Hey California! What Does It Take to Be Governor?

For decades most politicians who are not outright climate deniers have sounded like "oh yes, as you mention, the building is on fire and countless beings are trapped in it, and what if in a week or so I wander over and splash a little leftover lemonade on it?"

Before I get into my main topic I want to issue a warning about the popular strategy for this governor's race: the wait and vote for whichever Democrat is ahead to prevent two Republicans making it into the November election. There are unreliable polls out there trying to get you to support their candidate, and this vote-for-the-top-Democrat position makes these polls dangerous this time around. PG&E has reportedly produced a poll that suggests Becerra is ahead, which mostly tells us that PG&E thinks it would do well under a Becerra administration while it is also spending $10 million on anti-Steyer ads because Steyer has bold climate and electricity-price plans that interfere with the utility's power and profit margin. There will be trustworthy polls; there will apparently also be propaganda disguised as polls. Be careful about where you get your information (which is the main warning for the 21st century anyway).

I meant my essay about Tom Steyer to be a one-and-done but I keep running across people saying the same thing about him, and it is a thing that doesn't actually make sense. It's the illogic that provokes me to respond more than the defense of Steyer's record (but they're kind of the same thing in this case). People keep saying: "he doesn't have the experience," the premise apparently being having held elected office of any kind is uniquely qualifying and there is no substitute for it. This is nonsense. There are lots of ways to become expert in how government works besides being an elected official. Too, the job of legislating is a very different job than governing, and experience in the former is not necessarily qualification for the latter. A legislator oversees a staff of perhaps a dozen; a governor of California hundreds of thousands.

How the state government works is not a mystery; it is not run by a secret priesthood whose initiates shut out all others from the sacred rites. A whole lot of unelected people are not just involved but expert in how legislation gets passed, and how the state administers its programs. Around the actual elected officials are thousands of people – staffers, lawyers, campaigners, and organizers (and, alas, lobbyists) trying to usher a piece of legislation through the process or prevent it from passing. State employees turn successful measures into policy. Journalists who build careers around reporting on the process, the politics, and the players are crucial for keeping the rest of us informed and holding politicians accountable. A lot of these people become as expert as any elected official (or more so in specialized areas); a lot of legislators rely on their expertise.

Steyer has worked for sixteen years to pass legislation in California, which adds up to significant experience in the system, and some success with it. In the piece I wrote, I quoted former State Senator Nancy Skinner: "Even though Tom has never held elected office, he has been actively involved in state issues for decades. He established Next Gen California to be his policy think tank and advocacy group in Sacramento. NextGen and Tom were at my side for some of my most important progressive victories."

A governor should understand how state government works; a governor should also know how to govern, aka be able to manage a large administration. It's amusing to me that the people who insist that Steyer must have experience most probably said nothing of the sort about Zohran Mamdani when he was running for mayor of New York. Being in the New York state assembly 2020 to 2025 was not the same thing as heading an administration with (as of late 2024) 306,248 employees serving a city of eight million. No legislator, even a senate majority leader, heads anything remotely like that – and yet Mamdani seems to be doing great.

I think there's a sweet spot between being totally new to the work and being so familiar with it you're just entrenched in the status quo and not ready to do anything differently, maybe can't even see that things can be done differently and should be. (Think of how Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein scoffed at the Sunrise Movement advocates pushing for the Green New Deal in 2018 – they sneered, but the GND became the seed that grew into the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, thanks to more visionary leadership.) The main reason I've advocated for Steyer is: he's a bold climate champion who understands that we are in an emergency and what we – and the governor of this powerful state – can do about it. Can and should.

For decades most politicians who are not outright climate deniers have sounded like "oh yes, as you mention, the building is on fire and countless beings are trapped in it, and what if in a week or so I wander over and splash a little leftover lemonade on it?" We need something different as in better. Speaking of qualifications, Steyer is the only climate champion in the race (he even wrote a book about climate solutions). Speaking of climate, you can read Bill McKibben on Xavier Becerra's climate record here; spoiler: not good. Steyer was endorsed by Our Revolution, California DSA (see below), and a lot of progressive legislators, from California state assembly to Senator Whitehouse because he is progressive across the board on economic justice, housing, and other issues (and apparently because these legislators think he can govern).

But back to governance: Steyer has been at the top of a big organization, his investment company. He left it in 2012 as his values and focus were shifting. He wrote to his investors, “Now it’s time to focus full-time on giving back. I want my life to revolve around service in one form or another, including continuing participation in our community bank, in encouraging the advanced energy economy and in specific public policy initiatives here in California.” He did those things. They included donating what, so far as I can tell, amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars, and founding a number of other organizations, in this case nonprofits and other entities to pursue climate, democracy, economic justice, and other issues and to get deeply and successfully involved in the California legislative process.

You don't have to like him, and I get it: he's a dorky old white guy with bad ties and too much money (even though he's given a lot of it away). But the argument he's not qualified seems muddled about what constitute qualifications. And here I should say I absolutely adore Mamdani and wish that I got to vote for someone like that in this race (as I said in my earlier essay, I had hoped Rob Bonta would run), but you work with the options that exist, not the ones you wish existed. Meanwhile the amount of money that corporate interests are spending to defeat Steyer says they believe he's the real deal when it comes to economic democracy.

The whole primary seems like a test designed for a lot of people to fail it: do you judge the candidates by the simple category label each of them fits into, or do you actually plunge into the details of what they've done and propose to do? I see a whole lot of the former out there. I've tried to supply some of the details on the latter for one candidate.

p.s. The California Democratic Socialists of America [CA DSA] voting guide endorses Steyer: Tom Steyer is somehow running the most progressive campaign. Despite being a billionaire, he supports taxing the rich and supports the Billionaire Tax currently on California’s ballot, which CA DSA has endorsed. He has done an about-face from his previous position to now supporting state-level Medicare for All. He has called ICE a “violent extremist group” and outlined how he, as governor, would prosecute ICE agents. He has also been endorsed by a number of major labor unions, including the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers, AFSCME 3299, Unite HERE, the California Nurses Association, and the California Labor Federation, as well as progressive groups such as Our Revolution and Courage California, and former gubernatorial candidate Betty Yee. Notably, Steyer is one of two Democrats in the race, alongside Tony Thurmond, to explicitly support California’s law protecting trans girls’ participation in girls’ sports; Becerra, on the other hand, glibly stated that “there’s nothing in the Constitution that says that you are entitled to play a sport”, and other Democrats, including Porter, agreed.

p.s. Media critic Jeff Cohen wrote an essay about Steyer that aligns with my thinking. "He declares: Let me be clear: I generally loathe billionaires and hedge-funders and everyone in the financial speculation elite. I remain skeptical that someone as wealthy as Steyer who operated at the heights of amoral financialized capitalism can deeply understand and fight for working-class interests. If Steyer is elected, will he prove to be the effective “class traitor” that most Californians need him to be—a governor who stands up to corporate greed and power?vSo I was in a quandary. A month ago, after seeing Steyer’s anti-AIPAC video attacking Democratic leaders for failing to “forcefully” oppose Trump’s war, I started an intense dialogue with progressives across California, including journalists, experienced activists, organizational leaders. Almost all—somewhat surprisingly or confusedly or embarrassingly—were arriving at the same conclusion: the billionaire, Tom Steyer, is the best choice for governor." Full piece at: I Detest Billionaires: My Journey to Supporting One for Governor of California