Activist Tom Steyer not running — for now
campaign supporting the reelection of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said, “It is welcome news that he’s going to focus on electing Democrats rather than pursuing his own political career.”
Steyer is a former hedgefund manager who spent at least $91 million on left-leaning causes and candidates in the 2016 campaign cycle. Over the past several years in California, he has funded environmentalist ballot measures and organized against oil companies, tobacco firms and corporate tax loopholes. Through the NextGen America activist group he founded in 2013, Steyer is funding campaigns to register Millennials to vote.
On Monday, he said he would spend $30 million on registering 250,000 young voters in California, Florida, Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hampshire and Arizona. The effort will be aimed at electing Democrats in eight U.S. Senate races and 30 House districts in hopes of wresting Congress from Republican control, as well as on Democrats in nine gubernatorial races.
Steyer said Monday that grassroots organizing is “the task I feel called to do.”
Lately, Steyer has been appearing on TV ads and in Facebook news feeds, asking for signatures on a petition seeking Trump’s impeachment. He’s spent more than $20 million on the TV ads and millions more on digital buys to put the 60-second spots in places Trump would see them, such as Fox News.
In one spot, Steyer, wearing an open-neck denim shirt and labeled “American Citizen,” calls Trump a “clear and present danger who is mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons.”
On Monday, Steyer said he would be “redoubling” his impeachment efforts, calling it the most important issue before the country.
Despite Steyer’s regular involvement in national campaigns, many in the California political world have wondered whether he would run for governor or Senate. One reason Steyer may have decided not to run this year: His activism has done little to raise his personal profile with California voters.
A Berkeley IGS poll taken in December showed that 77 percent of respondents had no opinion of Steyer. Fourteen percent had a positive opinion of him, and 9 percent viewed him negatively.
“What that says is that it’s very difficult to become well known to the voting public unless you’re out front with a campaign, and he’s not,” Berkeley IGS Poll director Mark DiCamillo said Monday.
Plus, analysts say, Steyer has a bit of a charisma challenge if he wants to make the jump from behind-the-scenes donor to candidate.
“He’s not a great retail politician. He’s not a politician who can light up a room or take over a room when he enters it,” said David McCuan, a professor of political science at Sonoma State University.
Some have wondered whether Steyer’s true value to Democrats is behind the scenes. They point to NextGen America’s role in helping the party’s candidates take several key races in Virginia in November.
NextGen spent $3.3 million on grassroots organizing in Virginia, none of it on TV ads starring Steyer. Instead, the organization devoted $2 million for 60 paid staffers and 1,000 volunteers to flood 26 colleges in the state in an effort to turn out young voters.
One result: Democratic gubernatorial winner Ralph Northam received twice as many votes in November among people under 30 as Hillary Clinton did in the 2016 presidential election, exit polls showed.
“That’s the test for the Steyer dollars — getting lowpropensity voters to stay engaged and outraged,” McCuan said.
Even though House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a fellow San Franciscan, has called Steyer’s impeachment drive a distraction, it is gaining some traction. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey in December found that 41 percent of respondents backed impeachment hearings.
Before Steyer’s impeachment campaign started, only two House Democrats supported a call by Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, for impeachment. Fifty-eight now do.
But Clegg, also a top adviser to Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said signing a digital petition to impeach Trump is not the same as supporting Steyer as a candidate.
“If his impeachment email list is intended to be a 2020 email list, those two questions don’t transfer,” Clegg said. “Folks are not signing that petition for Tom Steyer. They’re signing because Tom Steyer is paying for the Facebook ads.
“That bait and switch is not going to catch a lot of fish.”
“He’s not a politician who can light up a room or take over a room when he enters it.” David McCuan, political science professor