A crowded field of candidates is still vying for the chance to become California’s next governor, with the primary election looming.
One Democratic candidate has poured in a record-breaking amount of money for broadcast advertisements, to try and secure a spot in the top-two primary — billionaire Tom Steyer.
A former hedge fund manager and 2020 presidential candidate, Steyer’s political experience has largely been as a fundraiser for Democratic campaigns, as well as liberal or progressive causes.
And he is one of the Democratic frontrunners in the 2026 California gubernatorial race, touting a progressive platform.
Steyer spoke with Insight Host Vicki Gonzalez about his plans to address California’s issues, and how he interprets the “billionaire” label differently from his critics.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights
A lot of media coverage refers to you as a billionaire. What does that title mean to you?
It actually means nothing, and I'll tell you why. I didn't inherit any money. I started a business, it went well, I ran it for 27 years. And I walked away from it because it was absolutely unsatisfying for me, and I was worried that I would die without ever having lived. My wife and I have said, and we are doing it, that we will give away our money while we're alive in pursuit of the progressive kinds of ideas that I'm pushing in this campaign, and that I have pursued as a private citizen in the public sector.
I think I have a very nice lifestyle, don't get me wrong, but I don't live in the way that people picture billionaires. I'm trying to be a good citizen, in a traditional Californian and American way, about standing up for what's right. I have an image in my mind of billionaires that's not flattering because I see Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. I see these people sounding arrogant, self-interested, uncaring and I think, “those are not the people I want running my life, that's for darn sure.”
If you look at this race, when they put the seven leading candidates on stage and said, "Would you support a billionaire's tax?" Only one said, “yes” and the one was me. To me what I'm representing is trying to stand up for working Californians. I feel like I don't have any conflict because I don't have to take money from any of these big corporations. I can be independent. I can do what's right and I don't have to answer for somebody who's paying for me.
Your political experience has largely been campaign fundraising for Democrats and progressive causes, not elected office. How does your experience prepare you to lead a state of 40 million people?
I think everybody knows what the problems are in this state; no one can afford to live in this state, normal Californians cannot make ends meet. That is a question about housing, healthcare, electricity costs, gas at the pump, and food. I built a business, a big business from scratch. And as a private citizen in the public sector, I have gotten a lot of things done. We registered 1.2 million young Californians, something the Democratic Party has never come close to doing. My wife and I pushed to get free breakfast and free lunch for every school kid in California. It happened. We need somebody who's going to get results.
I think we're going to have to have someone who will get results and shake things up. That's not going to come from inside the system. That's not going to come from a career politician who's built into the fabric of the status quo. The status quo isn't working.
You go around this state and you realize how desperate people are to make ends meet, how stretched they are, and there's no sense of that urgency here. They say housing crisis, but they don't really mean crisis. It's not urgent, we'll pass some laws that will get better — that's not true. What I'm talking about is taking on the status quo, breaking the corporate interest power over this state so that we can get the cost down.
If you were elected governor, what would be some of your immediate actions to make California more affordable?
On the first day I'll call a special election to close a corporate tax loophole called “split roll”… which is worth over $20 billion a year to this date. We need that revenue [for] education, healthcare, for this state to actually not have the structural hole that the [Legislative Analyst’s Office] says it has.
I'm also going to start on the first day working to curb the power of the electric monopolies… PG&E, SoCal Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric. They have a legal monopoly, people are not allowed to compete with them. They are overseen and regulated by the Public Utilities Commission. They have very perverse incentives, and the result has been electricity costs that are twice as high as the national average.
If you look at the farmers in the Central Valley who are under PG&E. Our farmers pay three times as much for their electricity as Texas farmers. It's hurting them. Fresno has literally the highest electric rates in the United States, it's really hot there in the summer. People use a lot of electricity because they need to cool off, so combine really high heat with really high electricity prices and you've got a real problem. I'm going to start regulating them differently and also making it possible for people to compete on a local level.
California also has the highest gas prices in the country, and right now those are incredibly painful. How do you reconcile ambitious climate goals here in California with the cost burden shouldered by Californians?
That last buck-and-a-quarter per gallon at the pump, that is just a windfall profit for the oil and gas companies, for Chevron. That is just a gift to them. Their costs didn't go up because Donald Trump declared a war in Iran. They put him in office, he's the oil and gas president. That's a windfall profit that's been estimated at $70 billion.
In the past when there have been these spikes in gasoline prices, that have no relationship with the cost of producing that gasoline, there's been a windfall profit tax. I think we should have that because the price of gasoline is absolutely murdering Californians right now. We should take that money and not send it to the government, but send it back to every Californian.
You have strong differences with the Trump Administration. As governor, are there any ways you could maybe work or collaborate with President Trump?
I got eight million signatures to impeach Donald Trump in 2017 and 2018 because I said, “I've been in enough boardrooms to know a crook when I see one. This guy's a crook. He's stealing from us every day, he hates America and Americans, and he's going to try and wreck this country.” I haven't changed my opinion on that.
You're not the first person who said to me: is there anything where you could work with Donald Trump? And my answer to you is maybe. The one thing that maybe the federal government would help us with, and that is thinking about competing in the film and entertainment business against foreign countries. They were giving huge tax credits to do filming in those countries, because they want to steal our business. I believe it's possible the federal government will help California in pushing back on that, and making sure we keep the film and entertainment business.
The Associated Press reported your campaign has spent or booked close to $200 million in ads, which is the most expensive political advertising campaign in the country. What do you say to the average Californian who has legitimate concerns about the influence of money and billionaires in politics?
The corporations and billionaires have spent a record amount of money to try and stop me. PG&E, Chevron, Uber, Airbnb, the people who are against single-payer healthcare… all of the corporate special interests who feel threatened by me are spending millions of dollars against me. I was the only person on stage who said that I would support a billionaire's tax, the billionaires noticed that too. They're supporting anybody but me. I'm not taking money from any of those interests. I can be absolutely straightforward in supporting California workers. That's what this race has become.
There are really only three people who can be in the top two. That is a hard-right MAGA Republican, Steve Hilton, who Donald Trump has endorsed. What I would think of as a corporate Democrat, Xavier Becerra, every single one of those corporations is supporting him. He was asked, “what would you change in California,” [and] he said, "We're doing pretty well… we're the fourth biggest economy in the world. We must be doing something right.” I.e. “I'm not going to change anything." If you think that's true, that's your candidate.
There's one person in this race who's saying single-payer healthcare, reduce electricity costs, close a corporate tax loophole, and use it to improve our education system which is ranked 38th out of 50 in the United States. Somebody who's willing to make polluters pay, who has an environmental policy. Xavier Becerra does not have an environmental policy. He's taking money from the big oil companies including specifically Chevron. I view this race as very simple: do the people run California or do the corporations run California?
Two social media influencers who support Xavier Becerra filed a complaint with the California Fair Political Practices Commission, accusing your campaign of paying dozens of third-party influencers to publish supportive content without proper disclaimers. How do you respond to those accusations?
One in five people get their political news from these online creative people. We have always been involved with them, we have never paid for an endorsement. We've gotten together with people who agree with us over the issues. We pay them for their time. We don't pay them for what they write and we don't pay them for an endorsement. This is an attempt to try and build us a controversy over nothing. We fully disclosed and obeyed every single letter of the law.
This is a question about accessing an important part of the communications ecosystem that exists now. The only thing I've seen in this whole campaign that I consider to be deceptive or unfair is the fact that the Becerra campaign has used a ton of bots to try and pretend that there's more going online for them, and to attack anybody who says anything about us. It's not illegal, but it's very deceptive. And it’s not transparent.
You can find all of our interviews with the candidates for governor here.
