Once I met a coach who was famous in college sports, and he hit on me. I was wearing professional clothes (not that profession) in a professional setting, and he immediately started asking me about my career and my professional ambitions and soon he was telling me that I would be outstanding as a TV sports reporter, interviewing players on the sidelines.
Right.
What I remember most clearly was his concentrated gaze of pretended interest in whatever either of us was saying during this brief conversation. Then he said I should come to his hotel room to talk more about my “career.” Do you think I missed my chance at an Emmy?
This must be what it’s like to be a billionaire in politics.
If you’re a billionaire, probably everyone you meet gazes at you with that concentrated, pretended interest, eyebrows lifted at an angle to convey that your words are insightful, original and urgently important. That’s a sure sign that they want to get into your pants, or wherever you keep your wallet, because the one thing everyone in politics needs is a lot of money, and they need it all the time.
Tom Steyer arrived like the answer to their prayers.
“Steyer made his fortune as the founder of Farallon Capital, a hedge fund headquartered in San Francisco that currently manages about $42 billion in assets,” CalMatters reported on Wednesday when Steyer jumped into the race for governor. “After selling his stake in the company in 2012, Steyer started NextGen America, a liberal nonprofit that supports progressive positions on issues such as climate change, immigration, health care and education.”
He also started a “labor-aligned super PAC to fund races nationwide.”
By his own account, Steyer donated “more than a quarter of a billion dollars to Democratic campaigns and causes, more than any other individual.”
It’s easy to picture candidates gazing at Steyer with angled eyebrows while an aide transcribed his every word for the campaign website’s “Issues” page. No matter how irrational or costly or ineffective a policy might be in real life, within the bubble of a fundraising event it was the answer to everything.
Inevitably in this P.T. Barnum traveling circus, someone in the campaign consulting business would eventually drift within earshot of the billionaire and whisper, “You’re the one who should be running.”
That may have happened in 2019, because Steyer decided that destiny called him to run for president of the United States. In February 2020, Forbes reported that Steyer spent $200 million of his estimated $1.6 billion fortune on his campaign for the Democratic nomination. Three days before the Iowa caucuses he was polling at 3.6% in Iowa and 1.9% nationally. He was out of the race before Super Tuesday.
The consultants were probably at the Ferrari dealership when they heard the news.
Here in California, Steyer recently dropped $12 million on ads for Proposition 50, an effort to convince voters to adopt new congressional district maps. At least, that was the apparent purpose of the ads.
Eagle-eyed watchers of politics noticed immediately that Steyer featured himself in the TV ads. His name floated in the air as a potential candidate for governor. In October, a poll from the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, showed him at 1%, barely ahead of skim milk.
Nonetheless, on Wednesday, Steyer launched his campaign for the state’s highest office. He released a two-minute video in which he uses mild profanity to sound tough and wears a plaid shirt to look real. A top-flight production crew gave him the movie star treatment. Another round of Ferraris for everybody.
On his campaign website, Steyer notes the high cost of utilities and housing as well as the schools that are “lagging behind.”
His solution? He wants to raise taxes on businesses and give the money to public schools, launch “the largest effort in state history to build homes that California families can actually afford,” break up “utility monopolies” and ban corporate donations in state politics.
His first problem is that the gazing phase is over, and now he has to tell it to the voters, who typically keep their eyebrows in a more skeptical posture.
It won’t help Steyer that the policies he has pushed to cut greenhouse gas emissions have led to higher electricity rates, higher transportation costs and an end to suburban single-family home construction (because commuting is blamed for climate change). He brags that he went after “Big Oil,” but now that anti-oil policies have led to the closure of two more refineries, he may want to take that off his resume before he’s blamed for $8-a-gallon gasoline.
That’s the other thing that has changed for Steyer — he has opponents now, and they will not be gazing with pretended interest, they’ll be attacking him.
Remember, Steyer is at 1% in the polls before the attacks start. If he had to spend $200 million to get to 3.6% in the polls in Iowa in 2020, how much will he have to spend to get to double digits in California before voting begins on May 4? It may not even be possible, but many brave Ferraris will be driven off the lot in the effort to find out.
I was skeptical of another billionaire candidate in 2015. Certain that the Trump campaign had to be paying for buses to bring audiences to his rallies, I drove to Las Vegas to attend a Trump rally and see for myself.
There were no buses. Instead, I saw real supporters in their personal vehicles, patiently enduring long security lines to drive into the parking lot, then bag searches to get into the packed hall. There were no chairs. Donald Trump stood at a podium in front of a flag and gave a lengthy speech. Afterwards he stayed for an hour while many in the crowd lined up to meet him and get his autograph.
If Tom Steyer can do that, he’s got a chance.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley