Who is presidential candidate Tom Steyer?
California billionaire has set up his campaign in Florida
Tom Steyer, the billionaire Democratic presidential candidate, has invested heavily in Florida in recent years, building a political network and amassing data that could prove a valuable advantage in what will be the largest swing state in the 2020 election.
Steyer, who said Tuesday he’s running for president after announcing in January he wouldn’t run, had been devoting some of his fortune, which Forbes estimates at $1.6 billion, to a range of political activities nationally and in 11 key states.
None is more important than Florida, which could go either Democratic or Republican next year — and awards 29 electoral voters, more than 10% of the number needed to win the presidency.
Steyer’s best known activity has been his Need To Impeach campaign pushing for impeachment of President Donald Trump. Steyer has bought several rounds of television ads — featuring himself — detailing the case for impeaching Trump.
And he’s been holding pro-impeachment town halls around the country, including in Boca Raton and Orlando. Besides getting his name out to activists who don’t like Trump, the town halls offer practice for skills important for a presidential candidate.
“This president is dangerous. He breaks the law on a daily basis. He has more than met the criteria for impeachment,” Seyer said last year in an interview in Fort Lauderdale before speaking to a voter mobilization group he was helping bankroll. “It is urgent that we remove him from office because he’s dangerous to our democracy and he’s dangerous to the health and safety of Americans.”
Less visible to most voters, but politically important, was his NextGen operation. The political organization, which stands for next generation, was active in four targeted congressional districts and on 43 college and university campuses in advance of the 2018 election.
The efforts, which included dozens of paid staffers, worked to register voters, especially on college campuses, find ways to engage their interest, and get them turned out to actually vote on Election Day or through vote by mail ballots.
The efforts appealed to those yearning for a change, to people’s regret over not voting in 2016 — and sometimes through the best way to reach college students: free iced coffee and doughnuts or pizza. When early voting started, NextGen sent tens of thousands of text messages, knocked on doors and gave free rides to the polls.
NextGen has continued voter registration efforts in Florida this year, including at last month’s Stonewall Pride Parade and Festival in Broward County.
Andrew Gillum, the unsuccessful 2018 Democratic nominee for Florida governor, was a top priority for NextGen and Steyer.
They were among the few prominent backers of Gillum’s candidacy when most big donors and prominent Democrats were supporting other candidates for the party’s nomination. Steyer’s involvement in the primary was unusual; he endorsed Gillum in Florida and one of the U.S. Senate candidates in his home state of California.
Steyer and NextGen contributed at least $2.8 million to Gillum’s political committee. He provided money for advertising and staffers for door-to-door canvassing of neighborhoods.
For the general election, NextGen’s efforts include spending more than $5 million in Florida on digital ads, mail advertising and field organizers.
NextGen also helped fund For Our Future, a seven-state effort in 2018 — including Florida — that involved major labor unions, AFL-CIO, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Earlier, when Steyer was concentrating his political efforts on
climate change, he was also active in Florida.
His NextGen Climate super political action committee targeted the 2014 Florida governor’s race, targeting Hispanic voters in South Florida and attempting to drive up Democratic turnout in Charlie Crist’s home territory in the Tampa Bay area. Crist lost to then-Gov. Rick Scott.
Besides spending his own money on the 2014 effort, he raised
money for the NextGen Climate effort at a fundraising dinner at the Fort Lauderdale home of attorneys Mitchell Berger and Sharon Kegerreis.
He’s a major Democratic party fundraiser and founder of the Berger Singerman law firm. She’s of counsel in the firm’s Miami office and was in the same high school and college classes as Steyer.
There’s another, related Florida element: Steyer hired Keven Cate, a Tallahassee-based political and advertising strategist, to produce TV and digital ads for the campaign, including the candidate’s announcement video.
Cate was a senior adviser to Crist in 2014 and Gillum in 2018.
“Florida peeps — ya’ll know this already, but @TomSteyer has had our back when we needed it most, especially helping @AndrewGillum in 2018,” Cate wrote Tuesday night on Twitter. “I don’t know anyone who has invested more in turning Fla. blue — progressive blue — than @TomSteyer. And it’s working. We’ll beat Trump here in ’20.”