Since President Donald J. Trump’s 2024 reelection, Democrats have incessantly droned on about “oligarchs” and latched on to reheated Bernie Sanders talking points about the evil of billionaires. In California, though, one group is making an exception for the billionaire Democrat running for Governor.
The California Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has officially endorsed Tom Steyer, the former hedge fund manager who has staked out a position as the most left-wing viable candidate in the state’s gubernatorial election. In its endorsement statement, the organization was critical of Steyer’s financial career, claiming that “[…] his wealth was earned through the exploitation of the working class. Much of his wealth was also invested in private prisons and coal mining, accumulated by the same things he now decries.” The group also decried Steyer’s unwillingness to say that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, a stance that is now gospel in left-wing circles.
Despite its criticisms, the state DSA endorsed Steyer due to his support for single-payer Medicare for All, his rabidly anti-ICE stance, and the fear of Democratic primary vote-splitting resulting in a Republican vs. Republican general election, due to California’s top-two primary system.
The group appeared somewhat skeptical of its own endorsement, acknowledging, “Time will tell whether he’s truly a class traitor.” Still, in the CA-DSA’s view, “[…] the most progressive of the current viable candidates for governor is Tom Steyer.”
Early in the gubernatorial election, Steyer used his amassed wealth to blanket the California TV airwaves with frequent ads, which appears to have paid off. He has repeatedly sold himself as a billionaire who will be a thorn in the side of other billionaires and get them to pay their “fair share,” and has cited corporate spending against his campaign as evidence of his leftist street cred.
Steyer has leaned into the CA-DSA’s repeated idea that he is a President Franklin Delano Roosevelt-style “traitor to his class,” although it is unclear what jailing ICE agents and dismantling immigration enforcement has to do with this stated anti-corporate agenda.
Steyer’s strategy isn’t without precedent: President Trump ran in 2015 and 2016 as an independently wealthy outsider not beholden to special interests, as did billionaire independent presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1992. The difference is that Trump was hated by Democrats and Republican Party leadership at the time, and he and Perot ran against the free-trade consensus of both parties.
Steyer, meanwhile, isn’t giving Democrats anything different from warmed-over left-wing rhetoric that has been increasingly embraced by the mainstream of the party. Unfortunately, should Steyer make the top two in the upcoming June 2nd primary, he will likely end up California’s new governor — and as bad as limousine liberals are, switching to champagne socialism isn’t exactly an improvement.
