Billionaire hedge-fund manager Tom Steyer has now spent over $195 million on advertising alone in his California gubernatorial campaign — twenty times more than his leading Democratic rival Xavier Becerra — and he's currently sitting in third place in the polls. The man who built his entire political brand on lecturing Americans about wasteful spending just lit nearly $200 million on fire and has nothing to show for it but a participation trophy.
You genuinely cannot make this stuff up.
According to The Spectator, Steyer's total personal spending on the 2026 governor's race has ballooned to $213 million, with $195 million of that going to media buys that apparently nobody in California is watching. The Public Policy Institute of California's latest poll has him ranked third — behind candidates who spent a fraction of what he did. Xavier Becerra, his leading Democratic opponent, has spent roughly one-twentieth of Steyer's ad budget and is beating him.
Let me do that math for you one more time, because it's genuinely beautiful. Twenty times the spending. Third place.
This isn't even Steyer's first rodeo at the money-bonfire. Back in 2020, he torched $340 million on a presidential campaign that went absolutely nowhere. So his combined political spending is now well north of half a billion dollars, and the man's lifetime electoral record is a perfect zero wins.
The Spectator's Cockburn column made a point that deserves repeating: Steyer would literally do more good for Californians if he just took that $195 million and bought people houses. His own campaign tagline says "Tom is running for Governor because Californians can no longer afford to live here." You know what might help them afford to live there, Tom? Two hundred million dollars in housing instead of two hundred million dollars in television ads they're skipping past to watch Netflix.
But that's the thing about billionaire vanity campaigns. They're not really about helping anyone. They're about a rich guy who made his fortune as a hedge-fund manager deciding he deserves to run things, and being genuinely confused when voters don't agree.
Steyer has pledged to lower costs, cut electrical bills, build affordable homes, expand healthcare access, and — my personal favorite — "make billionaires like me pay more taxes." Here's a thought, Tom. You could just write a check to the IRS tomorrow morning. Nobody's stopping you. You don't need the governor's mansion for that.
With five days until Election Day in California, Steyer is staring down the barrel of his second catastrophic, nine-figure political failure. At this rate, the man is on pace to spend a billion dollars on politics before he ever wins a single race.
Some people buy yachts. Some people buy islands. Tom Steyer buys elections — he just never wins them.
