Tom Steyer

A governor can direct the state Attorney General to bring civil enforcement for unlawful acts like assault or trespass when they are committed outside the scope of federal authority, and a governor can issue executive orders that restrict state cooperation, file lawsuits against DHS, and submit amicus briefs.

The hard limit is that federal agents acting within the scope of their official duties have federal officer immunity under the Supremacy Clause, a doctrine that comes from the 1890 In re Neagle case, and that immunity protects them from state prosecution, which is a limit that Steyer's own Substack post acknowledges rather than hides.

If this were delivered it would mean fewer ICE raids in California schools, hospitals, workplaces, and courts, more protection for mixed-status families, and real limits on how much local police can cooperate with ICE, and for Southeast LA specifically it would mean protection for our mutual aid networks and safer routes to school.

A governor can sign single-payer legislation if the legislature passes it, can seek federal Section 1332 and Section 1115 waivers, and can deploy the authority of CDPH and DHCS, but the estimated cost is more than $300B a year, and opposition from the American Medical Association is a major political hurdle.

The hard limit is that it cannot be implemented unilaterally, because it requires both the legislature and federal cooperation, and although SB 770, the single-payer study, is already underway, actually implementing the policy would take multiple years.

If this were delivered it would mean real universal coverage that eliminates copays, premiums, and the limited provider networks people are stuck inside now, and for immigrant families it would mean coverage regardless of immigration status, while for informal workers in SELA it would mean moving out of limited Medi-Cal and into the universal system, with dental, vision, and mental health coverage all held at the same level.

A governor can direct CPUC appointees, sign permit moratoriums through CalGEM, and push for legislation, and while blocking new permits is something that is reachable in the first year, restructuring the utilities is a multi-year effort that would be heavily litigated.

The hard limit is that breaking up the IOUs requires legislative action and probably a supermajority, the promised 25% rate cut still has no specifics behind it, and the IOUs have well-established investment relationships with the legislature that would not give way easily.

If this were delivered it would mean genuinely lower electric bills for low-income families, which matters because SoCal Edison bills in SELA have gone up 60% in 5 years, and a competitive public option would push rates down, while for renters it would also mean protection against having their power shut off over unpaid bills.

A governor can back and promote ballot initiatives, the way Prop 15 was promoted in 2020 before it lost by a narrow margin, can sign legislation that raises wealth taxes if the legislature passes it, and can set the budget priorities.

The hard limit is that changes to Prop 13 require a ballot initiative because Prop 13 is written into the state Constitution, and any wealth tax faces constant capital flight threats, which the opposition always raises, given that California already has the most progressive taxes in the country.

If this were delivered it would mean significant revenue for affordable housing, public transit, and schools, since the Legislative Analyst estimated commercial Prop 13 reform could generate roughly $6.5B to $11.5B a year in the 2020 analysis of Prop 15, and for SELA that would translate into real funding for local schools and public transit.

A governor can design and propose the budget, negotiate with the legislature, and use executive authority over existing departments like EDD, CDCR, and HCD, and infrastructure bonds can fund pieces of a program like this.

The hard limit is that real scale requires a multi-year budget, Prop 4 from 2014 imposes spending caps, and public housing at scale requires local zoning reform that the state does not directly control.

If this were delivered it would mean direct jobs with decent wages for residents who do not have a college degree, and for SELA that would mean jobs in environmental cleanup, habitat restoration, and solar installation, while universal childcare would remove the main barrier that keeps mothers out of the labor force.

Steyer has raised $197M, 99.9% of it self-funded, with zero corporate PAC money, and for context that figure is several times what a typical California gubernatorial campaign raises, so Steyer has already spent more in the primary alone than any gubernatorial candidate in California history, and his TV spend by itself is about $48M through May 1 according to AdImpact.

If voters in SELA and other low-resource communities come to believe that any candidate with $197M can simply dominate the conversation, that can have a demobilizing effect, because it teaches people that money wins anyway, but on the other hand, if Steyer loses despite all that spending, it could signal that money is not actually decisive at this level.

The "I reject corporate PAC" argument is verifiable and true, and the distinction between personal money used for progressive causes and corporate money used for capture is not nothing, but it still does not resolve the underlying democratic concern, which is that a single individual has the capacity to fund a $197M campaign with no consequences.

In 2020 Steyer ran ads opposing Bernie Sanders' Medicare-for-All, and in 2026 he is running on Medicare-for-All himself, so the switch is documented and public, and in December 2025 he made an explicit "I was wrong" statement, while his current platform now includes state Medicare-for-All as a central pillar.

The risk is that if Steyer wins and then does not actually push Medicare-for-All, the communities that voted for the promise end up without the policy they were promised, which is the classic pattern of a campaign promise followed by a governing retreat, and this matters because universal healthcare is among the highest priorities in community surveys in SELA.

The position change is documented and it happened before the campaign, in December 2025, rather than in response to primary pressure, and if it were pure opportunism the easier move would have been to deny the change, since saying "I was wrong" does carry political cost, but the historical pattern of billionaires allied with the insurance industry is real and it is fair to keep it in mind.

Farallon held about $90M, or 2.27M shares, of CCA/CoreCivic from 2004 to early 2006, which means the position lasted about two years before they exited, and Steyer later backed AB 32, the Bonta bill from 2019 that banned state contracts with private prisons, and the Factually fact-check confirms this timeline.

Immigrant families in SELA are more exposed to detention in private prisons, which are operated by CoreCivic and GEO Group under federal contracts, so if Steyer historically profited from that system it is a material problem for the immigrant community even with the later divestment, and the open question that voters have to sit with is whether the regret is complete or whether it is instrumental.

The divestment is real and it happened 20 years ago, AB 32 is concrete legislation that Steyer supported, and the fact that California has zero state contracts with private prisons today is partly the result of that policy, and it is also true that Farallon's investments spanned hundreds of companies across many sectors, so CoreCivic was a small position within that.

Farallon financed coal operations in Indonesia and Australia during Steyer's tenure, including a $455M debt and equity stake in the Maules Creek mine acquisition, and the original reporting on this came from the 2014 New York Times as referenced by The Hill, and his defense that he divested before he left Farallon has been challenged by later reporting that showed some of those investments were still active in 2012.

For communities in SELA that are exposed to industrial pollution and nearby refineries, like the Wilmington industrial corridor and the LA and Long Beach ports, the pattern of a billionaire who invested in the very thing he now criticizes has material consequences that are not just symbolic.

NextGen, Galvanize, and the $370M in transition assets are tangible and verifiable, and the level of his investment after 2012 far exceeds the financial damage from before 2012, so if the question is whether he is a climate ally now, the answer is yes, but if the question is whether he has made restitution to the communities harmed by his past investments, the answer is not clear.

He has held no elected office, authored zero bills, and cast zero votes, and his executive roles are Farallon from 1986 to 2012, NextGen from 2012 to the present, the CA Task Force from 2020 to 2021, and Galvanize from 2021 to the present, while his 2020 presidential campaign withdrew after South Carolina.

A governor without legislative experience can face a significant learning curve in their first year, and that comes at a moment when California needs fast action on climate, housing, and immigration, so without pre-existing relationships with legislative leaders, the first budget negotiations can be rough.

Schwarzenegger and Reagan are real precedents of governors who came in without prior elected experience, and Newsom had been SF mayor rather than a legislator, while experience operating organizations with more than $20B in assets under management is not trivial, but the counter-argument is that both Schwarzenegger and Reagan were significantly less effective in their first year than governors who came in with legislative experience.

Campaign finance filings from January through April 18 show Steyer's campaign paid more than $123,000 to at least eight social media influencers, and it is separately paying more than $870,000 to a digital firm, Group Project Digital, that recruits creators to post daily videos about him. The state Fair Political Practices Commission, the FPPC, opened an investigation into one video by creator Isaiah Washington, who was paid $10,000 and whose now-deleted version of the video carried no disclosure, after two creators who support Becerra filed a complaint. The state influencer-disclosure law being tested here was written with no fines attached, so even a finding against the campaign would carry no real penalty.

Paid posts that are built to look like a friend's honest opinion can manufacture the appearance of grassroots support, and for voters in SELA and other communities who increasingly get their news from social media, that makes it harder to tell a real recommendation from an ad, which is exactly the harm the disclosure law was meant to prevent.

Paying creators for their work is legal, the campaign's instruction to its content firms to require disclosures is written into the contracts, and paid influencers are now common across campaigns, since Mahan's campaign has also paid them and the Becerra campaign is facing its own scrutiny, but the open question is whether telling a contractor to require disclosure is enough when the campaign does not review the posts and several of them still went up with no disclosure at all.