Tom Steyer, the progressive billionaire investor who unsuccessfully sought the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, has entered the crowded race to be the next governor of California.
“We need to get back to basics, and that means making corporations pay their fair share again,” Steyer said in a video launching his campaign Wednesday to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Casting himself as an outsider in the race, Steyer added: “Sacramento politicians are afraid to change up this system. I’m not.”
While he’s never held elected office, Steyer, 68, is no stranger to Democratic Party politics. Over the years, he’s steered millions of his own dollars toward various state and national campaigns around issues ranging from environmental protection to gun control and cigarette taxes.
More recently, he spent over $12 million on ads boosting support for California’s redistricting ballot initiative, known as Proposition 50. Golden State voters overwhelmingly approved the measure earlier this month, green-lighting a new congressional map in response to mid-decade redistricting efforts in Texas.
Steyer self-financed a long-shot bid for his party’s presidential nomination in 2020 but ultimately dropped out after finishing third in the South Carolina primary.
The busy race to succeed Newsom remains wide open, with polls showing no candidate breaking out some seven months before the 2026 primary. Under California law, all candidates run on the same primary ballot, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the general election.
Two high-profile Democrats took their names out of gubernatorial consideration this year: former Vice President Kamala Harris and the state’s senior senator, Alex Padilla.
Prominent Democrats already in the race include former Rep. Katie Porter; former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who also served as state attorney general and a congressman; former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; former state Controller Betty Yee; and state school superintendent Tony Thurmond.
Steyer won’t be the only billionaire Democrat looking to become the state’s next governor, with former timeshare mogul Stephen Cloobeck also in the race. And he may not be the only unsuccessful 2020 presidential contender in the primary, with Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell reportedly eyeing a bid.
Notable Republicans running for governor include Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and former Fox News host Steve Hilton. While the GOP hasn’t won a gubernatorial race in California since 2006, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected to a final term, a crowded primary with no Democratic front-runner increases the chances of two Republicans advancing to the general election.
Porter had been seen as the leading Democrat in the race, especially after Harris said she wouldn’t run. But negative headlines over a handful of viral videos may have taken a toll on that status – a UC Berkeley/Los Angeles Times poll released earlier this month showed her dropping 6 points from August to 11 percent, trailing Bianco, who had 13 percent. No other candidate polled in the double digits.
Steyer, a former hedge fund manager, could opt to self-finance his campaign, giving him a financial edge in the race. But the same UC Berkeley poll, conducted by the university’s Institute of Governmental Studies before he entered the race, showed him at just 1 percent.
Steyer signaled in his kickoff announcement that the central focus of his campaign will be affordability, an issue that boosted Democrats across the country in the Nov. 4 elections.
He vowed to “launch the largest drive to build homes that you can afford in the history of California” and to “break up the monopolistic power of utilities … and drop our sky-high energy prices.”
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