Oligarch Tom Steyer’s Fraudulent Populism
“It’s really goddamn simple. Tackle the cost-of-living crisis, or get the hell out of the way…the richest people in America think that they earned everything themselves. That’s bullshit…back to basics: homes you can afford, cut utility rates by 25 percent, and make California a top-ten education state again.”
– Excerpts from California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer’s new ad
The first thing most people notice about this new political ad that’s saturating California’s broadcast television channels is the profanity. Apparently, Tom Steyer has come to the same conclusion that Gavin Newsom did: if you want to appeal to disaffected blue-collar workers, it isn’t sufficient to prance around in flannel shirts and pretend you’re a lumberjack. Tim Walz tried that, and we just laughed at him.
No, today, the threads you wear don’t matter. Projecting masculine thuggery is the new image. It’s really goddamn simple.
And it’s no surprise that billionaire Tom Steyer wants to be governor of California. Steyer has been active in politics for a long time, most recently as the man who helped bankroll fellow foulmouthed Gavin Newsom’s successful campaign to pass Proposition 50. For the forgetful, that ballot initiative was passed only last month, in a special statewide election where public sector unions and leftist billionaires spent over $140 million to con California voters into destroying democracy in order to save it.
Tom Steyer claims it’s “bullshit” for billionaires to “think they earned everything themselves.” There’s a grain of truth in his statement, but not for the reasons he hopes to sell to voters. Because Steyer, who made his billions as a hedge fund manager, decided to make fighting the “climate crisis” his new mission in life starting around 2012. And for some oligarchs—Al Gore immediately comes to mind—those billions most definitely weren’t “earned themselves.” These tycoons made their money with the help of massive government subsidies, mandates, regulations, litigation, and harassment of any competitors that weren’t sufficiently “green.”
Steyer’s record as a climate warrior is well established. In 2010, he was the biggest donor in the campaign to defeat Prop. 23 in California, a ballot initiative that would have reined in the extremes built into California’s draconian 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act. In 2012, he was the founder and main donor of NextGen Climate Action, a PAC that supports the climate movement. In 2020, Steyer spent over $200 million of his own money to run for president, and he made fighting the climate crisis the centerpiece of his campaign. And, surprise, surprise, in 2021, Steyer founded Galvanize Climate Solutions, a “climate-focused investment firm.”
Properly understood, Steyer’s version of a virtuous rich person is anyone who has enlisted the full power of government to benefit their “climate”-oriented companies while crushing any competitors. Of course, Steyer is going to lean in to “doing it with help.” He’s a crony capitalist masquerading as a climate crusader.
The scariest thing about Tom Steyer is not his billions. Meg Whitman wasted $170 million running a grossly incompetent campaign for governor of California in 2010. For that matter, Steyer himself squandered $200 million on his campaign for U.S. president in 2020. All else being equal, huge financial advantages will buy political control of a state. California is proof of that. But the examples of Whitman and Steyer, along with Bloomberg in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024, and many others, are evidence that money alone cannot win an election.
It isn’t even that scary that Tom Steyer has decided to adopt thuggish phraseology. There is a danger in fomenting collective anger that might tip borderline psychopaths off the ledge. And Steyer is participating in a broader strategy that tacitly encourages violent climate activism. But the biggest danger posed by someone like Tom Steyer is that he will reinforce an institutional bias toward even more “climate” policies that have already made California the most unaffordable state in America.
The fact that a coalition of corporations, public sector unions, and environmentalist NGOs is using climate politics to consolidate their power reveals the stunning hypocrisy and fraudulent essence of Steyer’s claim that he will solve the affordability crisis in California. Everything enacted in the state over the past few decades to cope with the “climate emergency” has made California’s cost of living worse.
How would Tom Steyer possibly change the rules in California so there could be “homes you can afford?” Extreme environmentalist legislation has made it impossible to build homes outside of the footprint of existing cities. This policy of “urban containment,” in a state that is only 5 percent urbanized, has made it impossible to increase the supply of homes. Instead, it has elevated costs for what limited parcels of land remain available for development, and it has destroyed neighborhoods with high-density infill.
The beneficiaries of this “climate crisis”-inspired war on new homes on open land are obvious. Politically connected developers collect billions in subsidies to build “affordable housing” for tenants who themselves have to collect government subsidies to afford the rent. Government bureaucrats administer benefits to renters, staffing up as well to serve the inevitable explosion of the homeless population, and expand their local tax base.
The “climate crisis” has also made energy and water unaffordable in California. But public utilities benefit when electricity is twice as expensive in California as in other states, because utilities earn a regulated profit based on total revenue. The transition to “renewable” energy, mandated on a timeline guaranteed to inflate costs, enriches companies and investors with products that wouldn’t otherwise be competitive. Water rationing means fewer “water-wasting” single-family detached homes can be built and fewer farms can get irrigated, hence higher prices and profits for the biggest water agencies and agribusinesses left standing. And all of this transfer of wealth is justified thanks to Tom Steyer’s “climate crisis.”
Steyer is smart enough to know this. But he’s made a decision congruent with the entire oligarchic faction he helps guide. He knows that if prices soar for houses, gasoline, and electricity, “alternative” solutions—infill and renewables—become more competitive, and the corporations and utilities that provide them make more money.
The idea that Tom Steyer can do anything to make the lives of ordinary Californians any better, or any more affordable, is laughable. Imagine Tom Steyer recognizing that California will never get energy prices down unless it ends the legislative war on oil companies and permits natural gas power plants to remain in service. Imagine Tom Steyer recognizing that there will never be enough water for the state’s cities and farms unless more reasonable regulations govern water withdrawals from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. And imagine Tom Steyer recognizing that suburban expansion in the still largely unsettled state is the only way that housing supply will again exceed housing demand, driving prices lower at last.
Finally, imagine Tom Steyer doing the only thing that will ever improve public education in California, which is to stand up to the teachers’ union. Don’t hold your breath for any of this.
When Tom Steyer calls “bullshit” on the rich people that he claims are making California unaffordable, he needs to look in the mirror.
This article originally appeared in American Greatness.
Edward Ring is a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, and a regular contributor to the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Forbes, and other media outlets.
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