Billionaire title becomes an anchor in California governor's race

Billionaire Tom Steyer is officially out of the 2026 California gubernatorial race.

Steyer lost to both fellow Democrat and former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and a Republican, former Fox News host Steve Hilton. While Becerra was able to advance to the runoff relatively quickly after Election Night, Steyer and Hilton continued to face off against each other until Tuesday night.

Working against Steyer was the fact that he would have needed roughly one-third of the remaining roughly 1.3 million votes, including from populous counties like Fresno and Riverside that are not home to large numbers of the high-income progressives who were more likely to back Steyer.

“Tom Steyer ran for governor of California as a climate crusader endorsed by Bernie Sanders’ political organization, Our Revolution,” wrote MS NOW’s Armand Manoukian on Thursday. “He also spent at least $216 million of his own money on the race — and in the end, that was the only thing voters seemed to remember. With nearly 58 percent of the vote counted, he is running third.”

“The timing is unkind to the ultrawealthy,” Manoukian added. “In a March YouGov survey, 77 percent of adults said the wealthy have too much political power, and 52 percent said the government should try to reduce the share of wealth held by billionaires. More than half of adults told a May Politico poll that cost of living is the ‘worst they can remember.’ Against that backdrop, self-funding candidates — once a recruiter’s dream — have become a harder sell.”

Speaking to this journalist for Salon in 2020, Steyer argued that his political philosophy is based on the idea of regulating the free market to protect the environment and workers’ rights.

“People always want to say ‘free market,’” Steyer told Salon at the time. “I mean, those were the words you used, ‘free market economic structures.’ There are no free markets! Every market has rules. And so do we need to change the rules in the market? Heck yes! The whole idea of a free market, like God came down and in the state of nature created a free market? There’s no such thing. And just think about the labor market: Once upon a time, I could have hired a 12-year-old kid for 25 cents a day and worked him for 14 hours a day. Can’t do it now.”

He added, “You know why? Because they changed the rules. Because all markets are driven by rules. I will say this: unchecked capitalism in this respect has failed and will fail. The way that we’re going has failed and will fail.”

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