Tim Myers knows a thing or two about voices.
He was, after all, one of the founding members of the pop-rock band OneRepublic. He’s written hundreds of songs, his biography boasts, and he founded record label Palladium Records, which has signed more than 60 artists.
But Myers, 40, has turned his attention to different voices — this time, less musical, more political.
Myers has launched a 2026 bid for California lieutenant governor, the No. 2 spot in state government.
The former OneRepublic bassist said he’s been disappointed in California’s current leadership.
As a Democrat, Myers said he wants to see state leaders stand up more to President Donald Trump and his administration’s policies, specifically pointing to the deployment of troops to Los Angeles amid increased immigration enforcement operations and scaled-back or eliminated funding to universities and Medicaid, to name a few.
He is also concerned about affordability and homelessness in California and “career politicians.”
“One of the main reasons I’m running is I want to be a loud voice that’s standing up to the political establishment and standing up to Trump and the Republicans,” Myers said in an interview.
A Hidden Hills resident now, Myers was born in Orange and grew up in Corona, where his father served as a pastor at Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside. His family eventually moved to the valley, where he attended Newbury Park High School.
It’s his experiences growing up that has, in part, fueled his desire to run for public office.
Myers remembers feeding the homeless with his father, a tradition he has since continued with his own two daughters. Pre-OneRepublic fame, Myers worked as a janitor at his dad’s church and later juggled opening up Starbucks at 5 a.m. as a barista along with attending school and playing in multiple bands, he said.
“My story is a story of the California dream,” Myers said, “which is coming from nothing … and becoming something.”
Myers had previously said he was running for California’s 41st Congressional District, a challenge to Inland Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona.
“Ken Calvert has been in Washington for 30 years,” Myers said in his original announcement. The “status quo isn’t working.”
But he has since changed his mind, saying in a statement this week that he has “witnessed things that are deeply disturbing — and impossible to ignore.”
“But when I looked around, I didn’t see our state politicians standing with us, and I realized: I can’t stay silent. I can’t stay on the sidelines. That’s why I’m shifting my campaign from Congress to California lieutenant governor — to represent all 40 million voices across this state and to fight for a government that actually works for us.”
Myers joins an already relatively crowded field in the race for lieutenant governor.
There’s California Treasurer Fiona Ma and California Chief Service Officer Josh Fryday, as well as former Sausalito Mayor Janelle Kellman and Mike Schaefer, a member of the California Board of Equalization. All are Democrats.
Fryday, a Navy veteran and Novato native, said he is running for the seat “to fix the problems in the communities we love and make it possible for us all to build a better future here.”
Ma is a former state legislator and member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors where, according to her bio, she led an effort to combat human trafficking and prostitution rings in massage parlors.
Schaefer served on the San Diego City Council and has said he’s “dedicated (his) life to protecting taxpayers and challenging powerful interests.”
Kellman grew up in a small Pennsylvania mining town, later earning an environmental law degree at Stanford Law School. She founded the nonprofit Center for Sea Rise Solutions, which aims to build coastal resilience with local decision-makers.
Myers, meanwhile, said he wants to represent a new generation in California politics.
“I want to be a new voice, a different voice that we haven’t heard yet in California politics,” he said. “We need something new.”
Aside from his work in the music industry, Myers is also a dad, a die-hard L.A. Kings fan and a big fan of California cuisine. (You might find him on the campaign trail at a Mexican joint or In-N-Out.)
He is also looking at his own family dynamics as he runs for a statewide office. He is running as a Democrat, but he considers his parents to be “moderate Republicans.” He has one sibling who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community and another who is also a Republican.
“We love each other, and we talk to each other,” Myers said. “It’s interesting the dynamics we’re in right now. There’s a lot of hate, you know, but I’m really hoping here in California I can bring people together and create some major, major change in the state.”