{"id":180145,"date":"2026-02-16T14:15:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T14:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/180145\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T14:15:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T14:15:07","slug":"the-billionaire-who-wants-to-be-california-governor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/180145\/","title":{"rendered":"The billionaire who wants to be California governor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Tom Steyer must solve this dilemma: How does he convince financially struggling Californians they can trust a billionaire to be their governor?<\/a> <\/p>\n

Because, after all, the former hedge fund titan doesn\u2019t exactly share their daily ordeal of scraping up enough money to pay for rent, groceries and gas in the run-down car.<\/p>\n

And he doesn\u2019t have any record in public office to point to. He\u2019s trying to start his elective career at the top.<\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s the solution? Well, you can be a global celebrity like super-rich actor Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was elected in 2003. Or a Gold Rush tycoon like Leland Stanford back in 1861. Other than those two, there\u2019s a long list of well-heeled rookie failures.<\/a> <\/p>\n

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George Skelton and Michael Wilner cover the insights, legislation, players and politics you need to know in 2024. In your inbox Monday and Thursday mornings. <\/p>\n

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They include Republican Meg Whitman, who blew $144 million of her fortune losing in 2010. And Al Checchi, who spent $40 million of his own money getting beaten in the 1994 Democratic primary.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook, they didn\u2019t have anything to say,\u201d Steyer told me while sipping tea at a popular hangout near the state Capitol, specifically mentioning Whitman and Checchi. \u201cThey\u2019d never done anything. Not like I\u2019ve done for 14 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steyer, 68, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, touts his record of funding and promoting progressive causes, including successful ballot campaigns that raised tobacco taxes, closed a major corporate tax loophole and beat back oil industry efforts to kill climate fighting laws.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could give you 10 things I\u2019ve done about environmental sustainability and economic justice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy trust me? Because I\u2019ve gotten results. And I don\u2019t owe anybody anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Democrat spent $12 million on TV ads<\/a> last year pushing Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s Proposition 50 that allowed the Legislature to gerrymander congressional districts aimed at gaining five more Democratic seats in California.<\/p>\n

Being a billionaire allows Steyer to buy all the TV spots he wants. He already has popped for $27 million worth running for governor.<\/p>\n

But astronomical wealth comes with a political price.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalifornia voters do not cotton to some rich guy who has never spent a day in office but looks in the mirror one morning and suddenly sees a governor of California,\u201d says veteran Democratic strategist Garry South.<\/p>\n

So, in his campaign TV commercials, Steyer wears casual backyard barbecue garb trying to look like Mr. Average, but with a populist agenda.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the billionaire who\u2019s going to take on the billionaires<\/a>,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

That sounds counterintuitive, and I\u2019m skeptical about how well it sells.<\/p>\n

Steyer knows he sorely needs labor support to seem credible among the working class. That\u2019s why he recently joined rallies for striking teachers in San Francisco and healthcare workers in San Diego.<\/p>\n

He has scored endorsements from the California School Employees Assn. \u2014 a union representing school staff \u2014 and the California Nurses Assn.<\/p>\n

Nurses are backing Steyer largely because he has embraced their No. 1 goal: a single-payer, state-run health insurance system.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve attempted to push that in Sacramento for years and failed. And for good reason.<\/p>\n

Single-payer would cost the state barrels of money it doesn\u2019t have. Moreover, it would replace not only private insurance, but popular federal Medicare and the state\u2019s Medi-Cal program for the poor. The federal government would need to agree. Fat chance.<\/p>\n

I asked Steyer whether he really believes the state bureaucracy is capable of handling such an ambitious undertaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have to get back to having a government that works,\u201d he replied, in what sounded like a knock on Newsom and his predecessors.<\/p>\n

How could he make a single-payer system work? \u201cGod is in the details,\u201d he answered, a phrase he frequently uses. Translation: \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to work through it. That\u2019ll take at least three years\u2026 But we\u2019re going to have to do it\u2026. Healthcare costs have been escalating for a very long time. And they\u2019re eating up the [state] budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Steyer left hedge fund investing, he became an ardent crusader for clean energy and fighting climate change. It was his core issue running for president in 2020, when he spent $340 million before giving up.<\/p>\n

But these days, he barely mentions climate. The better politics du jour is advocating for \u201caffordability\u201d \u2014 especially affordable housing.<\/p>\n

Steyer said he doesn\u2019t have a \u201csilver bullet\u201d for lowering housing costs. He has \u201csilver buckshot\u201d \u2014 a scattergun of solutions for boosting housing supply, plus rent control.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d shorten the time for issuing construction permits, require rezoning to develop vacant land, tax unoccupied housing left off the market and build higher \u2014 more like in New York\u2019s Manhattan, where he was raised.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is sprawl,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd what sprawl leads to is an awful lot of commuting, a lot of driving.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s been a problem for generations, I noted. Suburban ranch-style housing is the California way. \u201cPeople can change,\u201d he said. \u201cI think people want to.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked him about the slow-poke bullet train project that\u2019s costing four times original estimates.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, I\u2019m in favor of high speed rail,\u201d he said. \u201cBut good grief. We\u2019ve been working on this for an incredibly long time and spent an incredible amount of money. As far as I can tell, we haven\u2019t built anything. If we\u2019re going to do high-speed rail, we have to build it at a reasonable price. And we haven\u2019t been able to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Might he abandon the project? \u201cI want to look at it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The odds are against him ever getting the opportunity.<\/p>\n

But the odds aren\u2019t exciting for any candidate in this ho-hum contest.<\/p>\n

Steyer is running in the middle of the pack, based on polls. He has hired the strategists who managed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani\u2019s victorious campaign for New York mayor.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no front-runner for governor. But Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin) has some momentum. He recently was endorsed by Sen. Adam Schiff.<\/a> And he\u2019ll also soon be endorsed by influential former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, I\u2019m told.<\/p>\n

Voters will do their all-important endorsing in the June 2 primary.<\/p>\n

What else you should be reading<\/p>\n

The must-read: In 50-year fight to protect California\u2019s coast, they\u2019re the real McCoys, still at it in their 80s<\/a>
CA vs. Trump: Trump, California and the multi-front war over the next election<\/a>
The L.A. Times Special: Who pays for Newsom\u2019s travel? Hint: It\u2019s not always taxpayers<\/a> <\/p>\n

Until next week,
George Skelton<\/p>\n

\u2014
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here<\/a> to get it in your inbox. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Tom Steyer must solve this dilemma: How does he convince financially struggling Californians they can trust a billionaire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2208,7,9,8,2212,2210,2216,2209,2213,418,2220,2221,2219,2218,2211,2217,2214,2215],"class_list":{"0":"post-180145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-biden","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-california-headlines","11":"tag-california-news","12":"tag-court-pick","13":"tag-essential-politics","14":"tag-first-black-woman","15":"tag-gender","16":"tag-high-court","17":"tag-history","18":"tag-jefferson","19":"tag-media-coverage","20":"tag-nominee","21":"tag-political-criticism","22":"tag-race","23":"tag-stereotypes","24":"tag-supreme-court","25":"tag-women"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}