Billionaire Tom Steyer spent a record-shattering $216 million on his run for California governor, but fell short in the June 2 primary, failing to reach the November ballot. With more than 1.9 million votes counted by Tuesday evening, he lagged behind Steve Hi
On June 2. Californians couldn’t quite escape Tom Steyer—his ads threaded through newscasts. sitcoms. sporting events. streaming services. YouTube. influencers’ social feeds. and even the Puppy Bowl. It was relentless by design. and by the time the primary ended. Steyer’s campaign had spent $216 million of his own wealth trying to turn that saturation into power.
He didn’t get there.
Despite the spending. the Democrat failed to win enough votes in last week’s primary to advance to the November general election to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom. As the outcome became official on Tuesday. Steyer told supporters he was grateful for their efforts backing his campaign. endorsements. and votes.
“Together. we fought for a California that belongs to the people who keep it running every day. and we insisted that they do not have to settle for a system that protects corporate profits at the expense of working people. ” Steyer wrote. “I’m proud of how we never compromised our values or lowered our sights for what California can and should be.”.
Steyer pointed to major corporations he said spent heavily—naming Chevron and Meta—as he built his argument that opponents had poured “tens of millions of dollars” into attacking him. He also leaned into a theme that shaped his candidacy from the start: that voters were being asked to trust a billionaire who was running as an outsider to the political order.
“I’m proud of the enemies we made,” he said. “This campaign proved that business-as-usual depends on politics-as-usual, and there is no going back.”
He added that the fight would continue for a system where democracy serves Californians instead of corporations, and where, in his words, people don’t have to be billionaires to run on “single-payer,” “breaking up monopolies,” or “calling out a corrupt system when you see it.”
By Tuesday evening. Steyer had received more than 1.9 million votes out of more than 9 million cast. lagging behind the two candidates who will appear on the November ballot: Republican Steve Hilton. a former Fox News commentator. and Democrat Xavier Becerra. a longtime elected official who most recently served in President Biden’s cabinet. Steyer trailed Hilton, the second-place finisher, by just over 200,000 votes.
Steyer immediately endorsed Becerra, the same figure he had relentlessly attacked in the closing weeks of the campaign as beholden to corporations with business in front of the governor.
Even before the money-and-messages question took center stage, Steyer’s numbers showed how close he came—then stalled. In a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies survey co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. Steyer polled at 1% shortly before entering the governor’s race in November. He climbed in subsequent polls. reaching 19% in the same poll shortly before the June 2 primary. putting him in contention for one of the top two spots.
Then, the momentum ran into a ceiling.
Shifting voters from skepticism proved harder than outspending opponents. Marketing professor Andrea Godfrey Flynn of the University of San Diego said the money boosted Steyer “way up,” but that “there are so many other factors at play that it may not have been enough.”
Sheri Sadler. a veteran Los Angeles-based Democratic media buyer. described what it was like working through the final stretch of the campaign: “I literally saw his spots ad nauseam. They left almost no stone unturned.” Sadler also scheduled $50 million of billionaire Rick Caruso’s money on ads during Caruso’s unsuccessful 2022 Los Angeles mayoral campaign. and she believes Steyer’s 2026 gubernatorial spending hit a limit.
She argued that voters who are bombarded by ads can start to feel the candidate is trying to purchase their affection. “It’s one thing to give me a message I can resonate with,” Sadler said. “If they’re just trying to buy my vote, that feels different to me.”
Sadler added that Steyer’s wealth undermined his message, which included support for raising taxes on billionaires: “That’s my gut. And I feel like that’s what happened to us on Caruso and possibly why he didn’t run” for governor this year.
Steyer, 68, has long tried to defuse the “self-funder” problem by making his biography part of the argument. He made his fortune founding a hedge fund that included investments in fossil fuels. private prisons. and other businesses controversial among Democrats. He told voters he walked away from the firm 14 years ago. leaving an enormous amount of money behind. because it did not align with his morals. Steyer also said he and his wife. Kat Taylor. have pledged to give away most of their wealth before they die.
Still, politics has a way of punishing contradictions—even those a candidate tries to explain. Assemblyman Isaac G. Bryan (D-Los Angeles). who endorsed Steyer. argued that Steyer promoted proposals that were against his personal interests. such as a proposed billionaire’s tax expected to appear on the November ballot. Bryan also said Steyer was the only candidate openly talking about campaign finance reform and removing money from politics. including Steyer’s own money. to return power to the people through publicly financed elections in California.
After a Steyer rally near downtown L.A. on May 31, Bryan pointed to that as evidence of sincerity.
But Porter. another prominent Democrat who campaigned for limits on corporate political money. accused Steyer of running as a “change agent” while spending millions earned from oil and gas investments. During an April 28 debate in Claremont. Porter told Steyer. “You paid the lowest tax rate on this stage and yet you made the billions that you’re using to fund your campaign off fossil fuels.”.
Other political voices framed the problem in different terms. University of San Diego’s Flynn described a practical credibility hurdle: voters may find it hard to reconcile a billionaire’s perspective with the lived concerns of everyday Californians.
“The messaging still is a giant factor,” Flynn said. “I’m curious [about] how believable it came across to voters — can you trust a billionaire to really care about affordability, someone who made money working with business or in business not to care about special interests?”
Steyer’s campaign also faced a loyalty question within his own coalition. While he campaigned as a hard-left liberal, he didn’t become the top pick for progressives. A Berkeley May poll found Steyer supported by 35% of likely voters who identified as strongly liberal. while Becerra was backed by 37%.
The political history of billionaire self-funding also looms in California. Former Northwest Airlines co-chairman Al Checchi spent more than $40 million of his money on an unsuccessful gubernatorial primary campaign in 1998. breaking records at the time. More than a decade later. former eBay chief Meg Whitman spent $144 million of her wealth on her bid to become California’s governor. setting a new national record for spending on a state election. She won the GOP nomination but lost the general election.
And this was not even Steyer’s first shot. In 2020, he spent $342 million on a brief, unsuccessful presidential campaign.
For some of Steyer’s supporters, his next step is less about winning office than sustaining a movement. On the eve of the primary. after talking to college Democrats at UCLA. Steyer said he would remain politically involved regardless of what happened in the primary. though he would not run for president in 2028.
“I’m going to keep working on these issues, because I’ve been working full-time on these issues for 14 years,” Steyer said. “There’s no question what I’m going to do. How I do it is a little bit up in the air.”
When the final numbers landed, they didn’t just end a campaign. They left a sharper question for California politics: whether flooding the airwaves—often with the money that fuels suspicion—can overcome the doubt that voters bring to a billionaire’s pitch. As Tuesday made clear, in this race, Steyer’s $216 million wasn’t enough to carry him into the November ballot.
Tom Steyer California governor June 2 primary Xavier Becerra Steve Hilton Gavin Newsom campaign spending campaign finance reform single-payer political ads