Steyer Brings “Shared Prosperity” Tour to Fresno Amid Campaign’s Growing Momentum
Addressing affordability, education, and environmental justice, Steyer fields questions from a crowd of nearly 200 Central Valley residents
FRESNO — Last night, Tom Steyer continued his statewide “Shared Prosperity” town hall tour in Fresno as campaign momentum continued to grow. Steyer was joined by local comedian and actor Leo González, who provided opening remarks to a crowd of nearly 200 attendees. González praised Steyer as someone who "always does what he says" and someone who will "fight for working Californians."
Steyer took questions from Central Valley residents grappling with the state’s affordability crisis, education, environmental injustices, and the impacts of the war in Iran on Californians’ wallets.
On Big Oil benefiting from Californians paying more at the pump:
"The people who are profiting from [the Iran war] are oil companies. They gave [Donald Trump] hundreds of millions of dollars to get elected. Their costs haven't gone up one day, and our gas prices have gone up $1.50. That's why I'm for a windfall profits tax. Let's take that money back and send it to California. That's just a windfall profit because their president decided on when to start blowing up a country that's half a world away."
On his stance on PACs and their influence on U.S. politics:
"I'm against PACs, but I'm specifically against dark money PACs pushing us in the interest of another country instead of our own country."
On how he will make California top 10 school again:
“I’ve said we ought to be a top 10 education school… and we’re not. We’re in the 30s. We need to spend the money to do that, and that’s part of why I want to get rid of this corporate real estate tax loophole, because over 40 percent of that will go to education.”
On how to address the environmental issues facing Brown and Black communities:
"If you look around this state, where the dirty plants are, where the dirty roads are, where the asthma rates are really high, where the life expectancy is really low? Black and Brown communities, we all know that. And so when we think about environmentalism, when we think about climate response… it has to start with environmental justice… because we're not starting on an even playing field. We're redressing decades or centuries of intentional structural injustice."
On what “shared prosperity” means for all Californians:
“We've got this amazingly beautiful state. As a state, we're really rich. We're half the growth of the United States of America just in this one state. We have an ability to be incredibly prosperous. What we need to do is share it fairly. We need shared prosperity. This is the shared prosperity tour. We leave nobody behind. We take care of people, we educate people, we bring along everybody with our prosperity. And we compete on a global level, and we win. That's what California is supposed to do.”
###