I Detest Billionaires – My Journey to Supporting One for Governor of California
As a progressive who watches too much television, when I see a Democratic candidate dominating the TV air war with ubiquitous campaign ads, I usually know that’s a Democrat I should oppose – the one being lavishly funded by wealthy corporate interests. And the ads are usually vapid, empty.
Living in California these past months, I’ve had to adjust my normal mindset. Because the Democrat running for governor who was dominating the airwaves had put out one substantive ad after another – calling for taxing the wealthy, breaking up utility monopolies, standing up to Big Oil. Each ad could have been put out by Bernie Sanders. Like the ad featuring Rep. Ro Khanna about taking on the “big insurance companies” to pass universal “single-payer healthcare” for California.
Or the candidate’s video message denouncing AIPAC (“they’re attacking progressive Democrats every chance they get”) and the Democratic Party establishment for “not talking more forcefully” against the Iran war.
The candidate putting out all these wonderfully progressive ads is billionaire Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager turned environmental advocate, now self-funding his campaign to the tune of $130 million. So far.
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.
So 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.
Many had attended and been impressed by one of Steyer’s town hall forums across the state, where his introductory remarks were short while the audience Q&A went long. I started finding online memes from an activist I respect, Amar Shergill, a Steyer-supporter who formerly chaired the California Democratic Party’s Progressive Caucus – including his charts comparing the Democratic field.
Like in other Democratic one-party states, pro-corporate corruption in California’s state capital is rampant, which is why California – with a population almost as large as Canada’s – lacks universal healthcare coverage. Most Democrats in office say they support it, but profiteering insurance interests fund their campaigns. A bill to move California toward government-provided single-payer health insurance that would replace private insurance sailed through the Democrat-led state legislature in both 2006 and 2008, when it was well-known that GOP Gov. Arnold Scwharzenegger would veto the measure. Both times. Schwarzenegger called it “socialized medicine.”
But a funny thing has happened in the California legislature ever since Democrats took the governor’s office in 2011, first Jerry Brown and then Gavin Newsom: A single-payer healthcare bill never made it to their desks. In some years, thanks to medical industry lobbyists, the bill didn’t even get out of committee.
Make no mistake about it: Corporate lobbyists are horrified that Tom Steyer might become California’s governor. To stop Steyer, corporate forces and their allies in the Democratic establishment have moved from now-disgraced Rep. Eric Swalwell to Xavier Becerra, former US Secretary of Health and Human Services. Becerra, who won praise from the right-wing Murdoch press for pocketing the maximum campaign donation from Chevron, is now bending to the will of private interests on healthcare, according to KQED public radio.
Steyer’s unequivocal support of CalCare universal health coverage is one of the reasons he’s endorsed by Ro Khanna and the California Nurses Association, and why RootsAction (which I cofounded) came out in support last week.
One dividing-line issue among Democratic candidates is the California Billionaire Tax Act – a ballot initiative launched by SEIU-United Healthcare Workers that would impose a one-time emergency tax on the state’s 200 richest individuals to bolster healthcare. It’s supported by Steyer, Khanna, Bernie Sanders and opposed by Gov. Newsom and billionaire friends like Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt of Google. (As a funder/activist, Steyer used statewide ballot initiatives to win reforms, including Prop 39 in 2012 that closed a corporate tax loophole to fund green jobs and energy-efficiency in schools.)
The TV air war has taken a bizarre turn. While Steyer’s ads dominated for many weeks, he is now facing a barrage of negative ads funded by some of California’s powerful corporate interests straight-facedly accusing him of being a corporatist – of profiting from past investments his hedge fund had made in fossil fuels and private prisons. We know who’s funding the attacks on Steyer thanks to California’s DISCLOSE Act, which requires that the top funders of campaign ads be listed in the bottom third of the TV screen.
Even though California has a strongly-Democratic electorate, it’s likely that only one of the half-dozen serious Democratic gubernatorial aspirants will make it through the June “jungle primary” into November’s general election to face a Republican – probably Steve Hilton, a former Fox Newser endorsed by Trump.
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? Though not as rich as Steyer, President Franklin Roosevelt certainly provides a role model as someone willing to fight “the economic royalists” he knew so well in order to uplift working people
Robert Reich
May 6, 2026
Sergey Brin and Gerelyn Gilbert-Soto pose during the Met Gala, an annual fundraising gala held for the benefit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute with this year's theme 'Costume Art' in New York City, New York, U.S., May 4, 2026. REUTERS/Daniel Cole
Friends,
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the three or four wealthiest people in the world, with a net worth hovering around $260 billion to $277 billion, is devoting some of his wealth to fighting California’s wealth tax on billionaires.
So far, he’s spent $57 million trying to defeat the measure.
Brin’s actions — along with Elon Musk’s $250 million “investment” in getting Trump reelected in 2024 — should be Exhibits A and B in why America needs a wealth tax.
First, let’s stipulate that there is nothing inherently wrong about being a billionaire, a multibillionaire, or even, as Musk is likely to become, a trillionaire.
Wealth isn’t a “zero-sum” game in which these vast accumulations at the top depend on the rest of us losing an equal amount. In fact, the super-wealthy may help the rest of us do somewhat better than we were doing before.
Even though the wealth of the top 0.1 percent has soared in recent years, the bottom 50 percent are doing somewhat better than before. (See chart below.)
But wait.
The problem is that political power is a zero-sum game. The more political power is concentrated in a few hands, the less political power in everyone else’s hands.
It’s almost impossible to separate wealth from power, because the wealthy turn their fortunes into campaign contributions to politicians who will change laws to their liking and stop laws they’d detest — such as higher taxes on the super-wealthy. The wealthy also finance public relations campaigns and think-tanks to persuade the public of the wisdom of their positions.
Billionaire spending on presidential elections has soared even faster than billionaire wealth. And if you believe they’re donating because they want people with great integrity and excellent character to be elected president, consider that most billionaire political spending in 2024 went to Trump.
They’re donating because they want to protect and enlarge their fortunes and don’t want politicians elected who support higher taxes on them.
Nor do they want politicians elected who support stricter anti-monopoly legislation or who would make it easier to form labor unions or stop climate change (all of which might reduce the profits of, say, Google).
Take Sergey Brin and his $57 million against California’s tax on billionaires — which, not incidentally, was proposed because California must now pay more for Medicaid for lower-income Californians, because Trump and his Republican lackeys enacted a giant federal tax cut whose benefits have gone mostly to the wealthy.
Brin has become a major Republican donor. Last May, he donated nearly half a million dollars to the Republican National Committee.
Why? Because the Republican Party is more dedicated to protecting and enlarging the wealth of the super-wealthy than is the Democratic Party.
By spending his fortune trying to stop California from taxing billionaires, Brin is illustrating why we need to tax billionaires. He’s making the argument for a billionaire wealth tax more clearly and articulately than anyone else possibly could.
Thank you, Serge.
Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
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