Tom Steyer, the San Francisco billionaire who ran a quixotic campaign for president in 2020, announced on Wednesday that he was entering the crowded race to become the next governor of California.
Mr. Steyer, a 68-year-old Democrat, is little known to California voters but could overcome that disadvantage by funding his own campaign. In 2020, he poured enough money into his presidential bid that he finished third in South Carolina’s Democratic primary behind Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders.
The 2026 race for California governor has become an unpredictable, wide-open contest, with term limits preventing Gov. Gavin Newsom from running for re-election.
Eight Democrats and two Republicans have already entered, and more candidates are expected to jump in soon. None has captured enough support to take charge of the race with just over six months until the June primary, leaving the field unusually fluid in a vast state where campaigns need time and money to get their message out.
Mr. Steyer ran a San Francisco-based hedge fund for more than two dozen years and then sold his stake in 2012 to devote his time to politics and environmental advocacy. Forbes estimates Mr. Steyer’s net worth at $2 billion.
“There’s a reason everybody comes here to start businesses,” Mr. Steyer said in a video announcing his campaign. “Because this is the place that invents the future.”
Mr. Steyer may be familiar to some voters for the “Need to Impeach” campaign he started during President Trump’s first term. He spent millions of dollars on television ads and asked Americans to sign a petition lobbying the House to impeach Mr. Trump.
Most recently, he spent $12 million on ads supporting this month’s redistricting ballot measure, which California Democrats crafted to counter Mr. Trump’s push to gerrymander Republican-controlled states.
In 2016, Mr. Steyer spent more than $11 million on a California ballot measure that raised the tax on cigarettes to pay for health care programs. He has also donated millions of dollars to campaigns that funded energy efficiency upgrades at public schools and defended California’s marquee climate policy more than a decade ago.
Mr. Steyer plans to raise money in addition to using personal funds for his campaign, a spokesman said. Still, his wealth will probably put him in position to spend far more on advertising than most of his opponents.
It is hardly a guarantee of success. California’s political history is riddled with candidates who were wildly successful in business and were still losers at the ballot.
In 2022, Rick Caruso, a shopping mall developer, lost the race for Los Angeles mayor after spending more than $100 million on his campaign. Other business leaders who have poured millions into their own losing campaigns include Meg Whitman, the former eBay chief executive who lost to former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2010, and Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard who lost to Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010.
Mr. Steyer is not the only billionaire running for governor of California. Stephen Cloobeck, a real estate developer who founded a timeshare company, has put $13 million into his campaign for governor so far. But Mr. Cloobeck’s support in a recent poll conducted by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, was so low that the pollster denoted his performance with an asterisk instead of a number, indicating he had support from fewer than 0.5 percent of voters.
The same poll showed Mr. Steyer with 1 percent support.
Mr. Steyer said in an announcement that he planned to focus on tackling California’s high cost of living. He is promoting plans to build more affordable housing and tackle electricity prices by ending utility monopolies.
Two heavyweight California Democrats — Senator Alex Padilla and former Vice President Kamala Harris — decided earlier this year not to run for the job. That has left the field in flux, and the Berkeley poll last week showed that 44 percent of voters were undecided on whom to back.
Support for Katie Porter, a Democratic former congresswoman, dropped six points from August, the poll found. Ms. Porter suffered a setback last month when videos surfaced showing her berating a staff member and belittling a journalist.
Other Democratic candidates include Antonio Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles; Xavier Becerra, a former Biden administration cabinet secretary; and Betty Yee, a former state controller.
The top Republican candidates are Steve Hilton, a former Fox News host, and Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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