Tom Steyer Wants to Get the Money Out of Politics. He'll Spend $100 Million to Do It.
"The question you have to ask,” announced Tom Steyer, the longshot Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election, “is, do you think the system's broken?" He did not await my answer over lunch late last month at the latest New York outpost of a California farm-to-table chain—a fitting setting for the Manhattan kid who made his fortune in San Francisco. "I do, and I think most Americans do. Is change going to come from inside D.C., from the heart of power itself? or is it going to come from the outside?" Billionaire businessman thinks the swamp needs draining, and as the outsider candidate, he’s the best man for the job—sound familiar?
Steyer was quick to dismiss any comparisons. "It's actually completely different from Donald Trump,” he told me. “I have a completely different business history, since I actually built a business myself”—Farallon Capital, a wildly successful hedge fund he opened in 1986 and ran until 2012—"without any money from papa. I'm a completely different person from Donald Trump, with a completely different background, and a completely different set of values."
Steyer has been making noise about Trump louder and longer than many. Three years ago, he launched a sprawling ad campaign calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump, American president. At the time, the crusade was dismissed as lunacy. Democrats were in the minority in both houses of Congress; Trump had a vice-like grip on the GOP; and Robert Mueller was less than a third of the way into his 19-month investigation. Cut to our lunch, just days after Speaker Nancy Pelosi had announced the House would open a formal impeachment inquiry, and Steyer couldn't hold back an I-told-you-so. "We've said it from the beginning, two years ago: Most corrupt president in American history," he said. "If you don't believe us, wait until tomorrow. Whatever the day is, that's the best day of the rest of the Trump presidency."
Over a small mountain of jalapeño-studded ricotta, I pressed Steyer about why a voter who thinks the system is rigged should elect someone who has so clearly benefited from that system as president. "For ten years, as an outsider, I put together coalitions of ordinary American citizens to beat corporations." He was referring to NextGen America, which began as a climate advocacy nonprofit but has since taken on a slate of progressive causes. In the lead-up to the 2018 midterms, the group registered over 250,000 voters between the ages of 18 and 35, according to Forbes, with a focus on those in congressional swing districts. The initiative cost Steyer a cool $123 million.
Of course, it's easy to make noise when you have hundreds of millions of dollars to spare. Steyer spent three dominating decades in the hedge-fund world, and he emerged in the early 2000s with at least $1.6 billion to show for it. He wasted no time throwing huge chunks of his fortune at politics. He’s injected tens of millions into his Need to Impeach and NextGen America initiatives. Between 2014 and 2017, he spent north of $300 million, $74 million of which went to Democratic campaigns in the 2014 midterms. In 2016, he was the biggest individual spender of the cycle (though others may have spent more in unreported donations known as ”dark money”). He's pledged to spend up to $100 million on his presidential bid.
Along the way, he learned that money does not (always) translate to power. The Democratic Party got trounced in the 2014 midterms, losing control of the Senate. In 2016, Republicans seized the White House, and with it, full control of the federal government. And while Steyer’s vast wealth has allowed him to outlast a spate of other 2020 candidates, including a mayor (Bill DeBlasio), a senator (Kristen Gillibrand), and two former governors (Jay Inslee and John Hickenlooper), he has never consistently polled above two percent nationally. In last week’s Quinnipiac poll, which saw Elizabeth Warren overtake Joe Biden for the first time among primary voters nationally, Steyer failed to reach one percent.
At the third Democratic debate tonight, Steyer will have his best chance yet to make his case before the American public when he takes his place near the end of the stage. Steyer did not announce his run until July, missing the first debate in June. He immediately set his sights on qualifying for the second stage in September and took a targeted—or some might say exploitative—approach to the rules laid out by the Democratic National Committee. (Elizabeth Warren greeted him with an acerbic subtweet when he jumped in the race: "The Democratic primary should not be decided by billionaires.”) Steyer spent $12 million on advertising in the first six weeks of his candidacy, more than a quarter of which went toward digital ads soliciting $1 donations so he could meet the DNC’s individual donor threshold. He failed to hit 2 percent in any qualifying polls, however, and missed the September contest.
Steyer made it this time, though, and maybe he sees the stage in Cleveland as his moment to climb ahead of the pack still chasing Warren, Biden, and Sanders. But Steyer’s ability to defend himself in this setting remains untested. Warren might point out that Steyer's hedge fund invested in private prisons and was accused of using tax shelters. Bernie Sanders, who recently said that "billionaires should not exist," could throw a few existential jabs Steyer’s way.
When I asked about that Sanders line, Steyer pivoted to his own wealth tax plan—which he released a year ago, at a time when he maintained he was not running for president. The plan targets fortunes of $32 million or more—the same level where Sanders’ plan begins. Steyer wants to overturn Citizens United and introduce public financing for campaigns. Then again, that does make him a billionaire who’s spending tens of millions to get the money out of politics.
"Honestly, I think that if you look at the Democrats running, take a look at who has a history of taking on corporations and winning from the outside," he told me. "If I'm right on the issue, which I believe is broken government, who is going to actually take on broken government? Someone from inside the government, or someone who's been doing it from outside successfully?" He cited the recent impeachment efforts. "Where were the people saying, 'Wow, this guy's just a straight up crook. We need to get rid of him'? Were they inside the Beltway, or outside? The people from inside the Beltway spent two years telling me that I was on some crazy quest."
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