$250M later, Tom Steyer drops out of race
Former San Francisco hedge fund chief Tom Steyer dropped out of the presidential race Saturday, ending his expensive and longshot White House bid after a disappointing showing in South Carolina’s primary.
Steyer — the last Californian standing in the White House contest — decided to call it quits after getting less than 12% in the Palmetto State with about three-fourths of votes counted, despite spending more than $22 million on ads in the state.
“Honestly, I can’t see a path where I can win the presidency,” Steyer told supporters in Columbia, South Carolina.
Steyer spent at least $250 million on his campaign, pitching himself as a progressive political outsider who could go toe to toe with President Donald Trump on the economy. But while he saw temporary jumps in the polls in South Carolina and Nevada, Steyer barely had an impact on the broader presidential race, demonstrating the limits of how huge far ad spending can go in lifting an unlikely candidate.
The spending made Steyer the second-biggest self-funding presidential candidate in history, after his fellow 2020 candidate Mike Bloomberg — a dubious record considering he has accumulated zero delegates so far.
Other candidates could follow Steyer’s lead after former Vice President Joe Biden’s blowout victory in South Carolina, as moderate Democrats try to unify and prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders from racking up an unbeatable delegate lead.
With his departure, Steyer leaves seven Democratic candidates still in the race. He didn’t say Saturday night whether he would endorse any of his former rivals.
A businessman and New York City native with a fortune estimated at $1.6 billion, Steyer built one of the nation’s biggest hedge funds, Farallon Capital Management, before stepping away in 2012 to focus on philanthropy and politics.
He helped fund ballot measures and candidates in California, pushing for progressive causes like fighting oil companies and reforming the bail system. He started a prominent nonprofit, now named Nextgen America, to organize campaigns and register young voters.
For years, Steyer played a will-he-or-won’t-he game in state politics, publicly mulling runs for California governor and U.S. senator but bowing out each time. Instead, he used his fortune to become one of the Democratic Party’s biggest national donors, helping elect congressional Democrats around the country.
Steyer became a more nationally known figure in October 2017 after launching Need to Impeach, a group urging Congress to impeach President Trump. He built a massive list of more than 8 million supporters, and bought national ads featuring himself denouncing the president — which introduced him onscreen as “Tom Steyer, American citizen.”
Steyer originally decided not to run for president in 2020, saying in January 2019 that he would focus on his pro-impeachment efforts. But he changed his mind in July, jumping in the race and arguing that his business record let him draw a sharper contrast with Trump than any of the other contenders.