Photo courtesy of Tom Steyer’s campaign
The Democratic candidate made affordability, immigration enforcement, health care and climate costs the center of his pitch.
San Francisco — Tom Steyer, the businessman, climate advocate and Democratic candidate for California governor, told ethnic and community media reporters that California’s cost-of-living crisis requires a governor willing to confront utilities, insurers, oil companies and other entrenched interests.
“I’m running for a very simple reason,” Steyer said Tuesday, May 26, during a virtual California Gubernatorial Race Series briefing hosted by American Community Media and moderated by ACoM Associate Editor Pilar Marrero. “Californians can’t afford to live in California anymore, and there are corporate special interests that are driving up those costs and making it impossible for Californians to meet their bills at the end of the month.”
The briefing was organized to give community media reporters a chance to question gubernatorial candidates on immigration, health care and affordability, followed by live questions on issues affecting their communities. Steyer said he would “take on the corporate special interest and fight for working Californians every single day,” promising to build “a million homes that Californians can afford,” pursue single-payer health care, and “break up the power of the electric utility monopolies” to drive down electricity costs “by at least a quarter.”
“The corporations want nothing to change, and they have candidates that will promise them no change,” Steyer said. “I am the change candidate.”
Wealth, independence and a record outside office
Steyer has not held elected office, a point raised by a reporter who asked how he responds to critics who say he is trying to buy the governorship with his personal fortune.
“I am the only billionaire on the ballot running for governor, but I am very far from the only billionaire in this race,” Steyer said. “The billionaires and the big corporations in this state have lined up behind everybody but me.”
He said self-funding gives him independence from corporate donors. “I have no conflicts. I’m not taking money from anyone,” he said. “I can just worry, and I do only worry, about fighting for working Californians.”
Steyer argued that his work outside government shows he can deliver policy results, citing ballot-measure campaigns, youth voter registration and Beneficial State Bank. “I’ve taken on big corporate special interests three times and beaten them three times,” he said, adding that those efforts delivered “billions of dollars for Californians for education and health care without charging Californians a penny.”
Steyer led ballot proposition campaigns on California’s clean air law, corporate tax policy and cigarette taxes for health care, and said he founded NextGen Climate, created the Fair Shake Commission, started a legal defense fund for immigrants facing deportation and chaired Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Steyer also pointed to Beneficial State Bank, the mission-driven Community Development Financial Institution he co-founded in 2007 with his wife, Kat Taylor. The bank was created to serve communities “abandoned by Wall Street” and has financed more than 17,000 affordable housing units. During the briefing, Steyer described it as “a nonprofit community bank” intended to address unequal access to capital.
Immigration enforcement
On immigration, Steyer said California should take a more aggressive posture against federal enforcement practices.
“Immigrants build California. Immigrants make California run today,” he said. “I am strongly in favor of more immigrants coming to California from all over the world. We are the rainbow coalition. It’s one of the great strengths of California.”
Steyer said he supports abolishing ICE, while acknowledging that a California governor cannot eliminate a federal agency. “The governor of California does not get to, at the stroke of a pen, abolish ICE,” he said. “Here’s what I will do. I will prosecute ICE agents for racially profiling Californians. That is illegal here. I will prosecute ICE agents for using violence against Californians.
He said he would seek inspections of detention facilities in California and support a state-funded legal defense effort for immigrants facing deportation or detention. Asked whether he would support immigrant advocates seeking to end immigration detention in California, Steyer gave a qualified answer, saying the facilities are run by a federal agency and that his focus would be on inspections, legal representation and possible violations inside detention centers.
“If they’re going to detain Californians and instead of doing it in California, they do it in Arizona, I don’t think that’s a win,” Steyer said.
Health care and drug prices
Steyer reaffirmed his support for single-payer health care in California, calling health care “a right for every Californian.”
“If you go through and talk to families, talk to the businesses that pay for the health care of their employees, or look at the budget of the state of California itself, you can see that the escalating costs of health care are bankrupting all of the above,” he said.
Steyer said he would begin work on single payer on his first day in office, but acknowledged that a state-level system would require complicated implementation and federal approval. “When you ask me how long it’s going to take, I will start on day one and I will get going on day one,” he said, adding that “we need to get a waiver from the federal government.”
Asked whether he would challenge pharmaceutical companies over drug prices, Steyer answered: “100% I’m going to do that.” He said Californians pay more for health care partly because “we pay much more for drugs and we don’t negotiate hard against them.”
Climate costs and working families
Asian Journal asked Steyer how he would pursue aggressive climate action while ensuring that working families do not bear the cost of the transition, noting that climate advocates have endorsed him as one of the strongest candidates on the environment but that many Californians remain worried about high utility bills, gas prices and the cost of living.
“Thank you for that question because that question reflects exactly how I think about this, too,” Steyer said. He described his environmental policy as simple in principle: “One, polluter pays,” and “two,” environmental justice should be at the front of policy because pollution has disproportionately affected Black and brown communities. His third principle, he said, is accelerating clean energy. “Clean energy is cheaper and we need to put money in the pockets of Californians by making sure that’s true,” he said.
On electricity, Steyer said he would seek to reduce rates by 25 percent by changing utility regulation and expanding local competition. “We’re paying twice the national average. That’s not okay,” he said. On gasoline prices, he proposed a windfall profits tax on oil companies, with proceeds returned directly to Californians.
Past investments and criminal justice
Asked by a reporter how he would defend past investments in private prisons and fossil fuels, Steyer rejected any defense of the private-prison investment, calling it a mistake his firm later sold.
“I don’t defend them,” Steyer said. “I ran an investment company that bought hundreds of stocks, and we bought stock 22 years ago in a small private prison company. And 21 years ago, I realized it was just a mistake and we sold it.”
He said the issue did not end with selling the investment. “I didn’t just make a mistake and admit it and move on,” Steyer said. “I have worked really hard to help California move from a time of racist mass incarceration to the idea of rehabilitative justice.
Steyer said that work included efforts “to end any relationship with private prison companies,” decertify officers who had committed misconduct, end sentence enhancements and support bail reform. “I didn’t just say I made a mistake,” he said. “I did something about it for a long time consistently.”
Affordability as the central test
In his closing remarks, Steyer returned to his central contrast: corporate influence versus working people.
“I’m the candidate who’s going to take on the corporate interests,” he said. “I’m the candidate who’s going to change. And I’m the person who is unequivocally with no conflicts working for working people.”
Steyer said California’s prosperity is not being shared broadly enough and argued that the state must improve schools, deliver health care as a right and make housing more attainable.
“We are not sharing the prosperity,” he said. “Our school systems need to get much better. We need to deliver health care as a right. We need to make this a state where people can think they can buy a house again and can afford rent.”
Steyer’s pitch linked immigration protection, health care access, climate policy and household affordability into a single argument about who bears the cost when public policy fails working families.
