Tom Steyer Wants to Save California From Billionaires. But Also Doesn’t Want Them to Leave

For those concerned about the influence of Big Tech and billionaires on California’s future, Tom Steyer looks like an obvious choice. A billionaire who amassed his fortune after founding Farallon Capital Management, one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, Steyer quit the firm in 2012 and turned to philanthropy, political advocacy, and climate activism, among other pursuits. Now, he’s jostling for position among a handful of Democratic and GOP candidates looking to advance from a June primary and then win the California governorship this November.

Ahead of the midterms, I’m talking to candidates relevant to WIRED’s interests: A few weeks ago I spoke with Alex Bores, a candidate for New York’s 12th Congressional District, whose history as a Palantir employee and stance on AI regulation has attracted the ire of Silicon Valley–backed super PACs.

Steyer felt like the next obvious choice for a conversation: He’s running to lead a state where issues like AI, immigration enforcement, and climate change, among other core WIRED subjects, are paramount. Steyer’s posture in the race is also unique. He’s been described as a “class traitor” for ostensibly eschewing his fellow elites, voiced support for California’s controversial Billionaire Tax Act—which has everyone from Sergey Brin to Peter Thiel either making moves to or threatening to flee the state—and campaigned hard on affordability, climate policy, and the promise that he’s immune to corporate influence. (As a billionaire spending more than $130 million on his own gubernatorial campaign, I certainly hope he would be.)

As I said, for some Democratic voters, Tom Steyer seems to check a lot of boxes. Then he starts talking.

Steyer is adept, as politicians usually are, at toeing the line. But the line, in politics generally and California specifically, seems to be the problem: Steyer, or whomever is elected to the governorship this November, will be walking an exceedingly thin one. Taxing California’s billionaires without alienating them. Getting a grip on the state’s AI development without throttling it (or, again, alienating the billionaires building it).

I could feel Steyer’s reluctance to come down too firmly or dig in too deeply on issues, maybe to avoid alienating any potential voting block. Which made me wonder: Can Tom Steyer be a pro-billionaire governor who also taxes the hell out of them? Can he rave about the “mind-blowingly amazing” advances in AI while bringing the industry to heel? Can he learn the name of WIRED’s global editorial director (me) before she interviews him?

The third question is answered in the interview. The former two will be formidable challenges for anyone elected to California’s governorship—and I didn’t leave our conversation convinced that Steyer’s posture is a particularly coherent one. The minimum requirement for a California governor might be the ability to use Google.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

KATIE DRUMMOND: Welcome, Tom, thank you for joining us on The Big Interview.

TOM STEYER: Kate [sic], thank you for having me.

So, you’re a billionaire. You made your money in the hedge fund world. But now, in the last decade-plus, you’ve become a climate activist. Tell us about that transformation.

When I was growing up, when I got free time, either from school or work, I tried to go to wild places and get outdoor jobs. I worked as a ranch hand, I worked picking fruit. Before I went to business school, I spent the summer in Alaska, and I went to Alaska because I wanted to see what North America looked like before Europeans showed up.

I wanted to see the animals, I wanted to see the birds, I wanted to see the fish, I wanted to look at Denali. I wanted to see what it looked like, vast untracked North America, rich and fertile.

In 2006, I wanted my wife and four kids, none of whom had ever been there, to see it too. So we went up there for a week. I had a whole bunch of plans of what we could see, but what we could see was Alaska was melting. It was really obvious. It's one thing to read about it on a page when you're working away and thinking about a thousand things, but it's another thing to physically see where there used to be a mountain of ice and now it's a valley.

At what point, though, do you say, “I am going to say goodbye to running a hedge fund. I'm going to turn my back on this career, and I'm going to do something totally different. And a big part of that is going to be climate activism”? How did that happen?

Well, I didn't just leave specifically to do climate. You know, it was funny. I was talking to one of my best friends this morning, and he was saying, “Well, the whole point of life is to have a positive impact.”

I would hope so, yeah.

I got very, very scared that I was going to have a life of no meaning. That's actually what it was. It wasn't that I felt like, “Oh, my God, I'm going to die and I've had no meaning.” It's like I've amassed a whole bunch of, you know, numbers on a spreadsheet, but who cares?

Nobody, including me.

I felt somewhat desperate to get out and push for things that had meaning, including climate. I always thought climate was this huge opportunity for us.

A financial opportunity?

An opportunity for America to be America.

I see, I see.

To lead the world, do the right thing, save the world, build businesses around it. But I wasn't trying to build businesses. I was basically trying to give everybody else a chance to say, "Wow."

It's sort of like the fascists show up and America stands up to them, and it turns out to be great for us. I thought it would be good for us, but I also thought that's how we express ourselves as a nation, by standing up for what's right and succeeding and showing the world how it's done.

So I thought, "Here's a great example. There's something clearly wrong here. We can do the tech. We can do the finance. We can do the global leadership. Let's do it, man. Let’s be Americans."

I want to move on to talking about your run for governor of California, but climate is a big piece of that. Obviously, Trump is in office. What kind of power does the governor's seat give you vis-à-vis climate policy, knowing that Donald Trump is the president of the United States?

I think it gives us a chance to show what success looks like. I think what Donald Trump is doing, he's showing the world what failure looks like. He's so scared of failure, and he's failing on an absolutely gargantuan scale. But success looks like moving rapidly to sustainable clean energy that's cheaper, proving to the world that doing this is actually the way to succeed economically as well as doing the right thing. We build a bunch of companies around it. We get some great technologies going, all of which are happening, all of which are within our grasp. It's kind of like the president is desperately fighting to keep us on whale oil. I mean, it's nuts.

Your commitment to being a “good billionaire” is laudable, I think. But your critics have questioned some of Farallon Capital Management, your former hedge fund's, past investments. The New York Times published a piece earlier this month questioning whether you still have financial ties to investments that include fossil fuels. I want to hear from you more fully on this, and I know that our listeners do too. What can you tell voters about the status of your investments vis-à-vis that hedge fund?

The thing that I have left at Farallon is some residual buildings, investing in real estate. I divested from all the oil and gas from there in 2012. That's one of the reasons I left. I didn't feel that I could change that organization. People had signed up, hundreds of people had signed up to run an organization a certain way, and I had moved on.

And, you know, I was the head of it, so you'd think I could just be like, "This is what we're doing." But that's not really how organizations work in my mind, and I'm not that person anyway.