Californians Didn’t Buy Billionaire Tom Steyer’s ‘class Traitor’ Message

SACRAMENTO, California — Tom Steyer spent more than $200 million running for governor as the sworn enemy of moneyed powers. California voters didn’t buy it.

The billionaire megadonor shattered spending records with his bid to succeed Gavin Newsom. He bankrolled an inescapable ad blitz that introduced him to voters as an incorruptible foe of corporate power. And he won over left-leaning groups with ambitious policy promises to break utility power, enact higher taxes on the rich and corporations and adopt single-payer health care — a position the former hedge fund manager previously opposed but made central to his populist campaign.

It was the culmination of a failed decadeslong, more than $1 billion effort to translate his personal fortune into political clout, after his abortive bids to impeach Donald Trump and run for president. Even after former Rep. Eric Swalwell’s April implosion appeared to create an opening for Steyer, poll after poll put him in the mid-teens as much of the Democratic establishment coalesced behind former Biden Cabinet Secretary Xavier Becerra.

“The billionaire ceiling was real,” said Heather Grevenworth, the executive director of the Voter Protection Project who previously worked for the Steyer-founded NextGen PAC. “A lot of Democratic primary voters could not hold their noses and vote strategically.”

Steyer’s fervently progressive platform and enormous spending galvanized powerful industry opponents but couldn’t consolidate the left, even as he sought to harness populist energy and rage against the billionaire class. He was never able to overcome his campaign’s central paradox: an anti-corporate message aimed at the very bloc primed to distrust an older, white, male billionaire.

Steyer and his team addressed that contradiction early and often. The candidate donned a “Class Traitor” cap and repeatedly presented himself as “the billionaire who wants to tax other billionaires.” He argued his immense wealth bought him independence from Sacramento powerbrokers, allowing him to take on entrenched interests, from utilities and oil companies to landlords and developers.

“They are unanimous in their hate of me,” Steyer said in an election night speech, “and I welcome their hatred.”

Advertisements relentlessly reinforced that message: Judge Steyer by his enemies. Campaign adviser Rebecca Katz, brought on by Steyer after championing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s insurgent campaign, told reporters on the eve of the election that “bad guys trying to stop Tom … did us a favor.”

“It is no secret that it is hard this year for people to trust a billionaire,” Katz said, “but the corporations are showing exactly what this good billionaire is going to do for them.”

Ultimately, that distrust was too difficult to overcome even though Steyer’s money gave him the unrivaled capacity to reach voters frustrated by their party’s status quo. 

“It was our greatest asset and our greatest obstacle,” a Steyer aide, granted anonymity to discuss the race’s dynamics, said of Steyer’s fortune. “It’s been his blessing and his curse — especially among Democrats.”

Throughout his long history in California politics, Steyer had deployed his wealth in firehose fashion, using it to pass ballot measures upping taxes on corporations and tobacco and turning his political advocacy group NextGen into a force for environmental policy and voter registration. He sank more than $100 million into winning Democratic congressional contests.

Previous campaigns had suggested a limit to Steyer’s appeal. When he plunged into a 2025 redistricting fight by casting himself in ads — a habit during his career — analysis suggested the spots were ineffective. His closing ads in the governor’s race featured him less prominently than the torrent of earlier biographical spots, shifting the focus to the interests he promised to fight and people he vowed to fight for.

But if voters knew one thing about him, polling suggested, it was that he was rich.

“People like the idea of a billionaire spending his money to do good,” said Gil Duran, a political strategist who worked for Steyer when he was contemplating a U.S. Senate run against Kamala Harris, a race where he floated serving just a single, six-year term. “That drops down when a billionaire wants to spend his money to run for office.”

Groups the campaign was courting would raise questions that echoed voters’ concerns, said Arnie Sowell, who heads NextGen Policy and advised the Steyer campaign on policy: “‘He’s a billionaire. Why is he doing this? What’s this really all about? What’s he really about?’”

Steyer’s net worth and the way he obtained his wealth — including past investments in private prisons, which he said he regretted but was hammered for in attack ads — created “a much higher hill” for persuading left-leaning voters, said Irene Kao, executive director of the pro-Steyer progressive group Courage California.

“The challenge with Steyer is you have someone who carries what would be considered baggage for progressives,” Kao said, adding that his “overwhelming” ad campaign and decision to go negative against Becerra likely turned off some voters.

His campaign showed some signs of promise, winning over progressive groups and elected officials like Rep. Ro Khanna, environmentalists, and some unions by pledging to achieve ambitious policy goals that had long eluded them.

For the nurses, that was single-payer health care. For environmentalists, it was breaking up utility monopolies. And for the California Teachers Association, which endorsed Steyer after Swalwell’s exit, it was raising corporate property taxes through a special election — a costly fight that, for some, came with the unspoken expectation that Steyer could help pay for it.

But that approach also rankled some political professionals who saw Steyer as running the campaign equivalent of an Oprah car giveaway — promising something for everyone as he tried to seize an open progressive lane. It left people debating where his conviction ended and his calculation began.

“Tom’s drift to the progressive left is a strategic play to find a base,” said a campaign consultant who has worked with Steyer in the past and was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “He’s a hedge-fund guy who will do whatever it takes to manipulate the market.”

Katz forcefully rejected that assertion, saying in an interview that "there wasn’t a part of this campaign that was inauthentic to Tom."

“He didn’t say ‘go mold me’ — every position we put out was a Tom Steyer position," Katz said. "He wasn’t rebranded as a progressive. He is a progressive."

But while Steyer’s aggressive swing to the left endeared him to some voters, it activated his deep-pocketed enemies who spent tens of millions to defeat what they saw as an existential threat. His Democratic opponents lacked the resources to wage that fight themselves, but an anti-Steyer PAC spent tens of millions of dollars to portray him as a hypocrite who made money from the industries he now decries.

There was a moment when it could have gone differently. In the turbulent and panicked days after Swalwell’s collapse, which left the race without a frontrunner — and many Sacramento players without a candidate — it looked possible that Steyer would pick up the pieces and pull away.

It was then that Steyer’s camp, along with rival Democrats, reached out to business groups who had backed Swalwell, hoping to lower the temperature and present himself as a reasonable option.

“If those meetings had gone well, he had a shot,” said a person familiar with the business overtures who was granted anonymity to relay private conversations. “He was feeling inevitable.”

Instead, the person said, Steyer performed “disastrously,” alienating his interlocutors with a hostile tone and hardening people’s conviction that he had to be stopped. A senior Steyer official disputed that version of events, calling it a false narrative “that was incredibly lucrative and helpful to keeping an anti-Steyer coalition around.”

In April, the race shifted in Becerra’s favor. The former HHS secretary’s jump in the polls fed a self-perpetuating cycle: The more Becerra looked like the frontrunner, the more interest groups and voters hunting for a winner — or a viable alternative to Steyer — got behind him.

Steyer turned his financial firehose on Becerra in the race’s waning days, running ads portraying his rival as a tool of corporate interests and linking him to a corruption scandal that had ensnared a former top aide. Becerra has not been implicated in the case; Steyer’s attack prompted a cease-and-desist letter and a furious response from Becerra’s allies.

Even as polls suggested the race tightening in its final stretch, Steyer couldn’t overtake Becerra or Republican Steve Hilton, a conservative political commentator who consolidated the GOP vote after winning President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

He now finds himself in a familiar place: hundreds of millions of dollars poorer and still on the outside looking in.

“In such an uninspiring race, the ($215) million gets you something, but it’s not victory,” Duran said. “It bought him a close call with an empty suit from Sacramento and an attention-starved former Fox News host.”