Billionaire Tom Steyer: Can He Buy Enough Clicks to Win the Democratic Nomination?
Why, oh why, do we need another rich guy running for president of the United States?
Tom Steyer, philanthropist, environmentalist, and supporter of many good causes, thinks he has the answer to that question: He sees the corporate takeover of America as the root of our problems.
“The other Democratic candidates for President have many great ideas that will absolutely move our country forward, but we won’t be able to get any of those done until we end the hostile corporate takeover of our democracy,” he says.
Perhaps the answer should be “because he can.”
Steyer has promised to spend at least $100 million of his own money into his campaign. The ‘at least’ part means there are essentially has no limitations on how much of his own money he can spend on his campaign. A New York Times article notes that Steyer "can be expected to deliver his message aggressively over the airwaves, potentially crowding out other competitors who may hope to raise their profiles with paid advertising."
Although his money has flowed in many corners of the Democratic party’s landscape in recent years, many activists have already joined presidential campaigns. Others, notably those associated with the Indivisible movement, have promised to jump in only after a candidate is assured of getting the nomination.
Let’s back up a bit with some 411 on the man and his money.
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Tom Steyer was born to Marnie and Roy Steyer in 1957 in Manhattan. His mother taught remedial reading at the Brooklyn House of Detention. Roy Steyer, was a partner in a prominent New York law firm, and was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
Like Donald Trump (and FDR), Steyer attended the Buckley School. For high school it was off to board at Phillips Exeter Academy -- also attended by current presidential candidate Andrew Yang-- which includes former presidents Franklin Pierce and Ulysses S. Grant as alumni.
He was captain of the soccer team, elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated from Yale University summa cum laude in economics and political science. Steyer went on to earn an MBA from Stanford Business School.
Steyer’s early career includes stints with financial powerhouses Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Hellman & Friedman. In 1986 he went into business for himself, founding Farallon Capital. By the time Steyer ‘retired,’ the San Francisco investment firm was managing $20 billion in assets.
His current net worth is estimated at $1.6 billion. In 2010 Steyer and spouse Kat Taylor signed the The Giving Pledge, a Bill Gates/ Warren Buffet effort encouraging individuals and families to give at least half their wealth to charitable causes during their lifetime.
Steyer’s involvement in Democratic politics goes back to volunteering with Walter Mondale’s losing effort against Reagan in 1984. In 2000 former Los Angeles Mayor Bill Bradley’s campaign used his services as a fundraiser, as did Senator John Kerry in 2004.
After initially supporting Hillary Clinton in 2008, he became one of Barack Obama's most prolific fundraisers. At two different points during the Obama administration, Steyer was considered for cabinet posts.
In 2013, Steyer founded NextGen Climate (now NextGen America), an advocacy nonprofit and political action committee, giving the environmental movement a much bigger national footprint.
Five of the nine Democratic candidates backed by the group won elections in 2014, as NextGen opened 40 offices and made contact with over 1.5 million voters.
Democratic party candidates benefited to the tune of $87,057,853 of his money during the 2016 election cycle.
For the 2018 cycle, NextGen/Steyer pledged to $30 million in an attempt to flip the House, hoping to enable impeachment proceedings for Trump. Their efforts in the last cycle focused on millennial voters.
Over the past two years Steyer has spent more than $10 million on TV and internet ads advocating the impeachment of the president. While Trump remains in office, Steyer’s mailing list now tops 8.3 million contacts.
From a March, 2018 Daily Beast article:
In an age when the political parties are growing less influential, Steyer has, in essence, built a mini-party of his own. By latching on to the issue of impeachment, he has become both a leading figure in the resistance movement and the standard bearer for how anti-Trump a presidential candidate can and should be. Allies say he’s tapping into the sense among Democrats that their country is being taken away. More neutral observers hear echoes of how birtherism was used against President Obama, albeit absent the racist dog whistles and lack of sophistication.
“He is using Trump the way Trump used Obama,” said Tad Devine, a top Democratic operative who helped run Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign. “It as an organizing point. There is so many people who dislike Trump at such a basic level that that is the single most popular issue out there… The guy has an ability to repel voters like nothing else out there, and if you can be associated with taking him on, it is a big deal.”
This is not the first time Steyer has considered running for office. He looked at running for governor of California in 2018 and the Senate in 2016. Now he’s going for the big enchilada.
Although he’s resigned his leadership positions at NextGen America (and Need to Impeach) a unionization struggle within the group has cast a cloud over Steyer’s announcement.
Union organizers say that despite overwhelming support, management has interfered with the process by claiming up to 80% of staffers as supervisory employees and therefore not eligible to participate.
Management says they are merely waiting for third party verification of election results.
From Huffington Post:
The conflicting accounts of what has occurred since organizers asked management for voluntary union recognition on June 7 reflect disagreements over the size of a bargaining unit that are common in the early stages of a union recognition process.
What heightens the stakes of the dispute is that it is occurring within the boundaries of a progressive organization that regularly collaborates with labor unions ― to say nothing of one founded by Steyer, who has for years aligned with the Democratic Party’s pro-labor wing.
Within hours of the NextGen America organizers going public, they attracted high-profile shows of support that also reflect criticism of Next Gen America management.
“Democracy starts in the workplace,” Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson tweeted at NextGen America. “Don’t pretend you’re for the people of this planet if you’re not for your own worker’s rights!”
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Following a 30 city town hall tour, Steyer was widely expected to announce his candidacy for president last winter, and surprised observers by opting out.
Since then he’s grown frustrated at the pace at which the Democratic-controlled House is approaching Trump. Roughly half of the Democratic presidential contenders, seeking to appeal to the party’s progressive base, have called on House Democrats to start an impeachment inquiry.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has resisted, warning Democrats to collect the facts and that a rush to impeachment could ultimately help Trump politically. Meanwhile, the MAGA machine continues to run over humanity, decency, and empathy on its way to the promised theocratic/autocratic land its leaders yearn for.
Steyer joins the race three weeks before the next presidential debates and he likely won’t meet polling requirements to participate but could clear a fundraising threshold. Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out on Monday, and rumors persist casting doubt on the future of Gov. John Hickenlooper’s candidacy.
There are 20 spots at the debate for a field that includes two dozen candidates . If more than 20 people qualify, the Democratic National Committee will hold a tiebreaker to determine who gets on stage.
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The real test for Steyer’s candidacy will be whether all those digital relationships created over the past seven years will translate into the people power it takes to win elections.
I’ll grant that the man has the kind of privileged pedigree traditionally expected of presidential candidates. I’ll grant that his political heart is in the right place. I just don’t think he is capable of connecting with people in a way needed to win.
Put another way, here's Eric Levitz at New York's Intelligencer:
According to The Atlantic, Steyer believes that there is “an opening” in the Democratic primary for a candidate who can “challenge Trump on the economy.” Steyer suspended an earlier exploration into a 2020 run, after telling staffers that he was satisfied with both Elizabeth Warren’s economic message, and Washington governor Jay Inslee’s climate agenda. Since then, the hedge-fund billionaire has reportedly been disappointed by Inslee’s weak start, and has ostensibly concluded that Warren’s populist message would be more broadly appealing, if only it came from “a successful businessman who’s an actual self-made man and who believes in progressive economics.”
The idea that the Democratic primary electorate is eager to nominate a billionaire with no political experience is about as credible as the notion that the party’s 2020 field is sorely lacking in mild-mannered, middle-aged men who boast little-to-no national name recognition.
Given the political realities of our neo–Gilded Age, bleeding-heart billionaires like Steyer have a vital role to play in beating back the forces of reaction. The left needs class traitors. But no one needs another vanity presidential campaign. Steyer should apply the expertise he presumably accrued during his career as an obscenely well-compensated financier and direct his political capital toward higher yield investments.
Based on my experiences with watching digital organizing try--and mostly fail--to generate sustained social protests in the US, I’ll say Steyer’s doomed to failure. Translating clicks into votes has got to be even more difficult than getting people to show up for a protest.
And finally, to be honest, I’m not aware of any mass yearning for a white savior. Men who look and at some basic level are like him got us to where we are today.
https://twitter.com/TomSteyer/status/1148579342680637440
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Lead photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune Brainstorm Green/Flickr