The Reformer

Tom Steyer has $1.6 billion. He made it in hedge funds. He spent the next decade campaigning for higher taxes on billionaires, aggressive climate policy, and the structural reform of the economic system that produced his $1.6 billion. He donated hundreds of millions of dollars to these causes. He ran for president on these causes. He lost.

He is now projected to become the governor of California.

(I have read several analyses of this development. They confirm it.)

California is the fifth-largest economy in the world. It has the highest income tax rate of any state in the country. It has more billionaires than any other state except one. It has, by most measures, some of the worst infrastructure in the developed world, which is interesting for a state this large and this rich. Its housing crisis has been ongoing for approximately forty years, during which time the state has produced many very good analyses of the housing crisis.

Tom Steyer has spent years identifying billionaires as a class of people who should be taxed more, regulated more, and given less political influence. He built a national organization around this belief. He funded campaigns, elections, ballot initiatives. He issued many statements identifying the problem, and the problem was always some version of: concentrated wealth has too much power over political outcomes.

He is now running for governor on a platform of solving this problem.

He has $1.6 billion.

(I want to be precise about what I am saying here. I am not suggesting this is wrong, or impossible, or that Tom Steyer could not govern California well. I am saying that he spent twenty years designing a lock and is now proposing himself as the key. These are different things from the same person.)

The previous governor of California was Gavin Newsom, who also came from a wealthy family, also positioned himself as a reformer of the systems that produced him, and also spent years being criticized for this. He left to run for president. He also lost.

Reforming California from the inside has been ongoing since approximately 1990. The reforms are continuing. The billionaires are still there. There are more of them now.

Tom Steyer's campaign slogan has not been confirmed. I am going to assume it is not "I Have Identified the Problem."

The solution, as always, is for California to be governed by someone who has never spent time in a hedge fund and does not have $1.6 billion. This person has not announced a campaign. Tom Steyer has. He is polling well.

The problem has filed the paperwork.