Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Billionaire’s Florida tour focuses on mobilizing voters, impeachment
Tom Steyer isn’t running for anything — yet — but he’s campaigning in Florida, promoting a progressive political agenda, bolstering efforts to mobilize voters in this year’s elections and sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump.
If his name sounds familiar, it’s because Steyer is the funder and star of a series of TV ads calling for Trump’s impeachment.
That’s one of the causes he’s pushing in Florida, where he stopped in Miami and Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday and in Orlando on Wednesday.
“This president is dangerous. He breaks the law on a daily basis. He has more than met the criteria for impeachment,” Steyer said in an interview in Fort Lauderdale before speaking to a voter mobilization group he’s 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.”
Though the ads describe him simply as “American citizen,” Steyer has an unusual ability to get attention for his views. The former hedge fund manager
from California ranks 383rd on the Forbes magazine list of the richest Americans. With an estimated net worth of $1.61 billion, Steyer is willing to spend tens of millions on politics.
Three 2018 efforts
In Florida, he’s promoting each of his three political efforts.
NextGen Rising. It’s part of the NextGen America political organization Steyer founded and funds, to register and engage young voters. Nationally, it’s targeting 30 congressional districts in 10 states. NextGen stands for next generation.
In Florida, the group is focusing on four districts. Three are currently represented by Republicans: U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, who is running for re-election in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is retiring for her Miami-Dade seat, and U.S. Rep. Brian Mast, who is running for re-election in northern Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties. The group also wants to help U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Winter Park, and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson hold their seats, plus assist the eventual Democratic nominee for governor.
Steyer said NextGen Rising would have 100 organizers on 40 campuses around Florida. In Miami, he held a youth voting roundtable at Miami-Dade College on Tuesday.
For Our Future, a seven-state effort by Steyer’s NextGen and major labor unions, AFL-CIO, National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
He said it would have 200 paid staffers operating in 23 counties in Florida. In Fort Lauderdale, he appeared at the opening of For Our Future’s state headquarters on Tuesday.
Need To Impeach, Steyer’s effort to generate support for impeachment, through TV ads, a petition drive and town hall meetings. In Orlando, he held a meeting with students and a public town hall on Wednesday.
Money
Nationally, For Our Future plans to spend $70 million on the midterm elections. NextGen Rising has said it plans to spend $32 million nationwide, including $3.5 million in Florida. By the beginning of 2018, Need to Impeach had already spent $20 million on its national ad campaign.
In the 2016 election cycle, Steyer spent an estimated $65 million to $90 million in support of Democratic candidates and environmental issues.
Steyer said he didn’t know how much of his own money would go toward the current efforts. “I don’t have a number. I really don’t.”
“And the truth is, the way elections go, you never know how they’re going to go. Things change,” he said. For example, after the Feb. 17 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in which 17 people were killed and 17 injured, he said NextGen decided to do more organizing work with high school students who were becoming politically energized.
Motives
The Californian said he’s in Florida because it’s the largest swing state in the country with critical elections for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House this year.
But Taryn Fenske, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said by email Steyer doesn’t reflect what everyday Florida voters want. “Tom Steyer doesn’t understand Floridian values, and certainly doesn’t care how his radical views and out-of-touch policies impact Florida families,” she said.
Steyer built his fortune through a San Francisco-based investment firm he founded. After leaving the firm, he began focusing on climate change and alternative energy. At 60, he spends his time on philanthropy, environmentalism and progressive politics. He considered running for governor or U.S. Senate in California this year, but said in January he could be more effective concentrating his energy on pushing change from the outside.
In Florida and other key battleground states, his organization is building a network and amassing information that could be useful for someone running for president in 2020 — which some suspect Steyer is planning.
“I am completely focused on 2018. I view this year and these midterm elections, whether they be state elections or federal elections as a pretty straight up fight between right and wrong,” he said, objecting to “anyone who looks past that, who looks past Nov. 6, 2018, to talk about their future.”
Could that change on Nov. 7, the day after Election Day? “The truth is we don’t know where we’re going to be on November 7th,” he said. “We’re either going to affirm this, to my mind, reckless, lawless president … or we’re going to set ourselves on a new course. And I honestly don’t know where we’re going to go.”
Impeachment effort
About 50 political activists, Democratic Party leaders and elected officials shoehorned themselves into a small room Tuesday evening in an office suite off Cypress Creek Road in Fort Lauderdale, eager to figure out how For Our Future’s organizing efforts will play out.
Not everyone was enthralled with Steyer’s impeachment initiative, which he didn’t address during hs brief remarks to the group.
“I don’t think that should be our focus,” said Cynthia Busch, chairwoman of the Broward Democratic Party. “Impeaching Donald Trump may be the last thing on the minds of people in Broward County…. There are issues that are critical, life issues that people are going through in South Florida. And we have to talk to people about what we’re going to do, what our candidates are going to do.”
Tim Canova is such a staunch critic of Busch and other party leaders that he quit the Democratic Party last month to launch an independent candidacy against U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston. But he echoed her assessment of impeachment talk, calling it “very premature.”
Canova said candidates and parties need to “address a lot of issues that people face in their everyday lives right now. And most people, the main issues they face have nothing to do with impeachment.”
Steyer said Democratic voters do care about impeachment. An April 18 NPR/PBS NewsHour/ Marist Poll found 70 percent of Democrats would definitely vote for a candidate who wants to impeach Trump. The opposite was true of Republicans; 84 percent said they would definitely vote against a candidate who supports impeachment.
Steyer said the Democratic leaders who don’t want to focus on impeachment are like the people who opposed the civil rights movement, saying it wasn’t the right time. “In every important issue in American history there have been people who felt that it as the wrong time to bring up the truth. However true, however important, it was inconvenient, awkward and should wait,” he said.
“This is the most important issue of the day. It touches every single issue. It touches every single American. It touches every single voter,” he said.