that prop up broken systems instead of changing them.
I get it.
In an age when income inequality is reaching serf-lord levels, hating the rich seems easy and reasonable. You could take several zeros off the $200 million Steyer spent on his campaign and it would still be more than most of us make in a lifetime. That’s a rage-inducing reality for many, if not most of us, for whom pairing a full tank of gas with a restaurant dinner seems like careless luxury these days.
I’m not here to defend the nine-zeroes class. But maybe we should take a beat and make sure our outrage is working for us, not against us. While Steyer has spent the last few months advocating for universal healthcare, better pay and protections for workers, and putting curbs on out-of-control corporations from the energy sector to AI, other billionaires have spent that time actively undermining democracy and our financial system. Heck, some even seem to be undermining humanity. Why aren’t we raging at them?
Take, for example, a certain billionaire who seemingly would prefer to be a trillionaire: Elon Musk.
Last week, his SpaceX held an IPO in which somehow the rules of Wall Street meant to protect small investors and pension plans were set aside to his benefit. Like it or not, if you hold a public pension or a 401(k) in America that uses index funds (which most do) you will likely be an investor in his unproven and possibly risky business. I’m sure that will work out fine.
Or consider the hundreds of millions of dollars right-wing AI and surveillance-company billionaires, some Californians, are dumping into political races across the country right now to ensure that their dangerous and unpredictable technologies are not regulated, or regulated in largely meaningless ways. It’s a situation so dire that one wealthy insider last week warned in his own op-ed that if his former colleagues are successful, “It could concentrate economic power in ways that would make the Gilded Age look quaint.”
Then there’s our president, king of self-enrichment, whose wealth has skyrocketed to more than $6 billion during his time in office. Much of that moola is in opaque cryptocurrency holdings, an industry he has championed as his fortunes in it have increased.
But don’t think Trump is in it only for himself: He’s enriching his family, too.
But sure, hate the goofy guy in the vintage Nikes pointing all this out.
“I’m proud of the enemies we made,” Steyer said in his concession. “In this race, those corporations revealed that they see a government that puts working people first as an existential threat — even when proposed by a billionaire. By spending $55 million — the most ever against a single candidate in a California primary — they showed the lengths they would go to in order to protect a status quo that only serves them and their profits.”
I don’t like the amount of money in our political system either, but the truth is, it’s there. And worse, the majority of those who have it seem intent on diminishing the political and economic power of those who don’t.
We are increasingly moving toward a country where the well-being of the majority of people will depend on the largesse of the few — Silicon Valley’s tech industry now talks about a universal basic income as a great boon for the coming mass unemployment they are creating.
But is existence off a charity-pittance really what we want for ourselves and our children? Do we really want these ultra-wealthy overlords to use their money unchecked to make decisions that will shape our future, diminish our rights and ultimately leave us without the power to fight back?
If Steyer wants to use his money to join this battle to keep power by the people and for the people, then the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Like it or not, us average worker bees need money to fight money. In this age when animus eats discernment like the rich eat caviar, the luxury we really can’t afford is hating the good guys just because it’s easy — even if they’re billionaires.
Californians couldn’t escape billionaire Tom Steyer’s political ads — during newscasts, sitcoms, or sporting events; on streaming services, YouTube, influencers’ social media feeds, or their mailboxes. Even the Puppy Bowl.
Yet despite spending a record-shattering $216 million of his wealth on his run for governor, the Democrat failed to win enough votes in last week’s primary to advance to the November general election to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“Money isn’t everything, even though it obviously helps,” said Andrea Godfrey Flynn, a marketing professor at the University of San Diego. “It boosted Steyer way up. … But there are so many other factors at play that it may not have been enough.”
Steyer, a hedge fund co-founder turned environmental warrior, polled at 1% shortly before he entered the governor’s race in November, according to a survey by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times.
He climbed in subsequent polls, hitting 19% in the same poll shortly before the June 2 primary, putting Steyer in contention for winning one of the top two spots in the contest that would allow him to advance to the November election. But then he hit a ceiling, and on Tuesday, it became official that he failed to advance.
Steyer emailed supporters Tuesday expressing gratitude for their efforts backing his campaign, endorsements and votes.
“Together, we fought for a California that belongs to the people who keep it running every day, and we insisted that they do not have to settle for a system that protects corporate profits at the expense of working people,” he wrote. “I’m proud of how we never compromised our values or lowered our sights for what California can and should be.”
He pointed with pride at major corporations such as Chevron and Meta spending heavily to oppose his bid, and said their tens of millions of dollars spent attacking him shows the flaws in the electoral system. And he acknowledged that may be part of the reason some voters were skeptical of voting for a billionaire.
“I’m proud of the enemies we made,” Steyer said. “This campaign proved that business-as-usual depends on politics-as-usual, and there is no going back. We must continue to fight for a system where democracy serves Californians, not corporations — and where you do not have to be a billionaire to run on single-payer, or on breaking up monopolies, or on calling out a corrupt system when you see it. Because people are fed up with a system rigged to benefit billionaires and leave them behind.”
As of Tuesday evening, Steyer had received more than 1.9 million votes of the more than 9 million cast, lagging behind the two candidates who will appear on the November ballot: Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, a longtime elected official who most recently served in President Biden’s cabinet. Steyer was trailing Hilton, the second-place finisher, by just over 200,000 votes.
Steyer immediately endorsed Becerra, whom he had relentlessly attacked in the closing weeks of the campaign as beholden to corporations with business in front of the governor.
California has a history of unsuccessful self-funders. Former Northwest Airlines co-chairman Al Checchi spent more than $40 million of his money on an unsuccessful gubernatorial primary campaign in 1998, which broke records at the time.
More than a decade later, former EBay chief Meg Whitman spent $144 million of her wealth on her bid to become California’s governor, setting a new national record for spending on a state election. She won the GOP nomination but lost in the general election.
Sheri Sadler, a veteran Los Angeles-based Democratic media buyer, said Steyer’s 2026 gubernatorial deluge was notable.
“I literally saw his spots ad nauseam,” she said. “They left almost no stone unturned.”
Sadler worked for Steyer in the final weeks of his presidential bid and scheduled $50 million of billionaire Rick Caruso’s money on ads during his unsuccessful 2022 Los Angeles mayoral campaign.
She believes that Steyer hit a ceiling because voters who are bombarded by ads eventually feel that the candidate is trying to purchase their affection.
“It’s one thing to give me a message I can resonate with. If they’re just trying to buy my vote, that feels different to me,” she said, adding that Steyer’s wealth undermined his platform, which included support for raising taxes on billionaires. “That’s my gut. And I feel like that’s what happened to us on Caruso and possibly why he didn’t run” for governor this year.
Steyer, 68, made his fortune founding a hedge fund that included investments in fossil fuels, private prisons and other businesses that are controversial among Democrats. He told voters that he walked away from the firm 14 years ago, leaving an enormous amount of money on the table, because it did not align with his morals. Steyer adds that he and his wife have pledged to give away most of their wealth before they die.
And unlike many wealthy self-funders, Steyer did not leap into a campaign as a political neophyte who assumed their business skills would translate into being an effective elected official.
Steyer and his wife, Kat Taylor, are longtime donors to Democratic candidates, but for well over a decade, they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on liberal causes such as fighting climate change, mobilizing young voters, urging the impeachment of President Trump, opposing an effort by oil companies to suspend California environmental standards, increasing the state cigarette tax and supporting last year’s redrawing of the state’s congressional districts to counter Trump.
Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist who advised Checchi, said that Steyer’s focus on such causes had the potential to be meaningful to voters who are often skeptical about the sincerity and motives of rich candidates.
“Tom Steyer has done a good job in that respect, because if you’re going to overcome that skepticism, it’s very helpful for the candidate to show that he or she has actually been involved in the world of public policy and politics for an extended period,” and Steyer has, Sragow said.
Assemblyman Isaac G. Bryan (D-Los Angeles), who endorsed Steyer, argued that he promoted proposals that were against his personal interests, such as the proposed billionaire’s tax that is expected to appear on the November ballot.
“Interestingly enough, Tom Steyer is also the only candidate who’s talked about campaign finance reform and wanting to get money out of politics, including his money, to return power to the people and have publicly financed elections,” Bryan said after a Steyer rally near downtown L.A. on May 31.
Former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond also campaigned on limiting the influence of corporate PAC money in elections, or implementing publicly financed elections in California. Porter often criticized Steyer for running as a “change agent” while spending millions he earned from investments in oil and gas.
“You paid the lowest tax rate on this stage and yet you made the billions that you’re using to fund your campaign off fossil fuels,” she said to Steyer during an April 28 debate in Claremont.
Political experts argue that messages that seem contradictory to a candidate’s background, as well as drowning voters with incessant ads, can be jarring and off-putting to the electorate.
“It can be an overload to voters where they hit that tipping point where they’re no longer interested,” Flynn said.
Despite Steyer’s foundational argument that his wealth meant he was not beholden to anyone, she said voters may be unable to reconcile a billionaire’s ability to understand or empathize about an average Californian’s needs.
“The messaging still is a giant factor,” Flynn said. “I’m curious [about] how believable it came across to voters — can you trust a billionaire to really care about affordability, someone who made money working with business or in business not to care about special interests?”
While Steyer campaigned as a hard-left liberal, he failed to be the top pick for progressives. Steyer had the support of 35% of likely voters who identified as strongly liberal while Becerra was backed by 37%, according to Berkeley’s May poll.
After talking to college Democrats at UCLA on the eve of the primary, Steyer said regardless of what happens in the primary, he will remain politically involved, though he would not run for president in 2028.
“I’m going to keep working on these issues, because I’ve been working full-time on these issues for 14 years,” Steyer said. “There’s no question what I’m going to do. How I do it is a little bit up in the air.”
Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
June 6 (UPI) — Democrat Xavier Becerra is advancing to the November election in the California governor’s race, while Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Tom Steyer battle for the second spot.
California’s primary is nonpartisan, so the top two finishers advance, regardless of party.
If elected, Becerra, 68, would be California’s first Latino governor since 1875. The state’s population is about 41% Latino.
“The people of the great state of California, in the greatest nation on Earth, have spoken — loudly and proudly,” Becerra said in a statement. “We will not be bought. We will not be bullied. And we are never backing down.”
Becerra was the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary under President Joe Biden and is a former California attorney general.
No Republican has won statewide office since 2006. Hilton has also been endorsed by President Donald Trump, who is unpopular in the state. California Gov. Gavin Newsom can’t run for re-election because of term limits.
The vote count has taken several days because California has mail-in voting. It’s not unusual for California’s elections to take a long time to count. Trump-endorsed Hilton led early, but it’s likely that’s because Republicans voted early, while Democrats waited because they had many more contenders from which to choose, The New York Times reported.
Hilton, 56, is a British-born former Fox News host who once worked for Prime Minister David Cameron. Steyer, 68, is a New York-born billionaire philanthropist and climate activist who ran for president in 2020.
On Friday, the Department of Justice sent a federal prosecutor to observe ballot counting in Los Angeles after Trump claimed that the count was being rigged by Democrats.
The Los Angeles County registrar-recorder said in a statement Friday: “Our office was notified late yesterday that the U.S. attorney’s office would send an assistant U.S. attorney to the Ballot Processing Center to observe ballot processing activities.”
“The individual arrived this morning, was provided an overview of the public observation program and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” spokesperson Mike Sanchez said in an email to CNN.
Sanchez noted that ballot processing is open to the public.
California law gives election officials 30 days to complete the counting and certification process, California Secretary of State Shirley Weber said in a statement.
“Our commitment is immediate: in California, every ballot is counted properly and every ballot is accounted for,” Weber said.
President Donald Trump discusses renovations to the Lincoln Reflecting Pool and makes an announcement on coal in the Oval Office at the White House on Thursday. Photo by Samuel Corum/UPI | License Photo
1 of 2 | Former Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra speaks during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on former President Joe Biden’s proposed budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services for fiscal year 2025 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 14, 2024. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
June 4 (UPI) — Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra are leading a crowded field in California’s primary for governor on Thursday with millions of ballots left to count.
The two candidates that receive the most votes will advance to the November election, regardless of party. Democrat Tom Steyer has the third most votes so far.
Sixty-one candidates qualified to appear on the primary ballot to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Polls closed on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. PDT. It is common for California to take days if not weeks to tally enough votes to declare a winner.
Despite millions of votes still being counted, President Donald Trump has alleged that Democrats have cheated in California’s primaries.
“There’s BIG cheating by the Dumocrats in California,” Trump posted on social media. “Votes are all tied up. May not be in for weeks. Under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Why the vote counting DELAY?”
Trump also declared Hilton the winner of the primary, even though not enough votes have been counted to make that determination.
“Congratulations to Steve Hilton on coming in first, last night, in the California Vote for Governor,” Trump wrote.
Hilton, a former Fox News host, is the top overall vote-getter as of Thursday morning.
Becerra is the former Biden administration U.S. human services and health secretary. Steyer, a billionaire, is a philanthropist and climate activist.
In a typical midterm year, Donna Layne casts her ballot long before election day.
But this time around was different for the 75-year-old Democrat. Late-cycle controversies and fear of a “wasted vote” leading to a lockout for Democrats in the race for California governor meant she didn’t make her final decision until Friday.
California Democrats have been wringing their hands for weeks about who would emerge as front-runners in the crowded race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom. The sudden departure of high-profile candidate Eric Swalwell amid sexual assault allegations and California’s jungle primary system, which sends the top two vote-getters to the November general election regardless of their party affiliation, added pressure for Democrats to coalesce around candidates who had the best chance of advancing.
“I was concerned,” Layne said as she slid her ballot into a drop box. “I wanted to make my ballot count and I was afraid that there might be two Republicans because they had been polling pretty high, so I wanted to be strategic about it.”
On Friday morning, voters — predominately Democrats like Layne — trickled into the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana to turn in their ballots. A few told The Times they frequently wait to vote until the days leading up to the election so they can watch all the debates and get the most up-to-date information about the candidates.
But most said they hung onto their ballots this year for far longer than usual.
As of Friday, 19% of California Republicans had already cast their ballot, compared with roughly 16% by the same time in the 2022 primary cycle, according to data from Political Data Inc.
An election worker separates ballots from vote by mail envelopes to be tallied at the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Ballot Processing Center on Thursday in City of Industry.
(Gary Coronado/For The Times)
Meanwhile, only 14% of the state’s far-more-numerous registered Democrats have returned their ballots, down from 17% at this point in 2022. Only 29% of Democrats age 65 years and older — generally enthusiastic voters — had returned their ballots, down from 33% in 2022, data show.
But that doesn’t mean that Democrats will stay on the sidelines. Data show Democrats have started returning their ballots in earnest over the past several days, a trend that’s likely to continue through election day, said Paul Mitchell, the vice president of Political Data Inc.
“It’s the predominance of this fear that they’ve heard in the media — and that’s largely abated — that a Democrat won’t make it to the runoff,” Mitchell said. “In fact, there’s a growing sense that we could have two Democrats make the runoff, so that fear has — for the political class — gone away, but voters are still clinging to it.”
Democrat Xavier Becerra, the former Health and Human Services secretary, has risen steadily in recent polls, positioning him well to potentially advance to November. He was the leading candidate in a poll released Thursday by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, garnering support from 25% of likely California voters.
Former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra, a front-runner in the race for governor, shares a light moment with supporters at the UFCW Local 1167 Union Hall in Bloomington, on Friday.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Slightly behind with support from 21% of likely state voters was Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator whom President Trump has endorsed. In third place with 19% support was another Democrat: Tom Steyer, a hedge fund founder and environmental activist.
With support increasing for Becerra, Hilton and Steyer since the last Berkeley IGS/Times poll in March, the survey provided the clearest indication yet that those candidates have separated themselves from the rest of the field.
Support for Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, the only other major Republican candidate in the race, dropped 5 percentage points from the March poll to last week’s, putting him in a distant fourth at 11%. Former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter saw her support drop by almost half to 7%. Other prominent Democrats — San José Mayor Matt Mahan, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond — were all in the low single digits, the poll found.
Republican candidate Steve Hilton speaks at a news conference outside the CIF State Track Championship in Clovis, where transgender athlete AB Hernandez will be was to compete Friday.
(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)
Roughly a dozen registered Democrats interviewed by The Times said they cast their ballots last week for the person they thought would have the best chance of making it through the state’s jungle primary, even if it wasn’t their ideal candidate.
“I love Katie Porter,” said Connie Wadsley, 78. “I really do, but I just didn’t see her as being able to pull it off. I just don’t think society is ready for a woman governor as much as that pains me to say.”
In the end, Wadsley and her husband, Victor, cast their ballots for Steyer. Becerra, she said, is too much of a career politician for her liking, but Steyer impressed her with his promise not to take corporate money and his position on social justice issues.
“I think we need to shake things up in this state — in this nation,” she said. “Yeah, [Steyer] is a billionaire and I’m not really excited about that, but he truly seems to be spending his money on things that I feel are important.”
For some voters, the sheer volume of gubernatorial candidates — 61 in all — was off-putting. Some even organized gatherings with politically like-minded friends to discuss the best course of action.
“I think it was really overwhelming for a lot of people, especially when they got their ballot and saw all of those names,” said Linda Verraster, co-president of the Democratic Women of South Orange County. “There was this fear of making a mistake — air quotes — that would lead to two Republicans in the runoff.”
Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger, left, and Gov. Gray Davis joke with each other as Davis shows Schwarzenegger the governor’s private office at the Capitol in Sacramento on Oct. 23, 2003.
(Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press )
The race seems somewhat reminiscent of the 2003 recall election when 135 candidates vied to replace then-Gov. Gray Davis amid the state’s energy crisis. Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, won decisively with roughly 48% of the vote.
But this race differs in a few key ways, experts say.
Mainly, while all of the top candidates have impressive resumes, there’s a lack of star power that could help propel someone to the forefront. Instead, Democrats “have an option of like moderate Dem to slightly less-moderate Dem,” said Matt Lesenyie, an assistant professor of political science at Cal State Long Beach.
“There’s a lot of people, but they occupy a very similar lane and I think that’s been a lot of the problem,” he said. “They’re loathe to really critique some of the foundational problems like a real ideological opponent would.”
Verraster put it even more simply: “There’s no unicorn.”
Still, she’ll be happy if either of the two Democratic front-runners — or both — make the ballot.
When a friend asked if Tom Steyer could stop by my wife Delilah’s downtown Santa Ana restaurant, I had to explain to her who he was.
It’s not political apathy in my honey’s case. She’s just exhausted from running her small business, Alta Baja Market, in these inflationary times. She’s one of the 16% of undecided voters in a recent California Democratic Party poll — a group that may determine which two candidates for governor face each other in the general election.
Delilah agreed that Steyer could visit on Saturday after I told her that many of our friends support the billionaire’s progressive platform.
“Politics is your job, not mine,” she joked as we drove to Alta Baja and I named the other major candidates. The only ones she had heard of were Antonio Villaraigosa (“I liked him as mayor, but he needed to keep his pants on,” referring to his extramarital affairs) and Katie Porter (“Some of my workers like her, but I don’t know what she’s done”). She might be the last person left in the Golden State who hasn’t seen any of Steyer’s television and YouTube ads.
So a visit to Santa Ana, the heart of Latino Orange County, was a good move. At Alta Baja, he could talk to my Mexican American wife and other blue-collar Latinos.
When rival Xavier Becerra came to O.C. a few weeks ago, on the other hand, he appeared at a private fundraiser attended mostly by professional Latinos.
“I just want someone who tells us where our taxes are going and treats this country like a business, and we’re not wasting money,” Delilah said. She’s a socially liberal and fiscally conservative Democrat who has been especially angered by President Trump’s deportation deluge, which left the streets of downtown Santa Ana empty for months last summer. “Because right now, our government is a hot-ass mess.”
I asked what questions she had for Steyer.
“So insurance had to cover all the disasters that happened with the fires,” Delilah replied. “So why is everybody else having to pay for it? And what are you really gonna do to help the state?”
She paused. “Tom is a Democrat, right?”
Delilah prepared for Steyer’s noontime stop as if it were any other day. She has fed the likes of U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer and former Speaker of the Assembly Anthony Rendon. Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton is a fan of Alta Baja’s blue cornbread; Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee held a meet-and-greet there when she ran for president two years ago.
“You know who should ask questions?” Delilah said after she set the till for the day. “Angela.”
That would be 19-year-old Alta Baja employee Angela Nino, who will be voting in her first election.
“She’ll always be telling me, ‘Did you see the debate? Did you see the debate?’ And I always say, ‘No, I’m too tired to watch.’”
Nino soon clocked in.
“Guess who’s coming, Angela?” Delilah said before looking at me. “Is his name Tim or Tom?”
“It’s like I agree with some of his things, but he’s a billionaire,” said the Orange Coast College student and Santa Ana resident when I asked about Steyer. “His answers at debates have been pretty broad so far.”
Delilah smiled.
“You’re the future, girl, so ask him anything.”
Almost everyone who came in as we waited for Steyer was a campaign worker or volunteer. Former state Controller Betty Yee, who ended her campaign for governor last month and endorsed Steyer, sat at a table with her husband. Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento, who initiated Steyer’s Santa Ana visit, thanked Delilah for the opportunity. He has known her since the start of his political career on the Santa Ana City Council nearly 20 years ago,
“This is a city where our residents were criminalized because of ICE, our downtown suffered because of construction, and all this on the heels of a pandemic,” he told me. “These are the folks Tom needs to listen to.”
Sarmiento’s staffer got his attention. Steyer was here.
The candidate strolled in with a videographer and photographer. He wore his usual casual billionaire outfit — white-and-cardinal Nikes, jeans, checkered shirt with rolled-up sleeves and a colorful Southwestern-style fabric belt.
Steyer went straight to the counter.
“Are you running for governor?” he cracked while shaking Delilah’s hand.
“I don’t want to,” she replied.
“I knew you were a smart woman!”
He listened with wide eyes and a stern face as Delilah complained about a years-long light-rail project in front of Alta Baja “that has been worse for businesses here than COVID.” Insurance rates have gone up 30% in the last year alone, she said.
“Well, look, that’s my whole thing,” Steyer responded in his low, gravelly voice. “I’m willing to take on the big corporations who are ripping off California. And they’re all spending a lot of money against me.”
It was the Steyer I’ve heard on too many commercials: pugnacious, compassionate but spouting a whole bunch of boilerplate. Delilah smiled weakly.
“I appreciate that,” she said. “And we need more of that.”
Then she waved Nino over. Usually shy, the architecture major now channeled her inner Lesley Stahl.
“Why do you have to be governor in order to do something while you have billions of dollars?” she said.
“So I’ve been able to do something, but what I see in California — and what Delilah and I were just talking about — is big corporations actually run the state,” he said.
“That’s true,” Nino conceded.
“You have to take on the big corporations that are screwing everybody. And you can really only do that as governor,” Steyer continued.
“You want to tax the billionaires, is that correct?” Nino asked next, as Steyer nodded. “How come on some [campaign disclosure] forms, it shows that your billions are in different [countries] besides in the U.S.?”
The candidate vigorously shook his head.
“I might have investments outside the United States, but there’s nothing I’m doing to not pay — I pay full California and American taxes on everything, promise. There’s a lot of ways I could avoid taxes, but I don’t. And so, anything that I’m doing overseas is not to avoid taxes. … I give you my word.”
One more from Nino!
“And how can the people trust billionaires when currently they have been very disappointing towards us?”
“I understand why people are skeptical,” Steyer replied. “They couldn’t be more skeptical than I am.”
He argued that other moguls “are supporting every other candidate. Those people hate me — like, they think I stand for something really bad, which is making them pay their fair share,” referring to a proposed November ballot initiative that would impose a one-time 5% tax on billionaires like Steyer (he supports the measure).
“And they’re right,” Steyer concluded. “And so it’s like, they hate me, and that’s fine.”
Nino stayed silent. Delilah thanked Steyer, who was off to visit other local businesses owned by friends of ours. He bought a bottle of rosé, posed for photos with Delilah and Sarmiento and went off — but not before a staffer adjusted the back of his collar.
Delilah and Nino went back to prepping lunch orders. What did they think about Steyer?
“To be honest, I’m so skeptical,” Nino said. “I don’t think he has enough experience as some of the other candidates, and I feel like he could have been more into detail about his policies.”
What about you, honey?
“Gracious, very kind and not pompous, which is what I would expect from most politicians,” Delilah said. “I like that he heard out Angela — that’s important [that] politicians listen to the next generation, and I think everybody should be doing that. But I wasn’t satisfied with my insurance question.”
“And we don’t know if this is a performance,” Nino added, drawing a playful gasp from Delilah. “We’ve seen, like, throughout the years, many political people go into, like, regular [businesses] to seem like, ‘Oh, we’re relatable to the people. We know your struggles.’”
“Do they really?” Delilah interjected.
Nino frowned.
They could just be putting on a show for the cameras, she said.
Tom Steyer is trying to sell himself to voters as an agent of change.
He has vowed to take on entrenched political and economic forces to create affordable housing, make the wealthy pay more in taxes, lower energy bills and protect the environment.
But perhaps the biggest change he is selling is his own.
The hedge-fund billionaire turned climate activist has faced criticism throughout his campaign for past investments in coal plants and private prisons, to name a few, that helped build his fortune and gave him the means to spend more than $150 million of his own money in his quest for the governor’s mansion.
Steyer’s prolific spending has blanketed the airwaves with television ads and helped propel him near the top of an unsettled gubernatorial field in the polls.
The 68-year-old San Franciscan has helped put many Democratic candidates in office as one of the party’s biggest political donors in the past two decades, but has never held public office himself.
He spent more than $340 million in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, but dropped out after placing third in the primary in South Carolina, where he had invested heavily.
There is a long tradition of wealthy, self-funding candidates, and the results are mixed at best. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg spent more than $260 million to win three terms as New York City mayor. But he spent more than $1 billion on a 2020 presidential bid and lasted only four days longer in the race than Steyer. Two years later, real estate developer Rick Caruso spent more than $100 million in an effort to become Los Angeles mayor but lost handily to Karen Bass.
Hoping for a better result in his current race, Steyer has staked out a position as the most progressive candidate in the field — touting an endorsement from the Bernie Sanders-affiliated Our Revolution. He’s picked up other key endorsements, too, from the California Teachers Assn., California Nurses Assn. and numerous environmental groups.
But he faces the challenge of convincing enough liberal voters to support a billionaire with controversial past investments the same year a tax on billionaires, currently enjoying strong support, is poised to be on the November ballot.
“This election is about who you can trust to fight for you,” former Rep. Katie Porter said during an April 22 gubernatorial debate in San Francisco. “One candidate is a billionaire who got rich off polluters and ICE prisons and is now using that money to fund his election.”
Steyer said he understands the broad concerns about his wealth and is willing to vote for the billionaires’ tax in November.
“I know that people are skeptical of billionaires, and I’m skeptical of billionaires,” Steyer said Tuesday in an interview with The Times. “But if you look at this race, I’m the only progressive in the race. I’m the person who’s taking on the corporate special interests.”
He pointed to the millions spent by a super PAC supported by the real estate industry and Pacific Gas & Electric — which Steyer has pledged to break up to bring down utility costs — as evidence that he is the candidate most feared by moneyed interests in the state.
“The companies that are running up the costs are fighting like hell, because that’s how they make their money,” he said. “But somebody’s got to stand up to them.”
The departure of former Rep. Eric Swalwell from the race last month after sexual assault allegations doesn’t appear to have resulted in a major surge of support for Steyer. Rather, it is Xavier Becerra, the former Health and Human Services secretary, who seems to have gained momentum.
But veteran California pollster Mark Baldassare said that he hasn’t counted out Steyer yet.
Tom Steyer, in 2013, as he was campaigning against the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
(David Paul Morris / Bloomberg)
“It would be easy to say that he’s reached his peak, except for the fact that there are so many undecideds and Steyer has so many resources at his disposal,” said Baldassare, the statewide survey director for the Public Policy Institute of California.
Steyer has poured at least $875 million into federal and state political committees since 2010, according to an analysis conducted for The Times by OpenSecrets, and federal and state campaign finance records. That total includes the nearly half a billion dollars he has spent on his two races.
In 2013, Steyer left his investment firm and launched NextGen Climate, a progressive political action group geared toward addressing climate change. He has given nearly $270 million to a super PAC affiliated with the group, which was later renamed NextGen America.
The committee has spent tens of millions of dollars on campaigns opposing fossil fuel interests and supporting progressive candidates, though Steyer’s financial support for the group has decreased as he has run for office.
The billionaire also established his climate bona fides by opposing the Keystone XL pipeline during the Obama administration, which became a national proxy fight over climate policy, and by backing environmental ballot measures in California.
Among them was a $5-million investment in 2010’s “No on Prop. 23” campaign, which defeated a conservative effort to overturn California’s greenhouse gas emission reduction law.
Two years later, Steyer invested about $29.5 million in Proposition 39, a winning measure to recoup money from corporate tax breaks to help pay for clean energy projects.
Privileged upbringing and a ‘desire to compete’
Steyer’s unconventional path to politics began with a privileged upbringing on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He studied at the elite Buckley School and Philips Exeter Academy before attending college at Yale University, where he captained the men’s soccer team and graduated in 1979.
After a brief stint on Wall Street, he got a master’s degree in business administration at Stanford University, where he met his future wife, Kat Taylor. They wed on the Stanford campus in 1986.
Steyer worked hard — very hard — at making money.
He was one of several “Wall Street Prodigies” featured in a Wall Street Journal profile from the same year he was married.
Steyer’s work began at 5 a.m. in the office and he seldom took days off — he fretted he wouldn’t have time for a honeymoon.
He eschewed the trappings of wealth — driving an eight-year-old Honda — motivated instead by a “desire to compete, excel and keep struggling to do better.”
Steyer began cutting political checks soon after, but his real emergence as a major political donor came during the 2004 presidential campaign, when he pledged to raise more than $100,000 for John Kerry’s campaign and was talked about as a potential political appointee at the U.S. Treasury Department in a Kerry administration.
Steyer hired Kerry to join his sustainable investment company Galvanize in 2024. Steyer stepped down from the company before entering the governor’s race.
The year 2004 was pivotal for another reason.
A group of students at his two alma maters, Yale and Stanford, along with those at a handful of other elite universities, began a campaign to pressure the endowments at their institutions to stop investing with Steyer’s hedge fund, Farallon Capital Management.
They cited concerns about some of the firm’s investments, including a coal burning plant in Indonesia and a joint venture between Farallon and Yale to pump out water from an aquifer in Colorado adjacent to the Great Sand Dunes National Park.
“Stated simply, we do not want our universities to profit from investments that harm other communities,” the students wrote in an open letter to Steyer. “We are concerned about the impact some of Farallon’s recent investments have had.”
Steyer told the students he appreciated “the importance of the issues that you raise,” but defended his firm’s work, saying that it acted “responsibly and ethically.”
Looking back on that time now, Steyer said it was a turning point.
“I think that experience really was a wake-up call to me,” he said. “It’s when I started to very seriously consider leaving Farallon. I really felt like if I was going to be the person with my values, I was going to have to leave and be independent and do what was right.”
Three years later, Steyer and his wife began their initial pivot to public service, opening a bank in Oakland that would cater to low-income customers
Tom Steyer, seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, greets people at an event in Des Moines, Iowa, in 2019.
(Scott Olson / Getty Images)
But this initial venture highlighted the inevitable collision course between Steyer’s burgeoning activism and his firm’s investments.
At an event that year with then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, Steyer and Taylor pledged $1 million in loans to support vulnerable people in Oakland facing foreclosure in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Left unsaid was the fact that Steyer’s firm had extensive financial ties to San Diego’s Accredited Home Lenders, one of the biggest subprime mortgage lenders in the country.
The transformation to climate activist
Steyer and his wife began writing bigger philanthropic checks and in 2010 took the Giving Pledge, promising to donate at least half of their wealth before they died.
In 2009, they gave $40 million to endow the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford, the first of several multimillion-dollar gifts to Stanford and Yale to support climate-focused ventures. They pledged $7 million to create the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, also at Stanford, in 2010. It closed last year after its endowment came to an end.
And in 2011, the couple donated $25 million to Yale to help establish an Energy Sciences Institute focused on developing sustainable energy solutions.
But even as Steyer undertook his public transformation from investor to climate activist, his firm continued to make decisions out of step with his newfound commitment.
In 2011, for example, the firm purchased 1.8 million shares of BP, a year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, in which a BP-operated project dumped nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Steyer resigned from the firm at the end of 2012, though he still has millions of dollars invested in the firm .
Environmentalists have largely been willing to forgive Steyer’s past investments.
“There’s no question he’d be the most knowledgeable and committed climate advocate that’s ever held really high office in America,” climate activist and author Bill McKibben recently toldPolitico.
While the nonprofit California Environmental Voters hasendorsed both Katie Porter and Tom Steyer in the race, Steyer, in particular, has “taken on Big Oil dollar for dollar, toe to toe, and beaten them,” said Mary Creasman, the group’s chief executive.
“He has made this his career and his investment and his passion, so it’s authentic, and voters see that,” she said.
Leah Stokes, an associate professor of environmental politics at UC Santa Barbara, said she’s impressed by Steyer’s climate track record and progressive campaign platform, noting that he’s been an active presence in California’s climate movement for more than 15 years.
That includes not only his work on ballot initiatives and clean energy technology, but also his focus on biodiversity loss and carbon sequestration at his 1,800-acre TomKat Ranch in Pescadero, where researchers are studying regenerative agriculture.
But Steyer has also played a role in elevating climate into a national political issue — including in the early 2010s when it wasn’t a “politically hot topic,” Stokes said.
“He has been willing to spend an enormous amount of his personal money on elections on climate — whether it’s propositions, whether it’s himself running for president on basically a climate platform, whether it’s the Next Gen giant voter turnout campaign,” she said. “I think he has recognized … that politics is where we have to invest our time if we want to make a difference on the climate crisis.”
Despite concerns raised about Steyer’s early investments into fossil fuels through Farallon, Stokes said she’s more apt to criticize candidates who are taking money from oil companies today, such as Becerra, who accepted a $39,200 donation from Chevron for his gubernatorial campaign.
She was also heartened by the fact that Pacific Gas & Electric has funded a $10-million PAC opposing Steyer, because she said it indicates that he aims to hold utility companies accountable for skyrocketing electricity prices amid soaring profits.
“We could actually have a shot here at having somebody who cares about climate change, who wants to hold utilities accountable, who wants to hold big polluters accountable,” Stokes said. “That would just be transformative.”
Energy costs weigh heavily on voters
Steyer’s focus on climate issues and energy affordability could also be a strategic boon in the governor’s race.
Sixty percent of voters in the state see climate change as a major threat to the country and believe that the government is not doing enough to address it, according to polling from the Public Policy Institute of California.
“Californians connect the dots between what’s going on with extreme climate and wildfires and climate,” said Baldassare, the institute’s survey director.
Recent polling has also shown that voters are very concerned about energy affordability and rising utility costs, with 13% of Americans naming it as the most important financial problem facing their family — a 10-point increase from last year, according to an AprilGallup poll.
Overall, energy costs tied housing costs as the second-biggest concern following the high cost of living, the poll found.
In November, Democrats who campaigned heavily around energy affordabilityswept the field in key races in New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia. Residential electric prices increased nearly 11% between January 2025 and this February, according to the latest available data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“Voters are supporting candidates who are leaning into these issues,” Creasman said.
Wieder reported from Washington and Smith from Los Angeles.
For the third time in as many weeks, the leading candidates for California governor met on the debate stage Tuesday night.
The latest installment was a two-hour session, hosted and carried live from Monterey Park by CNN. The debate marked the first time the candidates appeared before a national audience and came as mail ballots have begun arriving in homes throughout the state.
Columnists Gustavo Arellano, Mark Z. Barabak and Anita Chabria took in all 120 minutes, absorbed every zinger — scripted and otherwise — and dutifully observed each parry and thrust. Here’s what they took away:
Arellano: Antonio Villaraigosa finally rises above his gubernatorial rivals. Is it too late?
I wrote my thoughts about this debate while writing my next columna on … something, stopping to pay attention only when issues in my bailiwick like immigration and the failure of the Democratic Party were the subject of discussion. The rest of the time, what the candidates said came off as one giant shout-fest straight out of the studios of the late, great Wally George, with everyone playing true to form.
Chad Bianco raged, Steve Hilton tried to mask his MAGA-ness with his British accent. Katie Porter scolded, Tom Steyer channeled Bernie. Xavier Becerra did his best impression of the old Bunsen character from “The Muppet Show.” Matt Mahan was just … there.
You know who sounded the best? Antonio Villaraigosa.
Anyone who really knows the former L.A. mayor has always seen him as Chicano Prince Hal, someone who doesn’t take himself as seriously as he should. His infidelities effectively killed his political career after his mayoral years; his consulting for the nutritional supplement company Herbalife made Villaraigosa a walking joke among too many Latinos I know.
He has spent the last decade effectively embodying Marlon Brando’s famous quote in “On the Waterfront”: He coulda been a contender. Even his gubernatorial run, announced way before many of his opponents, has mostly had the air of a has-been — that’s one of the reasons why Villaraigosa has polled so low through most of the race to the point he was excluded from many of the early debates.
But that hangdog Villaraigosa was nowhere to be seen tonight.
His wisecracks were kept to a minimum. He stayed mostly within his time limits and didn’t interrupt much. He hammered Hilton over his refusal to admit that President Trump lost the 2020 presidential election and his dismissal of undocumented immigrants.
Villaraigosa especially went hard on his forever frenemy Xavier Becerra on everything from his time as President Biden’s health secretary to how former staffers have been charged with stealing millions of dollars from his campaign funds. (Becerra has not been accused of any wrongdoing.)
When CNN co-moderator Elex Michaelson asked Villaraigosa if he would cancel California’s much-maligned high-speed rail project, the candidate’s emphatic “No” thundered down like a Lebron James dunk. He called out the waste on the multibillion-dollar project, said he revived L.A.’s subway to the sea, and spoke with a passionate gravitas that Becerra could only dream of doing.
“When I make a mistake, I’m accountable,” Villaraigosa said at the end of the debate. This sounded like a candidate who can win — and now he has a month to make a comeback worthy of his political mentor, the late, great Gloria Molina.
Four weeks to prove them wrong, Antonio.
Barabak: It was a no-hitter.
No startling breakthrough. No game-changing moment. No candidate so irresistibly charming he or she knocked the race akimbo and stamped themselves as the far-and-away front-runner in the slowly consolidating contest.
By now, the candidates are plowing well-furrowed ground.
To anyone who has watched each of the debates — and there may not be a great many of those viewers out there — it was all quite familiar.
What is new, and what may have been the draw for those just tuning in, is a sense the race is finally taking a coherent shape, with Xavier Becerra unexpectedly emerging as the candidate to beat.
A month ago, Eric Swalwell was a leading contender in the dozy contest and Becerra was an afterthought, being urged to quit for the sake of his dignity and the good of the Democratic Party. (Fears of a Democratic shutout in the June 2 primary have greatly receded.)
When Swalwell left the race and vacated his congressional seat amid allegations of sexual assault and other potentially illegal misconduct, it was widely assumed much of his support would move to either Steyer or Porter, the two other leading Democratic contenders.
But Becerra has been the clear-cut beneficiary and his new status was evident Tuesday night as he faced repeated attacks. He didn’t particularly dazzle, but that’s not his appeal. It’s his steadiness and seeming unflappability in a time of great upheaval and stress, and that was again evident.
With less than four weeks to election day — and voting already underway — time is waning for another dramatic shake-up like the one that took place between Swalwell’s implosion in April and Becerra’s surge in May.
It seems, however, as though little to nothing will change, with Becerra steadily gaining ground, Hilton consolidating GOP support and the remainder of the field looking for something — or someone — to drastically shake up the race one more time.
Chabria: I don’t know about a winner, but the debate definitely had a biggest loser: Bianco. The Riverside County sheriff, to his credit I guess, didn’t try for a hot second to hide who he really is — a conspiracy-loving immigration hardliner with ties to an extremist group.
Bianco sort-of said he was a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right organization best known for some of its members participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol. He threw out election fraud theories, even suggesting state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta could be involved. He made it clear that undocumented folks are breaking the law by existing in the state.
Maybe some MAGA voters will stick by that shtick, but I’m guessing independents and more moderate Republicans will find Hilton, the Trump-endorsed Republican, even more appealing after Bianco’s ragey ramblings. Hilton may well be sending his opponent a thank-you note and a bottle of bubbly for that performance.
As for winners, a couple of the Democrats had their moments. Porter spoke with clarity and force on issues including single-payer healthcare (she supports it) and resisting Trump’s immigration policies in this state of immigrants.
But she also directly addressed the criticism of her having a bad temper in a way that I think may haunt her.
As her male opponents bickered back and forth, taking swipes at each other, Porter said that given all the “shouting” and “disrespect” onstage, she was shocked that “anyone wants to talk about my temperament.” It’s a pushback she tried out earlier in the week with a new advertisement that sought to make a punchline out of the criticism.
I get her point and I don’t think a male candidate would face the same scrutiny for yelling at a staffer as she has, but also — what’s more unappealing to voters than an angry woman? A complaining one. That moment of resistance against the narrative may not land the way she intends with voters.
I agree with Gustavo that Villaraigosa had a good night, and that Steyer had Bernie energy — which may be good.
Steyer was the most lively and direct he’s been in a debate, landing a few punches and making points with clarity (far less wonky than he’s been in the past). He’s owning his far-left politics, and labeling himself the “change-maker.”
Steyer has been trailing Becerra in the polls, but Becerra again had a steady if less-than-thrilling appearance. For fed-up Democrats, Steyer may be looking better all the time.
Environmentalists had something in their arsenal for Tuesday’s election they never did before: a billionaire benefactor willing to empty his pockets of tens of millions of dollars to bring climate change to the forefront of political debate and elect candidates committed to fighting global warming.
But California hedge fund titan Tom Steyer’s $74-million bet — most of it from his own wallet — yielded little payoff. On Tuesday, voters elected the most hostile Congress environmentalists have faced in years.
The Republicans who won control are already making plans to roll back President Obama’s signature emission reduction efforts, green-light the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that would transport Canadian tar sands oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast, and cancel subsidies for renewable energy.
Steyer says he has no regrets.
“I feel great,” he said by phone from his organization’s San Francisco office. “We set out to put climate on the ballot in a bunch of states, to build an organization and to build a relationship with a bunch of voters.”
He argued that all of that happened, pointing to hundreds of thousands of climate-minded voters newly enlisted in his organization, NextGen Climate, the emergence of global warming in the debate in several races, and the retreat by various GOP candidates from a platform of outright denial of climate science.
He chalked up Tuesday’s results to “that part of the world we don’t control.” Steyer said there was no approach that would have overcome the Republican tide that gave the party control of Congress and defeated several of the candidates NextGen backed.
But the election results raise new questions about the approach deep-pocketed, green-minded donors are taking toward electoral politics. Despite their best efforts, and the huge amount of money invested, they are failing to get voters to set aside other concerns and cast their ballots on environmental issues. This time out, the president’s record and the economy were the forefront issues, with all others receding.
“The take-away here is this was not a successful strategy,” said Josh Freed, vice president for clean energy at Third Way, a group that seeks a middle path between the two warring parties. “Candidate positions on climate do not move the overwhelming majority of voters to pull the lever for or against them. I hope these organizations take a step back and come up with a different approach.”
Steyer’s group saw its candidates victorious in U.S. Senate races in Michigan and New Hampshire, and in state legislative races, including in Oregon. But candidates they backed lost in hotly contested Senate races in Colorado and Iowa. NextGen also failed to unseat the governors of Florida and Maine, targeted by the organization for their outspoken skepticism of climate science.
The unpopular GOP governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, which Steyer’s group campaigned against, lost. But even in that race — won by NextGen’s candidate, Democrat Tom Wolf — global warming hardly was a factor, according to G. Terry Madonna, who directs the Franklin & Marshall College Poll in Lancaster.
Steyer’s impact was “Zero. None. Zero,” he said. Climate change “was not an issue at all. It has literally no salience with voters. It didn’t ever come up.”
University of New Hampshire pollster Andrew Smith said much the same with regard to the Senate race in his state, which Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen won. “I don’t think anybody paid any attention to global warming this election,” he said.
In part that is because much of Steyer’s money was spent airing ads on issues his organization thought were more likely to turn out the Democratic faithful. But that too sometimes backfired.
In Colorado, independent pollster Floyd Ciruli suggested Steyer’s heavy TV advertising, which seized on a Democratic theme emphasizing abortion rights, may have actually hurt Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, who lost to GOP Rep. Cory Gardner.
“It was probably a net negative,” Ciruli said. “It turned out to be one of those things that threw Udall on the defensive. He was being parodied and mocked for it and criticized for it.”
Even Steyer’s strategists acknowledge that climate change is not a top-tier issue now. The question is whether it ever will be. Advocates such as Freed say the push seems to be futile, and well-funded green political groups should shift their strategy to more narrowly focused efforts with bipartisan appeal. They might start, he said, by being more open to such GOP-favored options as nuclear energy.
The green campaign efforts instead focus on getting Congress back to where it was in 2010, when it almost passed a California-style law that would have capped greenhouse gas emissions nationwide.
NextGen officials say they are confident in their strategy — and persistent. “This is a multi-cycle effort,” said Chris Lehane, Steyer’s lead political strategist. “If it was easy, it already would have been done…. Social change like this is not like switching on a light bulb.”
The GOP takeover of the Senate occurs as the science of climate change has grown more definitive and the predictions of widespread effects more detailed and dire. On Sunday, a panel of hundreds of climate scientists convened by the United Nations warned that climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels was already affecting life on every continent and in the oceans and that the window was closing rapidly for governments to avert the worst damage expected later this century.
Yet skepticism of climate science remains Republican orthodoxy. North Carolina Sen.-elect Thom Tillis said in a primary debate that climate change is not “a fact.” Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, who is expected to take the helm of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and dismissed the U.N. science panel “as a front for the environmental left.”
Obama moved to cut greenhouse gas emissions by issuing new rules for power plants and the nation’s vehicle fleet. The GOP-run Congress will not be able to nix the rules outright. But it could so thoroughly weaken or delay them through riders to key legislation that they’d be rendered ineffective, analysts said. Deeper cuts to the nation’s emissions would probably require congressional action, and the current GOP position on climate change makes such action improbable.
Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune acknowledged there was a “copious amount of bad news” in Tuesday’s election. But he says there was “significant good news” as well.
“Candidates who formerly denied climate science are now saying they are not scientists and instead talk about clean energy and associate themselves with it,” he said.
“The money from Tom Steyer made a difference in elevating climate science and pushing all these lawmakers to move off a denial platform,” Brune said.
Two of our esteemed gubernatorial candidates, the cowboy and the dilettante, apparently could not find ties for the first debate Wednesday night, showing up with dress shirts casually unbuttoned.
Mr. Middleground sported a scruffy sorta-beard, apparently unable to pay for a razor in the midst of California’s affordability crisis. It’s a trademark look that always makes me think if this doesn’t work out, he’ll opt to live on a boat in some not-too-expensive slip by the Bay.
The billionaire wore Nikes instead of dress shoes, a sartorial nod perhaps to his bid to be the outsider-fighter. Or maybe his feet just hurt.
The last two contenders were remarkably unremarkable.
Why start with fashion? Honestly, it might be the most interesting, and telling, bit of insight that came from this first (of three) chances for our next governor to let us know who they are and what they’re made of. If the debate showed us anything, it’s that none of these candidates are hiding follow-me charisma or an excitement-inducing political vision for our collective future.
Yes, there were a few decent jabs here and there about Tom Steyer’s money, Katie Porter’s temper, Matt Mahan’s tech ties and Chad Bianco’s far-right world view. But even those were predictable.
Still, in between the yawns, there were a couple of answers worth noting, ones that might actually give us insight into how the Democratic candidates differ (Despite all the hype, it seems increasingly unlikely that two Republicans will come out of the primary, and even more unlikely that in a Democratic vs. Republican race, the Democrat would lose in blue California.)
I’ll start with a surprising place where I agreed with Steve Hilton, the Republican endorsed by President Trump.
The candidates were asked if they would support a ban on social media for kids under age 16. This is a quickly accelerating idea not beloved by tech companies. Australia and Indonesia already have bans in place. Other countries, including France and Portugal, have them in the works. Florida banned children under 14 from opening social media accounts on their own last year.
And a Los Angeles jury last month dealt a blow to Meta and YouTube when it found the platforms had damaged the mental health of a young woman with their addictive features.
Hilton took the ban question a step further, saying it “misses the point.” He has long argued that it isn’t just social media that is the problem, but having kids staring at a digital device for hours a day instead of interacting in the real world. It was one of the most genuine answers of the night.
“We’ve got to get to the heart of the problem, and that’s the devices and the screens,” he said. “I think that every parent in their heart knows that it’s wrong.”
While Steyer and Xavier Becerra, the former California attorney general, both said they would support such a ban, the remaining three candidates hedged or said they would not. Porter said no to a ban under age 16, but said she “might consider a different ban,” without being specific.
Mahan, who is backed by significant tech money, and Bianco both said they believed requiring parental consent was the way to go (though Mahan said he would ban devices in schools).
As Becerra pointed out, “kids have died as a result of their use of social media,” so it’s a place where policy matters. And if a candidate doesn’t see government’s role in controlling the dangers of social media, what will happen with artificial intelligence?
The candidates also had differences in how they would handle homelessness and the related crisis of housing affordability, though the devil was often buried in the details.
At least for Democrats. For Bianco, the difference was stark.
“We are not dealing with homeless. So stop calling it homeless,” he snapped at the moderators. “It has nothing to do with homes. This is drug- and alcohol-induced psychosis, mental illness.”
Of course, this is wrong. Last year, the UC San Francisco Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative released the results of the state’s most comprehensive survey of homeless people. It found that for most people living on our streets, “the cost of housing had simply become unsustainable.” It also found an increasing percentage of those folks were older — almost half were over the age of 50 — and had become homeless after a hardship such as an illness or a job loss.
“It’s also families who are fleeing intimate partner and domestic violence,” Porter said. “It’s people who are double and tripled up. It’s people who are living in their cars on our college campuses. Homelessness comes in a lot of different forms.”
Most of the Democratic candidates seemed to understand this and embraced the increasingly popular idea of putting more money into helping people stay housed after a hardship, instead of trying to get them housed after they lose their place.
“How can I help you keep your home?” Becerra said. “Because it costs me so much more money to pick you off the streets, provide you with the assistance in the shelter, than it does to keep you in the home.”
But the issue of homelessness is also where daylight emerged between the candidates. Steyer said he and his wife had helped finance low-barrier homes, not just shelter spaces, where people do not need to be addiction-free and where they can bring pets — two issues that are common hindrances for moving folks off sidewalks voluntarily.
Mahan, the mayor of San José, who often touts his city’s success at moving people indoors, agreed that emergency and interim housing was critical, but also voiced support for forcing folks to accept help. Last year, San José passed an ordinance he backed that some say criminalizes homelessness — a person can be cited twice for refusing shelter, and a third refusal within 18 months can lead to an arrest.
“When shelter was available, we required that people come indoors,” Mahan said, adding, “We have to be able to mandate treatment.”
It’s a controversial position, but also one that is increasingly popular. Gov. Gavin Newsom has backed mandated treatment, in a lighter form, with his CARE Court (which is technically voluntarily). And the movement to require people to accept a shelter space or face arrest is growing on the right and even the Democratic-middle.
But there is a fine and dangerous line with mandated treatment and shelter requirements that is often pushed further and further to the side in favor of the clean, safe streets argument. Whenever we start locking folks up — whether it’s in mental wards or immigration detention centers or jails — we should be careful that expediency isn’t trumping ethics.
Of course, the debate would not be complete without the Democratic candidates’ position on our president, speaking of ethics.
Steyer was gleeful that Trump has come after him on social media, a point of pride that he is a relevant figure in the fight against MAGA. He also said he would abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement if he could, which he can’t.
Becerra highlighted his many lawsuits as California’s attorney general during Trump’s first term, and pledged to keep fighting. Porter leaned into her time in Congress and her efforts to help Democrats in other races win.
Mahan took a different route, pledging to fight when necessary, but adding, “We need a partnership, and we need to find common ground with this administration on certain issues.”
Newsom learned the hard way that common ground is what Trump says it is, and shifts without warning or reason.
So what’s the takeaway from all this?
Boring dad; feisty mom; rich do-gooder; striving newcomer; MAGA one; MAGA two.
None of them hit it out of the park, but no one struck out. Maybe next time.
The most unpredictable California governor’s race in recent history took another set of dizzying turns on Monday, with former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra surging after former Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out in the face of sexual assault and misconduct allegations, and former state Controller Betty Yee ending her bid.
The race to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom is the first in a quarter of a century with no clear front-runner and a sprawling field of candidates who have been jockeying for the attention of Californians, who are just beginning to pay attention to the campaign two weeks before ballots arrive in their mailboxes.
“I certainly could not have imagined the twists and the disturbing turns that this race has taken,” Yee said as she announced she was dropping out. “But through it all, my values and my vision for California has never wavered.”
A poll released Monday by the state Democratic Party — its first since Swalwell (D-Dublin) dropped out — showed Becerra’s support jumped nine points to 13%, placing him in a tie with Tom Steyer, the billionaire hedge fund founder turned environmental warrior. Former Rep. Katie Porter of Orange County saw a slight bump to 10% from 7%, while the remaining Democrats in the contest were mired in the low single digits.
The party began the surveys out of concern that Democrats could be shut out of the governor’s race because of California’s unique primary system, where the top two vote-getters in the June 2 primary move on to the November general election regardless of political party.
“I continue to believe there are too many Democrats in the field,” California Democratic Party Chairman Rusty Hicks told reporters Monday. “My call for candidates to honestly assess the viability of their candidacy and campaigns still stands, especially if you are stalled in the single digits, seeing financial resources dry up and/or are failing to pick up additional support.”
Hicks and other party leaders and allies had unsuccessfully urged low-polling candidates to reconsider their candidacies before the filing deadline in an attempt to cull the field and avoid splintering the Democratic vote. Though most did not name candidates who they thought should think about their viability, Yee was widely believed to be among them.
Yee became emotional as she said on Monday that she decided to withdraw from the race because she wasn’t able to raise the resources necessary to compete in the state. She also said her message of competency and experience wasn’t resonating among voters who were seeking a fiery foil to President Trump, not “Boring Betty,” as she dubbed herself. Yee said she would assess the field before making an announcement on whether she would endorse one of her fellow Democrats.
Becerra was another candidate believed to be a target of party leaders’ efforts to shrink the field. But he held on and apparently benefited from Swalwell’s downfall.
“I’m not the richest candidate, I’m not the slickest candidate, but I am the guy that’s got you,” Becerra said, rallying supporters in Los Angeles on Saturday.
The audience was filled with members of labor groups backing the longtime politician, and Becerra told them he’d serve as a “union man” in the governor’s office.
Pro- and anti-Becerra forces tussled outside the town hall after two people, who declined to identify whom they were working for, passed out fliers highlighting critical media investigations of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the migrant crisis when the agency was led by Becerra.
Pro-Becerra attendees grabbed the fliers and told the men to go away, prompting a security guard to intervene.
The question is whether Becerra, who also served as state attorney general, a member of Congress and a state Assembly member, can raise the funds necessary to compete in a state with some of the nation’s most expensive media markets. And he was tied in the state party poll with a billionaire who dumped an additional $12.1 million of his own money into his campaign last week.
Steyer’s total investment in his bid reached $133 million, according to the California secretary of state’s office. He also received the endorsement of Our Revolution, a progressive political organization founded by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
“We’ve never endorsed a billionaire — but Tom Steyer is using his position to upset the system,” the group posted on X on Monday. “As Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese told @theintercept, ‘He’s been a partner in the movement. Most billionaires have used their wealth and privilege to lock in the status quo. Tom is doing the opposite.’”
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who is also running for governor, accused Steyer of hypocrisy for the hedge fund he founded profiting from investments in private prisons being used to house ICE detainees, and Steyer calling for the abolishment of ICE.
Steyer got “rich investing off the ICE infrastructure he now wants to abolish,” Mahan posted on Instagram.
Steyer, who sold his stake in the hedge fund in 2012, has said he ordered the company to divest from the private prison company and has repeatedly expressed remorse about his former firm’s ties with the detention company.
Mahan also appeared Monday at a Hollywood production lot to announce his proposal for a special fund to lure sporting events, concerts and other productions to California as part of his plan to help the struggling film and television industry.
An independent effort supporting Mahan has also raised roughly $11 million since Swalwell left the race.
Mehta reported from Los Angeles and Nixon from Sacramento. Times staff writer Dakota Smith contributed to this report.
