STEYER 2

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target? //soros [mirror koch]

crc scott walter 6 25 MTG doge nextgen?

oops format, capt bak 719

see horner

2020 candidate, kpfa ad sound bite ~ corps no heart or soul, max profit

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steyer site

Big Oil Becerra’s Receipts | Tom Steyer

Big Oil Becerra’s Receipts

*His attempts to lie about the $500,000 check to back his campaign makes it clear that Xavier Becerra is on defense over corporate contributions

CALIFORNIA —Xavier Becerra is hoping that Californians aren’t paying too much attention to the news this weekend, as one of his campaign’s top donors, Chevron, is making waves for price gouging Californians at the pump.

This weekend,Becerra told KMPH it was an “outright lie” that Chevron is giving him money. Alas, here are the receipts:

*Chevron cut the independent expenditure that solely exists to support Becerra a $500,000 check last week

*Becerra’s campaign cashed a max out donation from Chevron in June 2025

You’re going to want to hold onto these as Becerra continues to deflect and deceive voters to distance himself from the Texas-based oil giant.

“To use Becerra’s own words, it’s an ‘outright lie’ that he’s telling about who supports his campaign: he and Chevron are one and the same,” said Steyer for Governor spokesperson Danni Wang.“Chevron and corporate special interests keep jacking up prices on California families, and are banking on Becerra to keep it that way. California families need real change, and the only person who can deliver that is Tom Steyer.”

As Attorney General, Becerra “stayed mum” on an investigation into ExxonMobil. In this campaign, he also backed increasing oil drilling in California and continues benefiting from millions in corporate-backed outside spending.

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Xavier Becerra Says He Will Fight for California. Who Did He Fight for as AG?

Xavier Becerra built his national reputation by suing the Trump administration. But as he runs for governor, critics say his record as California’s attorney general is less progressive on policing, Big Oil and housing.

May 18, 2026

Marisa Lagos

Melanie Fontes Rainer spent nine years working for Becerra, first in the attorney general’s office and then when he was the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Fontes Rainer, who led a healthcare unit as an assistant attorney general, said Becerra had the foresight when he was appointed attorney general to create that new unit, which focused exclusively on healthcare policy and was able to lead California’s fight against Trump’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act.

[

Learn everything you need to cast an informed ballot for the 2026 primary election

“It’s either clear ignorance of a core First Amendment principle, or it’s willful disregard of it. Neither of those, I think reflect very well,” Snyder said.

“I think that now there’s sort of a greater recognition that the overall housing shortage is damaging everyone, not just low-income people. He has made that pivot,” she said. endit

In contrast, Steyer has spent over a decade taking on Big Oil and winning. He fought for and won nearly $2 billion for clean energy in schools. Steyer has released a robust planto bring down costs for California families by expanding clean energy innovation and making polluters pay.

Tom is endorsed by prominent climate experts and environmental champions, including: Sierra Club, California Environmental Voters, Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund, Bill McKibben, and Jane Fonda.

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kqed

As California’s attorney general during the first Trump presidency, Xavier Becerra made headlines as a hero of the Democratic resistance, suing the Trump administration more than 120 times to defend key progressive policies, including the Affordable Care Act, the environment and immigrant and workers rights.

But as Becerra rises to the top of the Democratic field for governor, critics say that on some issues closer to home, he sided with powerful interest groups, including law enforcement and fossil fuel companies — and that on housing, he was as likely to use his power as attorney general to block development as to push for more.

As attorney general, Becerra declined to investigate oil companies accused of misleading investors and the public on climate change. And perhaps most notably, Becerra’s office went to court to fight against the release of police misconduct records following California’s passage of a landmark transparency law — and once threatened journalists with criminal charges for possessing records his office had sent them.

“Xavier Becerra just seems to reflexively have been against any of these measures to improve transparency into police records,” said Jason Paladino, one of the reporters threatened by Becerra’s office. “When you look at the fact that one of his major backers throughout his campaigns has been the police unions, it’s hard to not make that connection that he’s got this powerful constituency in the state, which he feels somewhat beholden to.”

It’s a characterization that Becerra and his supporters reject. Jonathan Underland, a spokesperson for his campaign, said Becerra has “always made decisions based on protecting Californians and defending the law, not on politics or who supported his campaigns.”

Those close to Becerra when he was attorney general paint a picture of a hardworking, principled leader who came into office prepared to push back on President Donald Trump and protect Californians — and whose views on issues including the environment and housing were shaped by his upbringing as the son of working-class immigrants.

“Not everyone was aggressive in those early days [of Trump],” said Amanda Renteria, who served as Becerra’s chief operating officer for his first year as attorney general. “He really was like, nope, we know what’s coming at us and we’re gonna be ready … from the first conversation I had, he had a real insight about what it meant to have a Trump administration and be in the state of California.”

Becerra surged in the polls after the exit of former Rep. Eric Swalwell, who suspended his campaign in April amid sexual assault allegations he has denied.

A complicated record in California

The attorney general’s office has launched three California governors and is perhaps the position in state government most analogous to the top job: attorneys general confront many of the same policy challenges a governor faces, from housing and homelessness to public safety and the environment, and they oversee a staff of more than 5,000.

The record Becerra built in Sacramento, particularly on three issues where California’s next governor will face immediate tests — police accountability; climate and the oil industry; and housing — offers the clearest window into how he might actually govern, and whose interests he would protect.

Yet much of the scrutiny of Becerra’s record since he surged in the crowded field has centered on his time leading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden.

As California continues to face hostility from a second Trump administration, those federal fights he took on as attorney general are newly relevant — and Becerra has framed himself as the best person to wage them. But on other issues, critics say Becerra struck a cautious tone and was unwilling to buck the status quo.

That includes environmentalists’ critiques of how he handled the fossil fuel industry.

“His time as attorney general was a story of what he didn’t do,” said Kassie Siegel, climate political director at the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund. “He did sue the Trump administration 120 times, but he didn’t do the things his successor did that were needed and that he was called on to do.”

“At that point, nobody had sued the president in this manner and had necessarily taken on this national role in protecting, whether it was national civil rights or national healthcare,” she said.

The expertise in that healthcare unit allowed California to be a leader in other areas, Fontes Rainer said, such as successful actions against companies involved in the opioid crisis. She said Becerra was eager to take on important, progressive issues: winning on behalf of DACA recipients at the U.S. Supreme Court; suing Sutter Health on behalf of patients and workers; protecting abortion andLGBTQ rights.

“He expects you to work your ass off, because he works his ass off,” she said, adding that Becerra is willing to take on powerful interests if the moment calls for it. “He is never gonna be the leader who is all about himself.”

Critics, though, say there were clearly some groups that Becerra didn’t want to challenge.

A fight over transparency

Becerra received heat for several incidents involving law enforcement, including his refusal to investigate a police shooting in Vallejo — a case his successor later pursued — and his failure to probe a jailhouse informant scandal in Orange County that led to a federal investigation and settlement.

But it was his legal battle against Senate Bill 1421 that drew the sharpest criticism from within his own party. The state law, passed in 2018 after years of advocacy by civil liberties groups and Democratic lawmakers, made public for the first time the disciplinary records of police officers accused of sexual assault, use of force and other serious misconduct.

After the law took effect, the attorney general’s office didn’t just refuse to release its own records— questioning whether the law applied to records created before the law’s passage — it also sent guidance to law enforcement agencies that critics say gave police departments across California cover to refuse compliance, too.

In recent interviews, Becerra has continued to defend how he handled the case, saying he didn’t fight for secrecy but rather clarity to ensure his office was following the law. But even after an appeals court ruled against him, his office continued to resist, and the lawsuits dragged on for six years.

“It was just an extreme position to take,” said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, which successfully sued Becerra and other police agencies, along with media organizations including KQED. “That office really fought tooth and nail to keep many of the records under lock and key.”

Becerra’s office shocked legal experts again when it sent a letter to two journalists at UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program ordering them to destroy a list of 12,000 current and former police officers and applicants who had been convicted of crimes.

The list was provided to the reporters by Becerra’s own office and another state agency in response to a public records request. In the letter, the attorney general argued that even possessing the records was a criminal act.

“It’s either clear ignorance of a core First Amendment principle, or it’s willful disregard of it. Neither of those, I think reflect very well,” Snyder said.

The attorney general never made good on his threats, even after the reporters published their story.

But Paladino, one of those reporters, said the letter was concerning for numerous reasons: He argued it showed a hostility toward a free press, a misunderstanding of basic First Amendment law, and a willingness to kowtow to law enforcement groups.

“The legal letter was just completely wrong in its interpretation of the law. And it had real implications for press freedom,” he said. “He was given a bunch of chances to sort of be like, oh, in hindsight, we shouldn’t have sent that letter. And at every turn, he has doubled down.”

In a recent interview with the *Sacramento Bee*, Becerra again insisted that he was following the law.

“I simply repeated what the law says. If you are in possession of information that is confidential and you disclose and you make that information public, or you disclose it, you are subject to action for violation of privacy laws,” Becerra said.

Brian Marvel, president of the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), one of the state’s top law enforcement lobbying groups, rejected the notion that Becerra took positions in order to score political points with police groups. On the records fight, Marvel said, Becerra simply wanted to make sure the law was on his side before releasing information that could harm an officer’s career.

“Once the cat’s out of the bag, whether the information is accurate or not, it’s out of the bag,” said Marvel, whose group represents more than 85,000 rank-and-file police officers in the state.

PORAC endorsed two of Becerra’s opponents in the governor’s race, Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and Democratic former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. But Marvel said he believes law enforcement would have a positive relationship with a Becerra as governor.

“I wouldn’t say he’s pro-cop, I’d say he’s pro-public safety,” Marvel said. “If ultimately Xavier Becerra becomes governor, I think I absolutely would have an open door.”

Friend or foe of Big Oil?

Becerra touts his environmental work as attorney general, including lawsuits targeting Trump’s moves to neuter greenhouse gas emission regulations, to undermine the Endangered Species Act, to roll back vehicle emission standards and expand offshore oil drilling. He also created an office of environmental justice to protect vulnerable communities.

In the governor’s race, though, he’s been hit by opponents over his ties to oil companies, with billionaire Tom Steyer in particular attacking Becerra for accepting donations from the industry, including Chevron’s $39,200 donation to his gubernatorial campaign, the maximum allowed by law. In response, Underland pushed back on Steyer, who invested in fossil fuel companies decades ago as a hedge fund manager.

“Xavier Becerra spent his time as attorney general actually fighting the fossil fuel companies in court — and winning. Unlike Tom Steyer, Becerra didn’t write them checks. He took them to court and won,” Underland said.

Earlier, as attorney general, Becerra angered environmental activists when he stayed mum on an investigation into ExxonMobil.

Becerra’s predecessor, Kamala Harris, reportedly launched the investigation into whether the company lied to investors about the links between fossil fuels and global warming. Becerra never addressed the investigation when he was attorney general, and did not file suit.

But Becerra’s successor, Attorney General Rob Bonta, did sue ExxonMobil and four other oil companies on similar grounds. That suit alleges that the oil companies have known for decades about the risks of fossil fuels but denied or downplayed those issues, and seeks to make them pay into a fund to help mitigate the effects of climate change in California.

It’s one of three dozen lawsuits like it filed by cities, counties and states in recent years, said Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity Action Fund.

When he was attorney general, Becerra’s office did support some of those local lawsuits, but Siegel said he should have gone further.

The Center for Biological Diversity gave Becerra a C+ on its environmental scorecard, noting campaign contributions from oil companies and his opposition to a proposed state law that would make fossil fuel companies pay for the effects of climate change.

Siegel also pointed to Becerra’s answer in a recent debate, where he said he would support opening up oil drilling again in Kern County— something he had opposed as attorney general.

“You have to put all the pieces together,” she said. “The environmental consequences of more oil drilling in California would be massive.”

Becerra didn’t shy away from the issue when asked by KQED’s Scott Shafer why he accepted donations from Chevron and whether he would hold big companies like them accountable as governor.

Becerra noted that there were several lawsuits he filed or joined as attorney general against fossil fuel companies. He also talked about how many people companies like Chevron employ.

“Chevron — that’s the problem with politics — they’re not the bad guy,” Becerra said. “Does everybody here drive an electric vehicle? You need Chevron, I need Chevron, my people of the state of California need Chevron.”

But Renteria said voters shouldn’t assume that just because her former boss isn’t writing off big corporations that he won’t fight for the little guy.

“By nature, he’s like this protector,” she said, adding that he has a natural aversion to anyone “bullying or taking advantage” of people, and will do everything he can to fight on their behalf.

Building less, blocking more

But on one of the biggest issues facing the state — the need for more housing — critics say Becerra didn’t show that type of aggression as attorney general, instead seeming more interested in blocking housing developments than helping push market-rate development.

In 2021, for example, he joined two lawsuits to halt developments in San Diego County, saying they were in wildfire zones and didn’t include enough affordable housing.

Earlier, in 2019, Becerra sued Huntington Beach for refusing to add state-mandated low-income housing to its local housing plan, and in 2020, he joined a lawsuit to ensure that cities comply with state affordable housing laws.

Becerra points to those lawsuits as evidence of his commitment to ensuring local governments both built more housing in general and affordable housing in particular — and that they complied with state laws mandating more construction.

On the campaign trail this year, Becerra has stressed the state’s housing shortage as a key driver of affordability and promised to use the governor’s office to eliminate hurdles — including aggressively going after cities and counties that aren’t building enough. He has also pledged to declare a state of emergency around housing and embed his own housing experts in agencies across the state government to help remove obstacles to building.

Laura Foote, executive director of the pro-housing group YIMBY Action, said she gives Becerra credit for appearing more interested in the issue as a candidate than he did as attorney general, a shift that matches the state’s overall political evolution on the issue.

What Is California's ‘Jungle Primary’ — and Why Does It Matter so Much for the Governor’s Race?

“I think that now there’s sort of a greater recognition that the overall housing shortage is damaging everyone, not just low-income people. He has made that pivot,” she said.

But her group, YIMBY Action, which endorsed Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer in the governor’s race, gave Becerra a “C” grade on housing. It noted that when asked about holding cities accountable as attorney general, “he took the opportunity to brag about using CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act), one of the most potent and abused tools of the anti-housing movement, to block a housing development in San Diego.”

Those lawsuits were successful: After Becerra left the attorney general’s office, Bonta negotiated settlements that led one of the projects to be scrapped entirely; the site, now owned by the state, will be permanently conserved as open space. The other proposed project will move forward under a separate settlement, with thousands of housing units slated for a smaller area than the initial proposal, which will reduce wildfire risk.

In general, Foote said, Becerra seemed to focus almost exclusively on affordable housing as attorney general, like in the Huntington Beach case, which Huntington Beach settled in 2020.

“It was a good case for them to weigh in, but I think it did reveal in that administration a preference to be really focused on subsidized affordable housing and pushing back on explicit discriminatory things as opposed to getting involved in the larger housing supply issue overall,” Foote said.

But she added that Becerra didn’t have as many tools at his disposal as the current attorney general does, and that he’s promised to focus on accountability if he’s elected governor.

“He has already committed to doing a greater degree of enforcement than we have had under the Gavin Newsom administration. … Is it as much improvement as some of the other candidates have committed to? No, but I think he is already promising to do better than we have done over the last eight years,” Foote said.

As Becerra leans into his resume on the campaign trail, his opponents are trying to frame that experience as a liability. His campaign is pushing back.

“The record speaks for itself,” Underland said. “Xavier Becerra took on oil companies, fought cities blocking affordable housing, challenged the Trump administration over environmental rollbacks, and held powerful interests accountable in court.”

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5 26

video pretty good:

he references this artl : https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/tom-steyer-billionaire-california-governor

JEFF COHEN

....So I was in a quandary. A month ago, after seeing Steyer’santi-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 hischarts 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 inboth 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 Rep. Ro Khanna and the California Nurses Association (CNA), and why RootsAction (which I co-founded) 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 News contributor 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.

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GMAIL 3 26

Can a billionaire fix California?

Tom Steyer argues he's not a regular billionaire. He's a cool billionaire.

EM ATK

Many people would say it’s unwise to trust a billionaire to overhaul the system that made them rich. Tom Steyer says he gets that.

“The skepticism and the anger at these people who have been so arrogant, so selfish, so full of themselves and so obnoxious—do I share that? Heck yes,” the billionaire climate activist said in an interview with HEATED last week. “Do I understand why people feel that way? How could you not?”

But Steyer, who is running a self-funded campaign for governor of California, argues that he is the billionaire to break the mold. He points to his early divestment from fossil fuels, his pledge to give away most of his fortune, and the hundreds of millions of dollars he’s spent trying to push climate policy and take on corporate power.

Our interview touches on a lot of topics: whether billionaires should exist at all, Steyer’s past investments in fossil fuels, the carbon footprint of billionaire investment portfolios, his proposal to break up California’s electric utility monopolies and lower electricity prices, the dark money campaigns already targeting him, and how he’d use the California governorship to push climate action nationwide. We also talk about our shared trip to the Athabasca tar sands in 2014.

You can watch our conversation at the top of this newsletter or on YouTube, or listen on all your podcast apps. If you’d prefer to read rather than listen, just scroll down for text and PDF transcripts.

HEATED podcast producer Tracy Wholf and I also recorded a short segment right after the interview reacting to what we heard. If you’d like to hear our off-the-cuff thoughts, I’ll be sending them out shortly in a subscribers-only newsletter. Make sure you’re a paid subscriber to get it!

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DOGE COMM MTG CRC 2025

...{The Solidarity Center is by no means the only Labor Department grantee that deserves scrutiny by this Subcommittee and the Department of Government Efficiency. My Capital Research Center colleague Robert Stilson surveyed recent grants by the Department for our website TheDogeFiles.org and found other grantees of obvious political value to the Biden administration’s policy agenda and re-election campaign.[[7]](https://capitalresearch.org/article/scott-walters-written-testimony-to-house-doge-subcommittee/#_edn7)

For instance, NextGen Climate America (aka, NextGen Policy) was awarded $6 million in 2024 for apprenticeship programs. This 501(c)(3) “charity”[[8]](https://capitalresearch.org/article/scott-walters-written-testimony-to-house-doge-subcommittee/#_edn8) is part of a network of nonprofits and PACs of similar name launched by Democratic megadonor Tom Steyer.[[9]](https://capitalresearch.org/article/scott-walters-written-testimony-to-house-doge-subcommittee/#_edn9)}:}:

After the 2024 election, NextGen’s executive director put out a statement declaring that the group was “incredibly disheartened” by Trump’s victory and that “clearly, this was not the outcome we hoped for.” Instead, he pledged the group would “fight for progressive policy change to address environmental, social, racial, gender, and economic inequities in California through justice-centered legislative advocacy, grassroots partnerships, and democratic civic engagement.”[[10]](https://capitalresearch.org/article/scott-walters-written-testimony-to-house-doge-subcommittee/#_edn10)}:

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EVIL BUT

Tom Steyer - InfluenceWatch

Thomas Fahr “Tom” Steyer is an American hedge-fund billionaire turned climate-change activist, and major political donor to environmental causes and Democrats advocating an environmentalist agenda to fight global warming.

Steyer made his fortune as the co-founder and senior managing partner of Farallon Capital Management, a hedge fund worth $30 billion. He sold his stake in the fund in order to focus on political, environmental and philanthropic causes including NextGen Climate Action, Advanced Energy Economy and Beneficial State Bank. With his wife Kathryn Taylor, he controls the TomKat Charitable Trust, which he uses to fund his policy advocacy.

Since 2008, Steyer has spent millions of dollars to influence presidential elections, state candidate campaigns, and ballot initiatives. His $74 million in contributions and expenditures on the 2014 midterm elections made Steyer the top political donor during that cycle.¹

Steyer’s turn toward climate change activism has been criticized as opportunistic and hypocritical because Farallon Capital had invested in companies that operated coal mines and coal-fired power plants from Indonesia to China between 1999 and 2014.²

Personal Life and Education

Thomas Fahr “Tom” Steyer was born in 1957 in New York City, New York and was the youngest of three boys.³ His parents were Marnie and Roy Henry Steyer.⁴ The elder Steyer worked as a corporate lawyer at Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented Goldman Sachs for decades.³

Tom Steyer attended Buckley, a, elite private boys’ school in Manhattan, followed by Phillips Exeter Academy.⁵ After graduating at the top of his class at Phillips Exeter Academy, Steyer attended Yale where graduated summa cum laude and was captain of the soccer team at Yale, then earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.³

He married Kathryn Taylor on August 16, 1986.⁴ The couple has four grown children.⁵ Steyer lives in San Francisco’s Sea Cliff neighborhood, in a house overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.⁶

His brother Jim Steyer is a law professor and the founder and C.E.O. of Common Sense Media, which rates movies, books, apps, and video games to help parents find age-appropriate material for their kids.⁶

Career

After graduating from Yale in 1979, Steyer worked as an analyst at Morgan Stanley for two years as an analyst. Then, after receiving his MBA from Stanford, he spent two years working at Goldman Sachs specializing in risk arbitrage.³

In 1986, Steyer moved to San Francisco and joined private equity firm Hellman & Friedman where he set up his own risk arbitrage fund, or hedge fund. That fund eventually became Farallon Capital Management, which he named after a group of islands 30 miles west of the Golden Gate Bridge.⁵

When Steyer sold his ownership stake in Farallon Capital Management in late 2012, the hedge fund was the fourth largest in the world, turning $8 million into $30 billion over 20 years.⁷ According to a 2014 report in the New York Times, Steyer continued as a “passive investor” in Farallon after selling his ownership stake.⁸ Forbes lists his net worth at $1.6 billion as of January 2019.⁹

Steyer is a member of the Stanford Advisory Council and was appointed to the Stanford Board of Trustees in 2007.¹⁰

Political Activities

Democratic Politics

Prior to working for Goldman Sachs in 1983, Steyer got a job working for former the 1984 Presidential campaign of former Vice President Walter Mondale (D) with the assistance of Robert Rubin, the future Treasury Secretary in the Clinton administration.³

In 2003, Steyer briefly considered running for governor of California during the recall election of Gov. Gray Davis (D), won by Arnold Schwarzenegger (R).¹¹

During the 2006 midterm elections, Steyer and former Clinton White Houseoperative Chris Lehane held a fundraiser in San Francisco for the reelection campaign of U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-California), attended by former President Bill Clinton. The following year, Steyer became a top donor to Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic Presidential primaries.³

Steyer served as a delegate to the Democratic National Conventions in 2004 and 2008.¹²

Obama Administration

According to emails released by Wikileaks, Center for American Progress (CAP) founder John Podesta pushed then-President-elect Barack Obama to name Tom Steyer as Energy Secretary in 2008, a post that eventually went to physicist Steven Chu. Podesta recommended Steyer for the Cabinet position again in 2013.¹³

California Political Activity

Steyer’s 2010 effort to defeat Proposition 23 in California, a proposal to delay implementation of certain environmentalist policies, is widely considered to be the start of his public climate change activism.⁵ He spent $5 million to fight the ballot initiative which would have rolled back new limits on greenhouse gas emissions.¹⁴ The $5 million was the single largest sum donated toward the initiative. Steyer also solicited $700,000 from Bill Gates and $500,000 from billionaire hedge fund manager Julian Robertson in the successful effort to defeat the proposition.⁵

While a Steyer-backed California ballot issue hiking tobacco taxes passed in 2016, and a few of his favored candidates won their elections, the 2016 election was seen as an overall disaster for Steyer’s environmental election agenda.¹⁵

Coal Mine Controversy

As Steyer’s environmental and political activism grew in the public eye, so did scrutiny of his wealth generated by Farallon Capital’s investment in coal mines and power plants. In 2004, Steyer became the target of left-wing attacks by student activists at both of Steyer’s alma maters, first at Yale then Stanford, when they learned the universities had millions invested in Farallon.³The activists started a website called unfarallon.info, and organized public protests and political theater events.³

The students’ push spread to other campuses, reportedly embarrassing Steyer and his wife, Kathryn, who were major donors to Democratic causes.¹⁴ Steyer gave up his ownership of Farallon Capital Management in late 2012.¹⁶

NextGen Climate PAC

Also see NextGen Climate Action Committee (PAC)

In 2013, Steyer created the NextGen Climate Action Committee, a PAC to support candidates who embraced climate change as a major issue. His $74 million spent during the 2014 midterm election cycle, including $67 million for NextGen Climate, made him the single biggest political donor that cycle. NextGen directed $25 million toward four Senate races and three gubernatorial races in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire and Illinois.¹Three of the seven NextGen Climate-supported candidates won in 2014, but Democrats suffered overall defeat, losing control of the Senate, and more seats in the House.¹

Steyer also mobilized his campaign contributions and his SuperPAC to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline. On April 3, 2013, he held a fundraiser at his home attended by President Barack Obama, where he and 15 top donors discussed their opposition to the proposed pipeline from Canada.⁶ Steyer backed U.S. Representative Ed Markey (D) in a special election for the U.S. Senate to succeed Sen. Mo Cowan (D-Massachusetts). Steyer had threatened to spend big money on Markey’s campaign, if his opponent, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Massachusetts), did not renounce his support for Keystone XL. Markey rejected Steyer’s support, saying the tactics have “no place in our political discourse and should be repudiated” and that “Mr. Steyer should immediately withdraw his threats and ultimatum, and stay out of this Senate race.”¹⁷

2016 General Election

During the 2016 election cycle, Steyer again topped all other political donors by spending $89,794,744.¹⁸ His NextGen Climate Action SuperPAC spent $33,119,385, leading all organizations funding outside spending groups.¹⁹ The Center for Responsive Politics classified all of the contributions as funding liberals.¹⁹

Steyer’s major goal in 2016 was to advance climate change as a top issue.²⁰ The widespread promotion of climate change as a major issue for the 2016 election was not reflected in polls, however, ranking near or at the bottom among issues that were most important to voters. Progressive magazine The New Republic reported climate change was discussed for “a scant 325 seconds” during the presidential debates.²¹

A 2016 report by the Energy and Environment Legal Institute showed that Steyer funded the Democratic National Committee and in turn, the DNC adopted Steyer’s agenda on climate change and renewable energy nearly word for word. Steyer also donated millions to candidates on the condition they accept his global warming agenda, and encouraged state Attorneys General to silence those who disagree with his environmental views.²²

Steyer and his NextGen Climate SuperPAC also joined forces with several outside groups in 2016 to influence the elections, including those listed here:

The Latino Victory Fund, a Democratic-leaning group associated with the New Venture Fund aimed at influencing Hispanic voters seen as a key demographic for Democrats and who Latino Victory officials say are disproportionately affected by environmental problems.²³
The AFL-CIO, with funding by Steyer for the For Our Future PAC, pledged to raise $50 million to elect a Democratic president. Seven member unions of the AFL-CIO which represent 1.5 million workers in the U.S. demanded that the labor federation cut ties with Steyer for his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.²⁴
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) received Steyer’s assistance for a $10 million effort to turn out voters for Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates in Colorado, Ohio and Pennsylvania through door knocking and phone banking in working-class communities, targeting African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Latinos. Steyer said of this partnership, “Stopping the Party of Trump is our number one priority this year.”²⁵

Impeach President Trump

In October 2017, Steyer called on Democratic lawmakers to impeach President Donald Trump if Democrats take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections.²⁶

At the Ohio Democratic Party 2019 State Dinner, Steyer claimed that “[w]e are in the fight of our lives” against Republicans in the 2020 presidential elections. “It’s scary for us, too,” Steyer continued, “because if they win, literally it could be the end of the world.” ^27

2017 Virginia Gubernatorial Election

Steyer announced in 2017 that NextGen America would make Democrat Ralph Northam’s Virginia gubernatorial campaign the top priority of his organization. It expressed a plan to spend upwards of $2 million on the election. Steyer said he supported Northam chiefly as an opposition to Republican candidate Ed Gillespie, who supported the Mountain Valley pipeline projects, despite the largely neutral stance that Northam himself took regarding the projects.²⁸

2020 Presidential Election

In July 2019, Steyer began his campaign to run for the Democratic Nomination during the 2020 presidential election. During his presidential campaign Steyer spent over $200 million on advertising, with over $20 million alone being spent on TV and radio ads in South Carolina and had reportedly spent nearly $13 million more on ads in Nevada than other candidates within the 2020 Democratic primary. ^29

In November 2019, Tom Steyer’s presidential campaign was reported by the Associated Press to have been privately offering campaign contributions to local Iowan politicians in exchange for endorsements. Among the politicians contacted by Pat Murphy, one of Steyer’s top campaign advisers, were former Democratic senator Tom Courtney, who was in the middle of a campaign for his old seat, and Rep. Karin Derry (D-IA). ^30

The campaign did not follow through with any of the offered contributions, and after various politicians reported it to the media Steyer’s campaign denied that they had been doing it. Adav Noti, the senior director and chief of staff at the Campaign Legal Center, told the Associated Pressthat such actions are not illegal, unless they made the contributions and did not disclose them or did not admit what the contributions were for. ^30

Later polling results during the primaries showed him losing the vote in South Carolina and Nevada, along with the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Following a lack of delegates and his loss in South Carolina, Steyer dropped out of the Democratic primary in February 2020. He later commented, “I said if I didn’t see a path to winning that I’d suspend my campaign…[a]nd honestly, I can’t see a path where I can win the presidency.” ^29

Sara Gideon Campaign Donation

In July 2020, Steyer was reported for illicitly contributing $16,800 over the federal campaign contribution limit to the campaign of Sara Gideon. ^31

Gideon is the current Maine House Speaker and is the Democratic nomination for a Maine Senate seat. Steyer received criticism for his contributions to Gideon’s campaign as Gideon has spoken out in the past against the involvement of wealthy donors and corporate PAC money in influencing campaigns. ^32

Philanthropy

Steyer’s primary personal philanthropic vehicle is his TomKat Charitable Trust, located in San Francisco, formed with his wife, Kathryn “Kat” Taylor. In 2008, the trust reported just over $153 million in net assets. In 2009, the value of its net assets exceeded $186 million; and in 2010, the value exceeded $203 million. In 2012, the trust had fallen back to $156 million in net assets, per its IRS disclosures.³³

Highlights of its 2012 grants include:

$250,000 to environmentalist activist group 350.orgin “general support”
$250,000 to the Aspen Global Change Institute (based in Basalt, Colorado) in support for its Energy Policy Project; this tax-exempt group organizes workshops for scientists and produces a variety of publications as part of its mission to further “the scientific understanding of Earth systems and global environmental change”
$392,000 for the Center for Ecoliteracy (based in Berkeley, Calif.; more on the Center appears below)
$2.5 million for the Clean Economy Network Educational Fund in “general support” (CENEF is the 501 (c)(3) arm of the Advanced Energy Economy, “a national association of business leaders who are making the global energy system more secure, clean, and affordable.”)
$200,000 in “program priorities” funding for the Energy Foundation; EF is “a partnership of philanthropic investors promoting clean energy technology [with the goal of building] a new energy future by advancing energy efficiency and renewable energy.”³³

Steyer founded two environmentalist energy research institutions at Stanford University, the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy and the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance.³⁴

In 2007, Steyer founded the Beneficial State Bank and Foundation, to benefit community development and underserved communities along the west coast.³⁵

Steyer and his wife intend to give much of their fortune away rather than leave it to their four children. In August, 2010 the couple signed on to Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s “Giving Pledge,” which is a promise to donate the majority of their wealth to charitable and nonprofit activities during their lifetimes⁵

Steyer co-founded Advanced Energy Economy (AEE) in 2011 to raise awareness of the public benefits and opportunities of advanced energy. The AEE board of directors includes former Obama Administration Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson.³⁶

In January, 2016, the Washington Free Beacon reported that AEE and the EPA coordinated to undermine agency critics over a regulation on the U.S. power grid. Emails obtained by the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute revealed that Arvin Ganesan, AEE vice president for federal policy and a former EPA executive emailed EPA and White House staffers in January 2015, about rebutting a study from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). The study questioned the impact of EPA regulations on electrical grid reliability and suggested the rule’s implementation be delayed.³⁷

Steyer is on the Board of Directors of the Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta, a former official from the Clinton and Obama White Houses.³⁸

References

---

[### What Is California's Trump Tax Loophole? (And - Tom Steyer

Substack · Tom Steyer

30+ likes · 1 week ago](https://tomsteyer.substack.com/p/what-is-californias-trump-tax-loophole)

Unlike my opponents, I'm free to say the truth: these backroom corporate giveaways are hurting California, and I'll end them.

[### Tom Steyer running for California governor as a populist ...

PBS

https://www.pbs.org › newshour › politics › tom-steyer-...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/tom-steyer-running-for-california-governor-as-a-populist-billionaire)

Nov 19, 2025 — Billionaire businessman and activist Tom Steyer, who once self-financed an unsuccessful White House campaign and spent his own money ...Read more

---

[### Tom Steyer - Proud Californian and relentless optimist who ...

LinkedIn · Tom Steyer

34.8K+ followers](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomsteyer)

In 1986, Tom founded Farallon Capital Management, a San Francisco-based hedge fund that pioneered the multi-strategy approach to investing.Read more

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DUCK 3 26

CalMatters

https://calmatters.org › politics › 2026 › 01 › governor-steyer-electricity-rates

Can candidate Tom Steyer slash California power bills by 25%?

Jan 29, 2026In summary California has the second-highest electricity bills in the nation, and no candidate for governor has honed in as much as climate investor Tom Steyer. But is his promise to cut bills 25% realistic?

The American Spectator

https://spectator.org › tom-steyers-affordable-energy-promises-to-california-are-unaffordable

Tom Steyer's Affordable Energy Promises to California Are Unaffordable

Dec 19, 2025Tom Steyer, the billionaire climate activist running for California governor, promises to cut electric bills by 25 percent by breaking up big utility companies like PG&E and Southern California ...

The Sacramento Observer

https://sacobserver.com › 2026 › 03 › qa-with-billionaire-tom-steyer-the-only-question-i-ask-is-whats-good-for-working-californians

Q&A With Billionaire Tom Steyer: "The Only Question I Ask Is What's ...

1 day agoAs California's 2026 gubernatorial contest takes shape, candidates are offering competing visions for addressing some of the state's most persistent challenges, including housing costs, homelessness, public safety, education and economic inequality. Tom Steyer, a billionaire investor and longtime political activist, says his campaign is focused on affordability and what he describes as ...

The Sacramento Bee

https://www.sacbee.com › opinion › article313732244.html

Steyer's 25% cut claim faces scrutiny in California campaign ...

Dec 22, 2025In the context of current California politics, and past failures to make our energy cheaper, Steyer's latest campaign pledge is not surprising or particularly original.

caenergyfactcheck.com

https://www.caenergyfactcheck.com

California Energy Fact Check

The California Electric Utility Industry Labor Management Cooperation Committee has launched the "California Energy Fact Check" website and on social media (@caenergyfacts on X, Facebook, and Instagram, and @CAEnergyFacts.bsky.social on Bluesky).

EID Climate

https://eidclimate.org › as-california-democrats-move-to-center-on-energy-amidst-affordability-concerns-billionaire-tom-steyer-misses-the-mark

As California Democrats Move to Center on Energy Amidst Affordability ...

Nov 21, 2025This week, San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer officially announced his bid for California governor, putting energy and climate policy at the top of the ballot during a time when the state's officials are pivoting towards practical energy solutions.

The Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com › opinion › usurping-electric-utilities-is-a-fools-errand-california-steyer-96951f7c

Usurping Electric Utilities Is a Fool's Errand - WSJ

Dec 10, 2025Tom Steyer's rejoinder to Allysia Finley is a smorgasbord of farfetched promises ("My Plan to Make California Affordable Again," Letters, Dec. 1). But his desire to break up the state's ...

SFGATE

https://www.sfgate.com › politics › article › tom-steyer-pge-villain-campaign-21239829.php

Tom Steyer chooses PG&E as villain for his California governor campaign

Dec 15, 2025Tom Steyer, the billionaire gubernatorial candidate, skewers energy utilities and high electricity costs in a new ad spot for his California campaign.

Tom Steyer

https://www.tomsteyer.com › issues

Issues | Tom Steyer for Governor

Tom Steyer's plans for housing, corporate tax reform, lower electric bills, education, immigration, climate, and healthcare in California.

San Francisco Examiner

https://www.sfexaminer.com › news › politics › 2026-california-governor-race-tom-steyer-interview › article_25eaac3a-8997-4072-9b61-91935d4f7100.html

Tom Steyer pledges more housing in California governor bid | Politics ...

Feb 12, 2026Tom Steyer is usually described in two ways: as a climate activist and as a billionaire. Steyer doesn't shy away from the fact that he's ultrawealthy and, just a few years after his failed ...

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note rubber glue inverse re billionaire eg koch [// soros?]

alec energy bills ref chris?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-battle-for-solar-energy-in-the-countrys-sunniest-state

The Battle for Solar Energy in the Country’s Sunniest State

By Carolyn Kormann

October 24, 2018

Despite the rapid decline in the cost of solar-energy technology and battery storage, Arizona gets only six per cent of its electricity from solar.

In late September, the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank that receives donations from fossil-fuel companies, published a blog post titled “California Billionaire’s Renewable Energy Initiative Makes Arizona Ballot.” The billionaire in question was Tom Steyer, whose year-long effort to pass Proposition 127, an amendment to Arizona’s constitution that would require power companies togenerate fifty per cent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030,has faced aggressive opposition from the state’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service, or A.P.S.

The blog post lamented a failed lawsuit filed by Arizonans for Affordable Energy, a political-action committee funded by A.P.S.’s parent company, to keep Prop 127 off the ballot,and quoted several opponents who believed the measure, now up for a vote in November, would be a costly mistake.

“Prop 127would tie Arizona’s future to technologies that do not deliver baseload electricity,” Mark Finchem, a Republican state representative, said, “and are arguably worse for the environment as a whole than the dependable technologies we already have.” The photograph accompanying the post depicted a wind-turbine farm, and, in the foreground, a dead bald eagle.

Arizona is the sunniest state in the country, with more than three hundred bluebird days per year. It is also projected to endure an additional month of hundred-degree days in the coming decades owing to climate change. Yet, despite the rapid decline in the cost of solar-energy technology and battery storage—to the point that, as an A.P.S. director told me, it now frequently outbids fossil fuels, even natural gas—in 2017, Arizona generated only six per cent of its electricity from solar, according to the ballot initiative’s advocates. The state currently requires utilities to generate eight per cent of their power from sources like solar and wind, scaling up to fifteen per cent by 2025. Natural gas, the largest source of Arizona’s net electricity generation, is imported from out of state. “Our most abundant resource in Arizona is our sunshine,” D. J. Quinlan, a spokesman for Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona, the Phoenix-based political-action committee that Steyer is funding, said. “We need a nationwide transition to renewables. One of the first places we should be doing it is where it’s most efficient and cost-effective, and that’s here.”

Carolyn Kormann is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

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https://www.expressnews.com/business/eagle-ford-energy/article/Inside-Exxon-Mobil-s-fight-to-stop-climate-12994450.php

BUSINESS

Inside Exxon Mobil’s fight to stop climate change litigation in its tracks

James Osborne

Staff Writer

June 15, 2018

[FILE - In this May 31, 2006 file photo, an ice sculpture fashioned by protesters, to demonstrate their view of how the company's policies are affecting the environment, slowly melts outside the Exxon Mobil shareholders meeting in Dallas. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled Friday, April 13, 2018, that Exxon Mobil must hand over documents for Attorney General Maura Healey's probe into whether the company misled investors and consumers about what it knew about the link between fossil fuels and climate change. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)]

WASHINGTON — Imagine this storyline: One of the largest oil companies in the world becomes the victim of a left-wing conspiracy, funded by wealthy liberals who convince Democratic attorneys general across the nation to sue the company to stop it from offering different views about climate change.

What sounds like the stuff of a bad Hollywood thriller is, in fact, the narrative Exxon Mobil’s attorneys are telling as they seek to defend the company from mryiad lawsuits and investigations into what oil companies knew about climate change and when they knew it. With a surprising procedural victory in a Texas court recently, Exxon is attempting to gain greater latitude in what it and other oil companies can say — or not say — about climate change and the impact on their businesses, seeking to build on legal rulings that have expanded corporations’ rights of free speech in recent years, legal scholars say.

The U.S. government has long limited First Amendment protections for corporations, prohibiting them from making false statements to further business interests — a staple of U.S. consumer protection laws going back to the days of snake-oil salesmen peddling so-called magic elixirs. But Exxon’s case could test how far the courts are willing to go to uphold governments’ ability to regulate commercial speech.

Exxon is arguing that the state and local governments suing the company have gone too far, trying to impose an Orwellian code of conduct to drown out those who call attention to uncertainties about how climate change will play out over the long term and affect the global economy.

“Exxon is framing (climate change) as a legitimate political debate in which they are a participant, rather than a for-profit company trying to make a buck,” said Tamara Piety, a law professor at University of Tulsa. “There has been a growing movement (among corporations) to raise the First Amendment. If something can be proven to be unconstitutional it’s completely off the table”

Over the past two decades, companies have successfully used the free speech strategy to challenge government regulations on everything from the placement of workplace signs explaining employee rights to the distribution of patients’ medical data. A key win for corporate America came in 2010 Citizens United case, when the Supreme Court ruled that limits on corporate spending in political campaigns violated companies’ free speech rights.

Now Exxon is seeking to expand corporate rights one step further, arguing that the government legal action, based on the company’s past statements, is little more than leverage to get oil companies to agree to a wide-arching climate change deal that would restrict what they can say about the issue — in violation of “of Exxon Mobil’s constitutional rights.” That includes investigations launched by the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general into whether Exxon lied to shareholders and consumers about the risks of climate change to the environment and its business, and lawsuits filed by cities and counties in California and Colorado, which are seeking damages from Exxon and other oil companies for the costs of rising sea levels and increased wildfires.

Exxon in January asked a state court in Fort Worth to order more than a dozen city and county officials from California to sit for depositions by Exxon’s attorneys to determine whether they are conspiring with plaintiffs’ attorneys and environmentalist activists to force Exxon into accepting a deal. A New York federal judge in March dismissed a similar request by Exxon to depose the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general, ruling it was based on “extremely thin allegations and speculative inference,” but the Texas judge, R.H. Wallace Jr., decided to give the company more room to prove its claim, ruling in April that Exxon could begin making requests to depose specific officials.

Exxon declined to comment. But James Coleman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and a contributor to the conservative Federalist Society, said Exxon, which has come out in support of the Paris climate accords and a national carbon tax, is simply protecting its First Amendment rightsto communicate about climate change and the effects on its finances as it sees fit.

“It’s an unusual claim (by Exxon) but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” he said. “The government can make you give accurate information, but the government can’t force you to say things you disagree with. For instance, the government couldn’t make Exxon say climate change is the defining challenge of our time, even if they consider it a fact.”

San Francisco and other California communities are challenging Wallace’s ruling in the Texas 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, potentially setting the case on a path to the Texas Supreme Court. And considering the political makeup of the state’s high court, Exxon stands a good chance of winning its argument, said Tom McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas, who sits on an advisory board to the California plaintiffs.

“It presents a very sympathetic venue,” he said. “It’s a pro-business Supreme Court.”

Conspiracy

The case in Texas comes three years into a legal campaign against Exxon and other oil companies. In Exxon’s telling, it all stems from meeting of environmental activists in the beach town ofLa Jolla, California, in 2012.

Activists and attorneys discussed a strategy for addressing climate change based on the tobacco lawsuits of the 1990s, which successfully argued tobacco companies were liable for smokers’ deaths because executives knew the risks but still claimed publicly they did not, according to an account of the meeting published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group that helped organize the event

If Exxon and other oil companies could be shown to have known the risks to health and safety of climate change but did nothing to warn the public and investors, then perhaps activists could create a groundswell of public outrage to change the political and economic landscape for oil companies, much as they had for tobacco companies.

“We wrote up a report so other lawyers and policymakers could pick up on those lessons (from tobacco) and use them, like you would any science you would hope is actionable,” said Peter Frumhoff, head of policy and science at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “The first tenet of good science is being transparent.”

But the activists also gave Exxon a potential weapon to counterattack.

The company’s lawyers have focused on one line in the Union of Concerned Scientists account, in which activists describe how they could could use litigation for “maintaining pressure on the industry that could eventually lead to its support for legislative and regulatory responses to global warming.” That game plan, Exxon lawyers said, was then adopted by government prosecutors, including former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who recently resigned amid allegations of sexual abuse.

Wallace, the Texas judge, agreed with the company lawyers, writing that environmentalists who attended the La Jollameeting “aimed to chill and suppress Exxon Mobil’s speech.”

California and Colorado officials dismiss Exxon’s legal maneuvers as little more than intimidation tactics aimed at frightening and bogging them down in paperwork. A spokesman for the New York Attorney General’s Office called Exxon’s strategy an attempt to “distract and deflect from the facts at hand.”

Public opinion

Within conservative circles, Exxon’s conspiracy message seems to be gaining traction.

Earlier this year, David Bookbinder, an attorney with the libertarian Niskanen Center, filed suit against Exxon and the Canadian oil company Suncor, claiming they were responsible for the costs sustained by Colorado local governments in fighting wildfires and other effects of climate change.

A few weeks later, he began seeing his name pop up on conservative websites, including theDaily Caller and one owned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Articles suggested Bookbinder and his colleagues were part of a conspiracy funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a New York charity with more than $800 million in assets that is overseen by the descendants of the late oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, whose Standard Oil was the precursor to Exxon Mobil.

The claim was based on a $200,000 grant the Niskanen Center received shortly before the Colorado lawsuit was filed. Bookbinder said the grant had nothing to do with the lawsuit and scoffed at the idea his plaintiffs were part of a conspiracy to damage Exxon.

“My clients don’t want Exxon out of business,” he said. “Then they don’t get paid.”

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund said in a statement that it does consider a willingness to take oil companies to court in awarding grants to climate activists. “Litigation is one tool that can help to level the playing field by leaning into legal standards that are meant to serve the common good,” the statement said.

In its legal filings, Exxon maintains that the Rockefellers and the hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, who is funding a campaign to impeach President Donald Trump, are behind the wave of litigation. Exxon lawyers cited a $30,000 campaign donation Steyer made to a former mayor of San Francisco shortly before that city filed suit, as well as a Columbia Journalism School investigation into how Exxon’s past statements questioning climate science conflicted with what its scientists were saying internally.

The Rockefeller Family Fund, another charity controlled by Rockefeller descendants, funded the Columbia investigation.

There’s nothing illegal about using money to try to influence a company’s behavior. But that’s besides the point for Exxon. Just as climate activists succeeded in convincing more Americans that climate change is a large and growing threat, Exxon wants to promote the idea of a liberal conspiracy to undermine a fossil fuel industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people and literally fuels the U.S. and global economies.

Exxon is now considering an appeal of a ruling by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that found the state’s attorney general’s office had not violated the company’s constitutional rights when it demanded the company turn over documents. Such an appeal would go to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Exxon’s success in convincing the public of its liberal conspiracy narrative could make the difference between winning and losing.

“I don’t think the Supreme Court is completely oblivious to public opinion,” said Piety, the Tulsa law professor, “and the more Exxon can marshal public opinion, the better chance they have of convincing the courts.”

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an 621

As what the National Weather Service described as "dangerous and record-breaking heat" affects 50 million people across the Western United States even before the first day of summer, climate experts and activists are using the hot conditions to reiterate warnings and calls for policy change as scientists are seeing their dire predictions come true.

"The current heatwave and drought leave no doubt, we are living the dangerous effects of the climate crisis," activist and former Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer tweeted Friday. "Action is urgently needed."

Steyer shared a Thursday New York Times report on the extreme heat that also caught the attention of Campaign for Nature director Brian O'Donnell, who warned that in the absence of bold action to address the climate emergency, "this will all get much worse."...

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selectively cited by shillenberger

nyt

july 4, 2014

To environmentalists across Australia, it is a baffling anachronism in an era of climate change: the construction of a 4,000-acre mine in New South Wales that will churn out carbon-laden coal for the next 30 years.

The mine’s groundbreaking, in a state forest this year, inspired a veteran to stand in front of a bulldozer and a music teacher to chain himself to a piece of excavation equipment.

But the project had an unlikely financial backer in the United States, whose infusion of cash helped set it in motion: Tom Steyer, the most influential environmentalist in American politics, who has vowed to spend $100 million this year to defeat candidates who oppose policies to combat climate change.

Mr. Steyer, a billionaire former hedge fund manager, emerged this election season as the green-minded answer to Charles G. and David H. Koch, the patrons of conservative Republican politics, after vowing that he would sell off his investments in companies that generate fossil fuels like coal.

But an examination of those investments shows that even after his highly public divestment, the coal-related projects his firm bankrolled will generate tens of millions of tons of carbon pollution for years, if not decades, to come.

Over the past 15 years, Mr. Steyer’s fund, Farallon Capital Management, has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into companies that operate coal mines and coal-fired power plants from Indonesia to China, records and interviews show.

The expected life span of those facilities, some of which may run through 2030, could cloud Mr. Steyer’s image as an environmental savior and the credibility of his clean-energy message, which has won him access to the highest levels of American government. A few weeks ago, Mr. Steyer, 56, joined President Obama for an intimate group dinner at the White House that ran into the early morning hours, according to people told of the event.

The New York Times examined the operations of coal-mining companies in which Faralloninvested or to which it lent money during Mr. Steyer’s stewardship, which coincided with growing demand and prices for coal. Together, those mines have increased their annual production by about 70 million tons since they received money from the hedge fund, according to corporate records, government data and interviews with industry experts.

That is more than the amount of coal consumed annually by Britain.

“I am disappointed, I have to say,” said Dale Jamieson, a professor of environmental studies at New York University, who said he admired Mr. Steyer’s campaign to curb climate change. When it comes to large-scale investments in coal, Professor Jamieson said, “you can’t undo what you’ve done in the past.”

Mr. Steyer sold his ownership stake in Farallon in late 2012, but he has not cut ties with it entirely. He remains a passive investor, his aides said, though they declined to describe the size of his investment. Employees at Farallon screen out any fossil-fuel-related holdings from his portfolio, and he no longer earns a share of the profits from the fund, the aides said.

Farallon is still invested in carbon-generating industries, and the aides declined to say whether Mr. Steyer had asked it to sell those holdings, a request that would presumably hold significant sway given his role as a founder.

The Australian mine, known as Maules Creek, illustrates the complexities of Mr. Steyer’s efforts to distance himself. Farallon was a major investor in a 2009 deal aimed at developing the mine, lending an Australian entrepreneur hundreds of millions of dollars to buy out the previous owner, according to people involved in the transaction. Eventually, the entrepreneur took the mine public, turning Farallon’s investment into a large profit. An executive involved in the original deal estimated that Farallon earned tens of millions of dollars.

Farallon remains an investor in Maules Creek to this day. Mining at the site, expected to start in 2015, will last up to 30 years, yield as much as 13 million tons of coal a year and generate about 30 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to Ian Lowe, the former head of the School of Science at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. (The company that owns the mine, Whitehaven Coal, disputes the carbon dioxide projection.)

Given Mr. Steyer’s reputation as an active environmentalist, Australian opponents of the mine were startled to learn of his firm’s role as an early investor.

“It’s gobsmacking,” Philip Spark, president of the Northern Inland Council for the Environment, a nonprofit trying to stop construction of the mine, said in a telephone interview. “It’s amazing that such a person could have been involved in this project.”

Mark Carnegie, an investment banker in Australia who was involved in the Maules Creek deal, said he could sense even then that Mr. Steyer was struggling to reconcile his motivations as a profit-seeking investor with his growing anxieties about the environment.

But the investment was financially irresistible. “It was a hard thing to turn down,” Mr. Carnegie said. “It was a huge winning bet for Farallon.”

Asked why Mr. Steyer had allowed Farallon to pursue such investments in recent years, Heather Wong, a spokeswoman for Mr. Steyer’s political organization, NextGen Climate, said, “Given how major global funds are structured, they are by definition invested in every sector of the economy, which is why Tom stepped down in 2012.”

When Mr. Steyer founded NextGen Climate in 2013, the environmental movement found what it had long lacked and sorely wanted: a determined political combatant with a willingness to raise and spend campaign money at a level never before seen by traditional environmental groups. An Upper East Side native educated at Yale and Stanford, Mr. Steyer glided through jobs at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs in the 1980s before plunging into the relatively new world of hedge funds. Since he founded it in 1986, Farallon — named for a set of rocky islands off the California coast — has grown to manage as much as $37 billion, from about $15 million in the beginning.

Mr. Steyer at the NextGen Climate Action office in San Francisco in February.

Credit

Jason Henry for The New York Times

Image

Throughout the early 2000s, the fund offered large, typically high-interest loans to companies seeking to buy undervalued coal mines in Indonesia, which was still rebounding from the Asian financial crisis. The buyouts proved profitable for Farallon, but they also encouraged the new owners of the mines to increase coal production in order to generate revenue to repay the loans, according to executives who participated in the buyouts.

In 2004, for example, Farallon lent at least $60 million to a group of investors buying an Indonesian coal-mining company called Berau, giving the fund a right to a stake in the company, according to people involved in the deal. Within a few years, Berau’s value had doubled, delivering a hefty return for Farallon. Berau quickly sped up its operations: Its coal production soared to 20 million tons in 2012 from about nine million tons in 2004.

Roger Suyama, a former Merrill Lynch banker who was involved in the Berau buyout, said Farallon was “like an anchor in the Indonesian coal industry.”

“By drawing money to an overlooked sector,” he said, “they helped expand the coal industry there.”

As with those in coal mining, Mr. Steyer’s investments in coal-fired power will reverberate far into the future.

Farallon invested in a subsidiary of Indiabulls, an Indian financial conglomerate, in 2008, just as the subsidiary began expanding into coal-fired power. Two years later, Indiabulls began construction on two massive coal-fired power plants: the 2,700-megawatt Amravati plant in central India and the 1,350-megawatt Nasik plant outside Mumbai. When completed, Amravati is expected to be one of the largest coal-fired power plants in India.

Indiabulls has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with a government-owned electric utility, locking in two decades of carbon pollution. It took a similar approach in China.

In 2007, Farallon provided funds for the sale of Meiya Power, an electric utility that operates four large coal-fired power plants, which collectively produce about 7,000 megawatts of power. Combined, the completed Indiabulls and Meiya plants will produce about 60 million tons of carbon pollution a year, according to Dallas Burtraw, an analyst at Resources for the Future, a research organization in Washington.

The Republican candidates Mr. Steyer is targeting in this year’s midterm elections said such investments deeply undermined his cause.

“It blows a hole in his credibility,” said Representative Cory Gardner,a Senate candidate in Colorado, whose Democratic rival, Senator Mark Udall, has benefited from $100,000 from Mr. Steyer’s political organization. “You can’t claim you are a great environmentalist and invest in the very same technologies you are railing against.”

Republican leaders and their allies are drawing up plans to cast Mr. Steyer as a hypocrite. In North Carolina,Thom Tillis, a Senate candidate, said he intended to portray his opponent, Senator Kay Hagan, and Mr. Steyer as “people who say one thing and do another.”

At the same time, conservative groups and blogs are scouring Mr. Steyer’s business record. One blog, Power Line, has written extensively about Farallon’s work in the coal industry.

In interviews, several prominent environmentalists argued that Mr. Steyer’s unrivaled spending to support climate-change policies outweighed the impact of the carbon pollution unleashed by his past investments.

“This is precisely what we want people to do: sell investments in fossil fuels and get to work solving the problem of climate change,” said Bill McKibben, a founder of the group 350.org, which pushes financial institutions to divest from fossil fuels.

Supporters point to the $25 million campaign Mr. Steyer organized four years ago to defeat a California ballot initiative that would have gutted the state’s landmark climate-change law. The law remained in place and is projected to cut about 30 million tons of carbon emissions by 2020. This year, Mr. Steyer plans to spend four times as much in support ofMr. Obama’s plan to reduce emissions from about 600 coal-fired power plants — a plan expected to eliminate 220 million tons of carbon pollution a year.

2018 major donor

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/31/steyer-democrats-millions-midterms-751245

.... Steyer plans to spend at least $110 million in 2018, making the billionaire investor the largest single source of campaign cash on the left and placing him on a path to create a parallel party infrastructure with polling, analytics and staffing capabilities that stand to shape and define the issues the party runs on in November.

Steyer is building out an operation that’s bigger than anyone's other than the Koch brothers' — and the billionaire and his aides believe the reservoir of nontraditional voters he’s already activated could become the overriding factor in House and other races across the country.

Unlike the $80 million being spent by Michael Bloomberg on House Democratic races, Steyer will put his cash toward building out NextGen America and Need to Impeach, his two growing political organizations, as well as funding clean-energy ballot initiatives in Arizona and Nevada. Steyer has already doubled his initial $20 million investment in Need to Impeach to $40 million and has not ruled out adding more.Yet Steyer’s oversize role also stands to position him squarely against Democratic Party leadership, which has shown little appetite for pursuing one of his signature causes: impeachment.

Steyer already dropped over $5 million into his For Our Future PAC, and he is expecting more outlays on behalf of individual candidates — such as the $1 million he put behind Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum — though likely not in any of the remaining primaries.

Between the two organizations, he’ll have close to 1,000 people on staff, in addition to over 2,000 volunteers. The Need to Impeach email list alone has already topped 5.5 million, which its research — anyone who signs up with the effort has their information run through a series of voter files and other databases — shows includes a very exact 697,780 infrequent voters in the 63 most competitive House districts.

“Our list is bigger than the NRA’s — and we’re going to make sure that it votes that way in 2018,” said Kevin Mack, lead strategist for Need to Impeach.

...

LAT

California Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica) saw the legislation through the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee, of which he is chairman. It passed the Senate 26-12 and the Assembly 51-26.

Several grassroots groups, including California Common Cause, Move to Amend and Money Out, Voters In, have pushed to get the measure on the ballot in California and in other states across the country. Organizers say they’re holding meetings, rallies and attending events like county fairs to educate people. There is a proposition campaign kickoff planned at Los Angeles City Hall on Sept. 18.

Campaign records show only $10,000 had been raised to drum up support for Proposition 59 before California billionaire Tom Steyer joined the effort in early September and gave $61,000. No one has spent money opposing it.

A billionaire environmentalist is spending big money in California to skewer presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump—the latest volley in a barrage of anti-Trump advertising that has saturated TV airwaves.

The billionaire? Tom Steyer, who has so far contributed $24 million to his personal super PAC, NextGen Climate Action Committee. That ranks him among the top contributors to all super PACs so far this election.

NextGen Climate Action Committee says it acts “politically to prevent climate disaster and promote prosperity for every American.”

But the Spanish-language ad sponsored by NextGen Climate Action Committee depicts Trump calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and announcing plans for a “deportation force”—a clear departure from the super PAC’s typical environment-focused messaging.

The ad then cuts to Steyer himself who, in Spanish, encourages Californians to vote.

During the 2014 midterm elections, no person funneled more traceable money into federal elections than Steyer. He spent more than $73 million that year backing Democratic candidates concerned about rising global temperatures — exceeding what individual conservative megadonors spent backing Republicans.

Yet, a majority of the candidates Steyer backed lost their races, and Democrats failed to retain control of the U.S. Senate.

Steyer appears ready to double down on politics in 2016, despite a low return on his previous investment: NextGen Climate Action will invest $25 million in get-out-the-vote efforts, and Steyer himself said he plans to spend more money on this election cycle than he did the last one.

The ad’s sponsor

Technically sponsoring the ad is NextGen California Action Committee, a super PAC operating under the “NextGen” umbrella.

NextGen Climate Action first formed in 2013 as two entities: a 501(c)(4) nonprofit and a super PAC, NextGen Climate Action Committee.

The super PAC made a splash in 2014 when it raised about $78 million amid hotly contested U.S. Senate races, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Some of the money—about $17.6 million directly attacked Republicans. That included spending $100,000 to build a “Noah’s Ark”—literally, a giant wooden boat on wheels —that traveled throughout Florida, taunting Republican Gov. Rick Scott.