Bloomberg: “Class Traitor” Tom Steyer Wants to Tax Billionaires (Like Himself)

Steyer’s Working-Class Economic Message Is Breaking Through — Despite Millions in Corporate Attack Ads

SAN FRANCISCO –— In a new profile, Bloomberg highlights how Tom Steyer’s campaign for governor is building momentum by taking direct aim at the corporate interests making California more expensive for working families — from oil companies and utility monopolies to billionaires and entrenched special interests. 

The piece underscores why corporate power brokers are spending tens of millions of dollars to stop Steyer’s campaign: because he is threatening a system that has rewarded wealthy insiders while Californians struggle with skyrocketing housing costs, utility bills, gas prices, and economic insecurity.

Excerpts of the full piece are below. Read the full Bloomberg article here:

“Tom Steyer rolled into working-class East San Jose in a pale blue bus, a billionaire on his way to a union rally, when Lorena Gonzalez decided to test the premise of his entire campaign.

Gonzalez, a major labor leader in the state, had a stack of red shirts made up for the May Day rally, with “WORKERS OVER BILLIONAIRES!” stamped on the front. “I was like, ‘You need to put it on,’” she said, recounting the scene.

Steyer, 68, didn’t flinch, slipping the tee over his button-down and grinning for the crowd. “My whole campaign is about representing working people against the corporate special interests,” Steyer said. “There’s enough of us to win.”

A former hedge fund titan turned leftist firebrand, Steyer is vying to become California’s next governor by running against his own class. His calls to cap oil refinery profits, break up electric utility monopolies and impose a one-time wealth tax on billionaires have infuriated the business community. They’ve also placed him in striking distance of surviving a crowded June 2 primary and reaching the general election in November.

Steyer is now out-polling several competitors with government experience, including a former congresswoman and an ex-mayor of Los Angeles.

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“I think our political system is grotesquely riddled with money,” said climate activist and writer Bill McKibben, a Steyer friend. “I’d rather have him spending money on himself than Chevron.”

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But his success eventually came into conflict with his emerging role as a Democratic donor, and his growing interest in climate change. Billions of dollars in financing deals for coal, along with stock holdings in private prisons, became political liabilities and personally troubled him. “I realized just like Paul on the road to Damascus,” Steyer said in a recent interview with a social media influencer. “I took that mistake and said, ‘That’s a wake up call to do the right thing.

“He just cold-called me out of the blue,” said McKibben. The pair ended up hiking in the Adirondack Mountains, where Steyer told McKibben that preventing climate disaster would be the focus of his life’s work. McKibben hoped Steyer would act as a liberal version of the conservative Koch brothers. “He hasn’t backed away one iota,” McKibben said.

Steyer stepped down from Farallon in 2012 and made fighting global warming the centerpiece of his post-hedge fund career. His remaining holdings in Farallon are now worth $34.7 million, according to his campaign team. He co-founded Galvanize Climate Solutions, a roughly $7 billion climate-focused investment firm, as well as a bank focused on social justice, Beneficial State Bank.

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Steyer also dove into political campaigns, becoming a pivotal voice urging university endowments to divest from fossil fuels and bankrolling opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. In California, he backed successful ballot campaigns that defended the state’s landmark law to cut greenhouse gas emissions and closed a tax loophole for out-of-state businesses. He also funded a 2017 campaign pressuring Congress to impeach Trump.

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Our Revolution, the Sanders-aligned PAC, has now endorsed Steyer for governor. “Yes, Tom Steyer is a billionaire. But it matters what he is doing with that power,” the group said in a press release. 

Within the Democratic Party’s policy spectrum, Steyer’s campaign proposals skew left. He has called for ending the monopolies enjoyed by the state’s electric utilities and reducing their return on equity investments. He also wants to assess commercial property at market value instead of under the current system, which often limits increases in taxable value. That proposal, which would require calling a special election, could raise billions of dollars from major real estate holders. Both the California Association of Realtors and the California Chamber of Commerce are now financing ads against him.

While he’s convinced some former doubters, it remains to be seen whether Steyer can win over enough voters to advance to the general election at a time of rising anger against the rich. During a campaign stop in San Jose, his eyes started tearing up after a potential voter said she was skeptical of him and put off by his aggressive style. In a gravelly voice, Steyer tried to convince her he was a different kind of billionaire.

“It gets me emotional,” he told her. “These rich people think they made their money on their own. My point is, basically, poor people have set up a system at the risk of their lives for hundreds of years. Do not disrespect them.”

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