Steyer pledges $10 million to get voters out

San Francisco billionaire activist Tom Steyer says he will spend another $10 million to get people to vote in the November midterm elections, focusing on a specific constituency: people who have signed his petition to impeach President Trump.

Organizers with Steyer’s Need to Impeach organization have found that nearly two-thirds of the 5.5 million people who have signed the petition don’t have a history of voting regularly. But turnout among signers has been high in recent special elections, the Steyer group says, including the House race this year in which Democrat Conor Lamb defeated a Republican in a western Pennsylvania district that Trump won easily in 2016.

Eighty percent of those who signed the im-

peachment petition in Lamb’s district voted in the election in March, Steyer said.

Steyer’s organizers are going to concentrate on getting their petition-signers to the polls in November in 63 House districts identified as competitive by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Steyer said 10,000 of his petition-signers live in those districts.

“We expect many of these races will be decided by a few thousand, if not hundreds, of votes,” Steyer said Monday at a town hall meeting in Lansing, Mich., that was live-streamed. “That means that if our movement shows up in November, we can change who controls the House.”

The former hedge-fund manager commands attention in left-leaning circles for the tens of millions he has spent on registering voters and backing Democratic candidates. His latest cash infusion will bring his spending during the midterm election cycle to $120 million.

The new money will fund digital ads, direct mail, targeted messages to Direct TV and Dish Network subscribers and, in an old-school twist, a letterwriting campaign. More than 60 percent of impeachment petition signers are over 50 years old, and Steyer’s organizers believe that personalized letters can be an effective way to reach them.

“This is the generation that told you to write a thank-you note to the person who gave you a gift,” Kevin Mack, lead political strategist for NeedtoImpeach.com, said Monday.

Republicans were unimpressed by Steyer’s latest funding blitz.

“Democrats need a positive message, not a liberal billionaire wasting millions more on something even Nancy Pelosi calls a distraction,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens, referring to the House Democratic leader’s discouragement of impeachment as a campaign issue.

Steyer’s big spending and his appearances on TV commercials calling for Trump’s impeachment have led to speculation that he’ll run for president in 2020. Steyer has said he won’t address the possibility until after November.

In the meantime, however, he’ll be speaking Tuesday at the Iowa State Fair — a must stop-by for anyone thinking of running.