\u201cIt\u2019s hard to vote for a billionaire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager turned major liberal financier, had just stopped her on her walk home from lunch to make his case. The 37-year-old tattoo specialist would have been convinced more easily were it not for the contradiction weighing on her:<\/p>\n
How could a man who can splurge millions at will serve people worried about paying their next bill?<\/p>\n
This was the question dogging Steyer during a recent weekend of campaigning in the Bay Area to lead a state where the rich are getting richer <\/a>and income inequality runs rampant.<\/p>\n As Steyer launched an affordability-focused bus tour trailed by an entourage of cameramen and staffers, skepticism about his billionaire status also followed him. Voters pressed him about it at town halls. Demonstrators denounced it on signs they held at a workers rights rally he attended.<\/p>\n As one of the leading candidates to helm the bastion of liberal politics, Steyer represents a persistent tension for the Democrats. The party that promises to fight for the working class and bashes billionaires as the poster children for wealth disparities embraces affluent candidates.<\/p>\n When asked about his wealth, Steyer recounts growing up the son of a teacher and lawyer and becoming the odd one out in his family when he started a hedge fund. He says he turned his business acumen to advocacy on combating climate change and advancing progressive politics because wanted to help his community, the way his family taught him to.<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest challenge for me will be to convince people that somebody everybody\u2019s trying to label as a billionaire actually cares about them,\u201d Steyer, 68, said in an interview.<\/p>\n Mai listened to him, her hands folded over the handle of the stroller holding her 9-month-old son. As a camera crew filmed their exchange, Steyer explained himself like this:<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t inherit money. He made it on his own through a business he turned his back on over a decade ago. Since then, he and his wife have given much of his fortune away, and they plan to keep doing so.<\/p>\n \u201cI see, okay,\u201d Mai replied.<\/p>\n Mai\u2019s concerns are characteristic of many Californians. They despise Trump. Health care is getting pricier. Buying a home in the state seems out of reach.<\/p>\n Running to address those woes, being a billionaire is a liability <\/a>for Steyer. His strategy relies on voters stomaching a billionaire if they see him as a class traitor.<\/p>\n After stepping down from his hedge fund, Farallon Capital Management, in 2012, Steyer turned his attention to the environment. He dedicated his spending to climate change ads and Democratic candidates who wanted to combat global warming. In 2017, he rebranded his four-year-old NextGen Climate organization to NextGen America as a broader liberal advocacy group.<\/p>\n He then spent millions to star in his own commercial<\/a> urging Trump\u2019s impeachment. That one call grew to a series of ads and town halls demanding the president\u2019s impeachment, boosting Steyer\u2019s political profile at the same time.<\/p>\n In 2019, he launched a longshot presidential bid, spending more than $260 million of his own money before losing to Joe Biden in the South Carolina primary and dropping out. Another billionaire, Mike Bloomberg, also competed in the race.<\/p>\n Now, Steyer has spent $175 million and counting on his California campaign. The money helped him blanket the state with advertising and poll second in a crowded pack despite having no government experience, <\/b>according to a late-April CBS News-YouGov survey<\/a>, though the largest share of voters were undecided.<\/p>\n Ballots are being mailed to voters ahead of California\u2019s June 2 primary, where the top two vote-getters advance to the general election regardless of their political party. Alongside Steyer in the field are Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, and a slew of Democrats, including former U.S. health secretary Xavier Becerra, former California congresswoman Katie Porter and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. There is no clear front-runner among them.<\/p>\n At one point, Eric Swalwell led the Democratic field. But the congressman\u2019s withdrawal from the race<\/a> following sexual misconduct allegations left Democrats scrambling to pick up his supporters and pull away from the pack.<\/p>\n Each candidate carries baggage. Voters and rival candidates have raised concerns about Porter\u2019s temperament, Becerra\u2019s support from oil companies and Mahan\u2019s Silicon Valley donors.<\/p>\n Those opponents have hammered Steyer on his wealth. In their most recent debate last Wednesday, Mahan said the state doesn\u2019t \u201cneed the leadership of a billionaire who\u2019s now against everything he made his money in.\u201d When discussing whether California was the best place for business owners, Porter declared: \u201cI guess it was for him, because he became a billionaire off it, but for the rest of California businesses, it\u2019s been a real struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n On the trail, Steyer repeatedly says he favors taxing himself more and will vote for a November ballot measure imposing a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires. He touts his endorsement from progressive groups including Our Revolution, the Bernie Sanders-founded group that opposes billionaires. At the worker\u2019s rally he attended, he slipped on a red T-shirt that read: \u201cWorkers over billionaires.\u201d<\/p> Read more Kash Patel lashes out as lawmakers question \u2018excessive drinking\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Still, the scrutiny has gone beyond the billionaire label to the investments that got him there.<\/p>\n Mai, the voter in San Jose, asked about stock he bought 22 years ago in a prison company that now runs Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. How could he have done that and say on the campaign trail that he is in favor of abolishing ICE?<\/p>\n Steyer told her he\u2019d messed up and sold that stock within a year.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought that maybe we could do a better job than the public prison system in a time of mass incarceration,\u201d Steyer said about the same investment at a town hall in Walnut Creek the day after speaking with Mai, a wealthy suburb in the East Bay. \u201cWrong.\u201d<\/p>\n While he spoke there with a senior community, Susan Bennett typed copious notes on her phone.<\/p>\n Bennett, a 78-year-old retired nurse, saw the state\u2019s biggest nurses union endorse Steyer weeks earlier. It made her curious to hear out a candidate she would have otherwise written off because of his wealth.<\/p>\n As he ticked off the ballot measures he helped pass in California, the climate change advocacy he funded, and laid out his stances on housing and health care, Bennett found herself clapping, nodding her head.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has an understanding of the problems that we\u2019re facing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Bennett left the town hall still undecided. She wanted to do her research and hear from Becerra, because she believes he has a better political r\u00e9sum\u00e9 <\/i>and that a Hispanic son of immigrants may be a better fit for a diverse state.<\/p>\n Still, Steyer\u2019s wealth weighs on other voters.<\/p>\n Rebecca Nunez, 65, stood in the back of at a packed town hall in San Jose waiting to hear Steyer\u2019s plan for housing. She thought of her three daughters, ages 26, 37 and 41, who she fears will never own a California home when they\u2019re 10 times as expensive as they were when Nunez and her husband bought their Santa Clara home decades ago.<\/p>\n Steyer, she believes, can\u2019t relate to such anxieties.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the itch that I got with him,\u201d said Nunez, a retired library clerk. \u201cHe has money.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/7b995f0cc4cd8c15eb8283d34fedacd4-1024x683.jpg\")
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