Steyer calls out Becerra for taking money from the corporations
SAN FRANCISCO — With less than one week until Election Day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate and climate advocate Tom Steyer delivered a closing argument centered on one core question: who will actually take on the corporations driving California’s affordability crisis?
At a KQED town hall Tuesday night, Steyer sharply contrasted himself with both a Trump-backed Republican opponent and what he called a “corporate Dem” in Xavier Becerra — arguing Becerra is funded by the same powerful interests Californians are struggling against.
“There's a corporate Dem, Xavier Becerra, who's been taking money from all the corporations that I'm talking about restructuring their bottom lines,” Steyer said, citing support for Becerra from Chevron, Meta, Airbnb, Uber, and healthcare industry interests opposed to single-payer healthcare.
KQED's Maria Lagos covered the town hall. The following are excerpts from the piece:
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With one week until voting ends in California’s June primary, Democratic candidate for governor Tom Steyer sold himself as a populist who will use his experience in finance to squeeze more out of corporations and help average Californians with rising costs.
Steyer, one of the race’s three leading candidates, is a former hedge fund manager who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars of his fortune in recent years pushing progressive causes, including fighting climate change, opposing President Trump and, now, running for governor. At a KQED town hall Tuesday night, he returned to his campaign’s central theme of affordability.
“If you want change in this state, if you believe this state is unaffordable for Californians, if you want to take on the corporate interests, there’s only one person,” Steyer told a live audience at KQED’s San Francisco headquarters. “I’m the change person. I’m the person who’s going to take on the corporate interests, and I’m the person that working people are behind. That is the choice in this election.”
Steyer’s ‘enemies’
Part of Steyer’s closing pitch to voters: Judge me by those who oppose my candidacy. He lists off big oil companies, investor-owned utilities and tech companies that have all spent big to defeat him.
So, how would he work with those companies to actually govern?
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Steyer, who made his fortune making bets on high-risk assets, said a company like PG&E is simply following the rules California has set up. But he said those rules have resulted in Californians paying double what residents in other states pay for their electricity.
“So I’m going to change the rules to the extent I can so we drive down prices,” he said. “ I don’t believe in monopolies…. When there’s competition in the world, that’s how we keep prices down and that’s how we take advantage of new innovation and the ability of people to do things cheaper.”
Steyer cast the company’s opposition to his campaign as a badge of honor — but one that’s not personal, just political. He said he just wants corporations to pay “their fair share.”
“None of these corporations invest because they like someone, they spend money because they don’t like what I am going to do,” he said, adding that the companies backing his competitors in the governor’s race are doing so because they “believe for sure [those candidates] are going to do their bidding.”
Taxes and affordability
Steyer has promised that one of his first acts as governor would be to call a special election asking voters to increase taxes on commercially held properties in California.
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When asked by audience member Bathsheba Turnage how he will balance keeping businesses in the state while raising their taxes to bring in more resources for housing and education, Steyer leaned on his experience in the private sector and as a political activist.
Steyer noted he’s been on the other side from oil and tobacco companies in numerous ballot measures fights over the past 15 years, and said none of those initiatives have hurt California’s economy. He rejected the argument that increasing commercial property taxes would push businesses to move elsewhere, reframing it as a tax loophole that is allowing businesses to avoid paying their fair share.
“Nobody is moving Disneyland to Austin, Texas, or Miami, Florida, or Reno, Nevada,” he said. “I went to Stanford Business School, I built a business from zero to $38 billion. I think I know something about business. And so I’m going to be very intent on making sure that we do this in a way that works and works for business…. I’m for shared prosperity. And you know what? You can’t share prosperity if there’s no prosperity.”
Artificial intelligence
Steyer was also asked about another balancing act: which specific policies he would implement to protect workers while ensuring California remains a leader in the development of artificial intelligence.
He started by noting what he called “one of the biggest policy failures of my lifetime”: The decimation of Midwest industrial jobs because of globalization and mechanization. Steyer said that era should offer lessons as AI rises.
“It’s something we cannot let happen in the state of California,” he said. “We have to protect workers…. We want [AI] to be a tool for workers, not a replacement of workers. We have to have a huge government effort to make sure we have training for people to get good jobs.”
Steyer said he would create a “gigantic” training program at community colleges in a collaboration between government and the private sector. It should be paid for, he said, by a small fee imposed on every calculation done by an AI company — an idea he joked that he “shamelessly” stole from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
Noting that Pope Leo XIV just issued an encyclical about artificial intelligence, Steyer associated himself with the religious leader’s approach to the profound moral and existential questions the technology poses. He dismissed an idea pushed by billionaire Elon Musk that the federal government should cut checks to counter unemployment caused by AI.
“I’m going to come out on the side of the pope instead of on the side of Elon Musk. The pope is talking about the dignity of human beings, the dignity of work, the meaning of purpose, supporting people in having a meaningful life. And that’s what I’m in favor of,” he said. “Healthy societies have people participating, building things together … that’s what California’s always been about.”
Read the full article here.
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