Can A Billionaire Win Over California’s Left? Tom Steyer’s Betting On It

SACRAMENTO, California — As billionaires face mounting backlash in California, Tom Steyer is running for governor as a different kind of plutocrat: a populist.

He’s hired a top strategist who helped propel Zohran Mamdani’s rise in New York and promised labor unions he’d back a special election next year to raise corporate taxes. He’s embracing single-payer health care, a policy he attacked Bernie Sanders for supporting during the 2020 presidential primary. He’s argued for soaking the ultrarich, himself included.

“He is a billionaire that would take on billionaires,” Lorena Gonzalez, president of the powerful California Labor Federation, said in an interview. “I do believe that those two things can coexist.”

But the progressives he is courting are keenly aware he is financing his campaign almost entirely with wealth amassed during his years as a hedge fund manager, at a time when Americans increasingly blame billionaires for their financial strain. Just this week, Sanders, a standard-bearer for progressive populism, railed against billionaires during a visit to California to promote a wealth tax, calling billionaires “oligarchs” whose “greed and arrogance and moral turpitude” threaten American society.

“Trying to pose yourself as a populist billionaire is, to the typical voter, a contradiction,” said Garry South, a Democratic consultant who ran former Gov. Gray Davis’ 1998 primary campaign against a crowded field that included wealthy businessman Al Checchi. “Voters ask themselves: ‘What on earth can he possibly understand about my everyday life?’”

As he heads to the state party’s endorsing convention this weekend to pitch himself as a champion of everyday Californians, Steyer is testing the bounds of left-wing populism. The 68-year-old Democratic megadonor isn’t a charismatic firebrand like Mamdani or a curmudgeonly independent underdog like Sanders. And he’s running against candidates like Rep. Eric Swalwell and former Rep. Katie Porter, who can boast liberal records in Congress and come from more modest means.

“People bring a certain skepticism … that these guys are not terrific,” Steyer said of billionaires in an interview when asked if his wealth was complicating efforts to win over progressives. “It's very important to me to say to people, ‘Let me give you my history,’” he added. “I have been talking about and working on these things for a long time.”

Steyer’s attempt to claim the left lane appears to have sparked friction with Porter, whose anti-establishment populist streak in Washington catapulted her to prominence. Porter this month retweeted an old Joe Biden post from 2020 slamming Steyer’s previous investments. Last week, she jabbed at Steyer’s appearance on a teachers’ picket line in San Francisco, followed by a video contrasting her small-dollar donor base against his self-funding, using her signature whiteboard.

“Is that who we are? Are we a state where our democracy can be bought?” Porter asked in the video.

In a statement to POLITICO, Porter campaign spokesperson Peter Opitz accused Steyer of trying to “lie about his record and buy an election” using “the billions he made from expanding private prisons and immigration detention centers and producing fossil fuels.”

“Steyer’s scam would make Donald Trump blush,” Opitz said. “Democrats won’t be fooled by another billionaire fraud seeking high office — Katie’s the one with a real record delivering progressive victories.”

Other ultrawealthy candidates have tried and failed to self-fund their way to the California governor's office, from former tech CEO Meg Whitman in 2010 to businessman Stephen Cloobeck just this year. Arnold Schwarzenegger was an exception — though, as a popular celebrity, the Republican brought another set of advantages to a special recall election in 2003.

“It’s on Tom to show that he’s different,” said Anthony York, a Steyer campaign strategist. The campaign is working to “make sure voters are familiar with Tom’s record,” he said, including his climate advocacy, a promise to donate half his fortune and his consistent support for raising corporate taxes.

Steyer has made some headway ahead of the top-two June primary after spending tens of millions of dollars on ads and touting his record to progressives on social media. In the last month, he grabbed endorsements from one statewide union representing nurses, and another for school employees.

Gonzalez said she believes Steyer’s a “good guy” who will “stand up for working people” — though she noted the group representing 2.3 million members hasn’t endorsed a candidate.

And just last week, two progressive state lawmakers, Ash Kalra and Alex Lee, backed Steyer — even as Lee told reporters that he didn’t “like how Tom and a lot of other billionaires have made their money” when asked about Steyer’s past investments in coal mining and private prisons.

Kalra said other top progressive candidates “haven’t taken the strong stands that I want my progressive candidates to take. It's not just a matter of viability, it’s a matter of values, but it's also a matter of standing by those values in the midst of a campaign.”

But Steyer has yet to lock down endorsements from unions including SEIU and the California Teachers’ Association, and it’s highly unlikely that he — or any of his rivals — will get the official party nod this weekend. Recent surveys show Steyer polling below 10 percent overall and firmly in third place in the Democratic field, behind Porter and Swalwell.

“He's spent a lot of money, but he's moving a little bit,” said longtime Sacramento consultant Andrew Acosta, who is not working for any of the candidates. “He sees that there's threats ahead of him that he has to go knock down.”

Steyer will not say whether he would vote for a controversial proposed ballot measure from SEIU-UHW that would levy a one-time, 5 percent tax on billionaires’ wealth, though he has argued that billionaires need to be taxed more. Instead, he has called for increasing commercial property taxes and closing California’s “water’s edge” loophole, a plan backed by progressives aimed at preventing corporations from avoiding taxes on foreign subsidiaries.

“Personally, my goal is to come up with alternatives that are better,” Steyer said, calling the SEIU-UHW proposal “a one-time fix for a long-term problem.”

That’s despite the billionaire benefiting from low-tax policies himself: His investment firm has $1 million stored in two Cayman Islands-based funds, according to federal records. Steyer says he’s not engaging in tax avoidance, and that the funds are for foreign investors.

“Do I think that we need to tax the corporations that are exploding in value in this state, the people who run them, the people who own them, including billionaires? Yes,” he said.

Steyer’s wealth could offer an advantage to union leaders working to knock down centrist Matt Mahan. The San Jose mayor is widely seen as a threat to labor interests and has received support from tech titans, like Google’s Sergey Brin and Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, who are spending unprecedented sums on state candidates and ballot initiatives. Steyer has repeatedly blasted Mahan on social media for accepting tech donations. (Mahan campaign spokesperson Eric Jaye countered that the mayor “is staying focused on better policies, not social media posts.")

"He's not going to be beholden to corporations like many of the other candidates, and he's a viable candidate," said California Nurses Association President Sandy Reding, whose group endorsed Steyer. "He has the funding to see this through."

But will labor leaders and progressive activists trust a billionaire in the end?

“You're trying to sell people the idea that somehow, despite your circumstances and being a billionaire with unlimited money, you identify with the average guy,” South said. “I just don’t think it’s a salable self-characterization.”