SAN FRANCISCO — Democratic gubernatorial candidate and climate advocate Tom Steyer delivered remarks at his election night watch party in San Francisco:
Thank you all for being here.
This might take some time, but we’re feeling good.
We’re going to wait until every ballot is counted. We’re going to give democracy time to work.
We’re here tonight because our state is in crisis, and so is our nation.
California is the richest state in the richest country in the history of the world.
It’s unacceptable that right now, so many Californians struggle to make ends meet.
We’re about to see the world’s first trillionaires, probably in California.
We’re already witnessing an explosion of wealth concentrated in the hands of the very, very few.
The gap between the rich and the poor grows wider by the minute.
Prices are higher than ever. Faith in government’s ability to do anything is lower than ever.
Californians are being priced out of their homes every single day.
While it happens, we see billionaires do whatever they have to to get whatever they can out of the system – and then do everything they can to hoard their wealth and avoid paying taxes.
And we see corporations continue to rig the system for themselves – raising your prices to juice their profits.
Screw that.
California deserves better. Working people deserve better.
Democracy matters. Justice matters. The truth matters.
Anyone who says otherwise is invested in a system rigged against you.
Here’s the truth: for every bill that’s too high, there’s a special interest profiting off keeping it there.
They want you to believe that’s inevitable. That it’s just how the market works.
But that’s BULLSHIT. We don’t have to accept this.
This campaign has been about proving that.
My vision for California is based on a simple idea: The wellbeing of the most vulnerable shouldn’t depend on corporations and billionaires choosing to do the right thing.
We should have a system based on fairness, not on asking for fairness.
Where the most privileged pay their fair share, not by charity, but by law.
A system that reminds them of what I’ve been saying since the very beginning of this campaign: You didn’t do it all yourselves.
The soon-to-be tech trillionaires built their wealth here because California enabled them to.
Because ordinary Californians worked hard and sacrificed, day after day, year after year, to create the system where those billionaires could realize the dreams they came to this state to pursue.
The California I believe in is a California where recognizing that hard work – and honoring that sacrifice – is fundamental to assigning credit and designing our society.
This race, more than any other in recent memory, laid bare the basic operating principle of American politics, a very uncomfortable truth: Money talks.
In this race, we saw what corporate money tends to ask for: Higher rents. Lower wages. Permission to pollute, to price gouge, and to treat workers as disposable.
And in this race, we saw the way that money – money from some of the wealthiest people and corporations in the history of the world – mobilized when I said I’d tax it fairly.
We saw a direct, causal relationship between my plans for change, and the $55 million of corporate money that flooded in to stop me.
Single-payer healthcare? Here come the insurance companies.
Clean energy? Here comes Chevron.
Taxing AI? Here comes Meta.
Lowering electric bills? Hello, PG&E.
To quote FDR: “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”
But here’s the thing: Their spending wasn’t personal. It wasn’t about who I am.
It was about what the corporations believed I could do.
For the corporations, elections are always about policy. For the corporations, politics isn’t about parties. It’s about profits.
They do not think in red and blue teams. They think in red and black ink.
They think in dollar signs, in balance sheets.
Their priorities and decisions have proved soulless.
They are totally unconcerned with the wellbeing of working people, with the health of our democracy, with the very concept of justice.
They will support who and whatever they have to in order to usher in a future that is beneficial to their bottom lines.
It’s why they uniformly back Trump. It’s why they uniformly oppose progressives.
And none of that was unique to this race.
Here, they were just especially brazen.
Because here, they were especially scared.
The dollar amounts are different, but in elections everywhere, the principle is the same: You want to fight for working people at the expense of corporate profits?
Watch corporations do everything in their power to stop you.
Usually, they just try harder to hide it.
And usually, they’re confident that if they spend enough, whoever’s threatening their profits will be forced to back down and go away.
This is how working people have been priced out of our politics.
This is how the system protects itself.
And I’ll be the first to say it: That isn’t how the system should work.
You shouldn’t have to be a billionaire to run on single-payer, or to challenge monopolies, or to call out a corrupt system when you see it.
But the system depends on its ability to crush anyone who tries.
And I know that there are many, many people – activists, and organizers, and ordinary working people – who are out there today, and who have been out there for decades, saying and doing all of these things, brilliantly and fearlessly.
Those are the people I’m in this race for. Those are the people I’m in this race with.
The corporate interests came at us with everything they had, and we didn’t back down.
We were absolutely uncompromising in our values and our vision for California.
And together, we’ve scared the hell out of the corporate interests used to getting their way.
We exposed the fact that their power depends on a system that is fundamentally corrupt.
We showed, with clarity and conviction, that we do not have to accept the system they’ve built as inevitable.
We proved something FDR said almost a century ago: “that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”
And we showed that a better California is possible – and that we know what it looks like, and that we know how we’ll get there together, day by day, vote by vote.
Because together, all of us in this room, believe in a not-so-radical idea: California can work for working people.
Because we believe in a California where we have single-payer healthcare.
A California where we have clean air to breathe and water to drink.
A California where young people can imagine a future in the place they grew up.
A California where corporations and billionaires who got rich here and then pulled the ladder up behind them pay their fair share – and are actually proud of their contribution to the 21st century society that the rest of the world admires.
That’s what we’re fighting for together.
And that’s what the corporations are hell-bent on stopping.
Because they know what we know: If we win, corporations lose.
I’ve always been an optimist, and tonight, I remain an optimist: None of this is far off. These dreams are not too big.
The better California we’ve been fighting for is possible. And it’s coming.
I know that because I know Californians.
I’ve spent the last six months traveling up and down the state, talking to people in the Bay, in LA, in the Inland Empire.
People in Santa Rosa and Riverside, in San Diego and San Jose.
People in communities along the coast and in the valley and in the foothills.
And everywhere I went, I heard the same thing: People are fed up.
They know what is happening. They see it with their own eyes.They know who the villains are. They know they deserve better.
And they are willing to fight with everything they have to win it.
It will be hard work. It is hard work. But we’re here tonight because it’s happening.
Because we are making it happen.
I’ve never felt more confident that California is the greatest place in the world. And that Californians are the greatest people in the world.
It has been the honor of my life to have the very best of them by my side.
To my family: Thank you for everything. None of this would be possible without your love and support.
To my team: Thank you for your hard work every single day of this campaign.
To the people of California – I say it all the time: There are no people like Californians.
You are the best of the best.
Thank you for the doors you knocked, the calls you made, the tweets you posted. Thank you for showing up to our town halls, for asking tough questions, for believing in a better California and working so hard to bring people there with you.
I’m so grateful for each and every one of you.
We’ve done the hard work, and we did it together.
Together, we put the corporations on notice.
Together, we demanded more and better for the best state of them all.
And now, we’ve just got to be patient.
Thank you again.
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