The billionaire environmental activist is leaning hard into economic populism.
By Noah Baustin
SAN FRANCISCO — You can measure how far Democrats have retreated from climate politics in one name: Tom Steyer.
The billionaire environmental activist who built his political profile on climate change — and who wrote in his book last year that “climate is what matters most right now, and nothing else comes close” — didn’t mention the issue once in the video launching his campaign for California governor. That was no oversight.
Instead, he leaned hard into economic populism, criticizing the rich and aiming to tap into the magic that powered the likes of Sen. John Fetterman to office in Pennsylvania and is the bedrock of other 2026 hopefuls, like Graham Platner in the Senate race in Maine.
“Everyone knows that this race is really about affordability,” Steyer’s campaign strategist Rebecca Katz said in an interview. “Tom wants to get back to basics.”
It’s a far cry from Steyer’s 2020 presidential campaign, when he proclaimed climate his No. 1 priority, vowed to declare a climate emergency on day one, and pressed Joe Biden on his climate credentials. But it reflects a political reality confronting Democrats ahead of the midterms, where one-time climate evangelists are running into an electorate more worried about the climbing cost of electricity bills and home insurance than a warming atmosphere.
Even in the coastal Golden State, where climate change has animated governors of both parties for decades, Public Policy Institute of California polling in October found just 2 percent of likely voters rank the environment, pollution and global warming as the most important issue facing Californians, far behind cost of living, the economy and inflation.
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Climate concern has fallen in the state over time. In 2018, when Gov. Gavin Newsom was running for office, polling found that 57 percent of likely California voters considered climate change a very serious threat to the economy and quality of life for the state’s future. Now, that figure is 50 percent.
Allies see Steyer’s approach as politically savvy.
“If you’re talking about climate when people are paying too much for rent, they’re just going to roll their eyes and say, ‘Whatever’,” said former state Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, who first met Steyer in 2015 at the United Nations climate conference in Paris.
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It isn’t just Steyer who’s backing away from climate, either. Democrats in Sacramento this year pared back the landmark California Environmental Quality Act, a major blow to environmentalists already weathering attacks from the Trump administration across the board. Newsom, while embracing the role of climate champion at the international climate talks in Brazil, has infuriated climate activists at home with his turn from an oil industry critic to a more moderate approach. No candidate to succeed him is seizing the climate mantle.
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Newsom acknowledged the polls are pointing Democrats to focus on other issues besides climate: “There’s not a poll or a pundit that suggests that Democrats should be talking about this,” Newsom told POLITICO ahead of the United Nations climate talks. “I’m not naive to that either, but I think it’s the way we talk about it that’s the bigger issue, and I think all of us, including myself, need to improve on that and that’s what I aim to do.”
