WHY I'M VOTING FOR TOM STEYER FOR CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR — AND NO, I'M NOT SORRY ABOUT IT
A love letter to public schools, a breakup notice to the status quo, and a mild roast of everyone who deserves it
Published at Big Education Ape | May 31, 2026
Let me be upfront: I have watched California's public education system get slowly dismantled, defunded, demonized, and privatized for over 40 years. Forty years of watching a system that was once the envy of the world get reduced to a mediocre, two-tiered arrangement that serves wealthy kids well and poor kids — including English Language Learners and students with disabilities — with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for a DMV waiting room.
So when a candidate walks into a school in Inglewood, listens to a mother explain that her 10-year-old daughter doesn't have access to dual-language immersion programs, that five schools in her community have been shuttered, and responds not with a focus-grouped platitude but with a specific, funded, day-one plan — I pay attention.
That candidate is Tom Steyer. And here's why he has my vote.
The $22 Billion Reason — And It's a Good One
Here's the thing about California that should make every taxpayer's blood pressure spike: we are the 4th largest economy on the planet. We grow the food that feeds the nation. We house the tech companies that mint billionaires at a pace that would make a Vegas casino blush. And yet — and yet — our public schools are dramatically, structurally, embarrassingly underfunded.
Tom Steyer stood in front of a parent in Inglewood and said something that no other candidate in this race has had the nerve to say with a specific plan attached:
"The first thing we need to do about California education, to get us back to being a top-10 state in education in the country, is more money. And I'm the only person running for governor who has a specific plan."
That plan? On Day One as governor, he will call a special election to close a corporate real estate tax loophole worth $22 billion a year to the state of California — with half of that, $11 billion annually, earmarked directly for public education.
Not a task force. Not a blue-ribbon commission. Not a strongly-worded letter to the legislature. A special election. On Day One.
For a voter who has spent four decades watching politicians perform elaborate theatrical concern about education while doing absolutely nothing structural to fix it — that kind of specificity is, frankly, intoxicating.
What Forty Years of "Reform" Actually Looks Like
Let's be honest about what the bipartisan consensus on California education has actually produced. The billionaire-funded privatization playbook — executed through charter school expansion, school closures, emergency-credentialed teachers, and the systematic defunding of traditional public schools — has delivered us a system that:
- Serves poor kids poorly, while providing a parallel premium track for those whose parents can navigate the charter lottery or afford private alternatives
- Discriminates against students with disabilities, English Language Learners, and the most economically vulnerable families — the very kids charter schools routinely find ways to counsel out or never enroll in the first place
- Employs underqualified teachers at alarming rates in the highest-need schools — Oakland Unified, for instance, has only 57% fully credentialed teachers, compared to 92.7% in Garden Grove Unified
- Bleeds enrollment — California's K-12 public school population has fallen below 6 million for the first time since 2000, with projections showing an 11.4% decline by 2031
This is what 40 years of "reform" looks like. Not reform. Managed decline.
The Field: A Candid Assessment
Let me be clear — this is not a race without other serious people. But clarity requires candor.
| Candidate | The Honest Take |
|---|---|
| Tom Steyer | Billionaire who built the machine and now wants to dismantle it. Specific plans. Self-funded. Answers to no one but voters. |
| Xavier Becerra | Impressive résumé, genuine public servant — and the establishment's hand-picked favorite, funded by the very utility monopolies and corporate interests that have helped hollow out public services for decades. |
| Katie Porter | Brilliant, principled, carries a whiteboard like a weapon of mass instruction. Polling around 7%. Bless her heart. |
| Steve Hilton | A British Fox News host cosplaying as a MAGA cowboy who has suggested extraditing California abortion providers to Louisiana. A non-starter dressed up in a flannel shirt. |
| Chad Bianco | Riverside County Sheriff. Enthusiastically Trumpian. See above. |
I have genuine respect for Katie Porter and, in many ways, for Becerra's public service record. But respect is not the same as a vote. And in a top-two primary where the real question is whether November becomes a Becerra-Hilton race or a Becerra-Steyer race — the stakes of this choice are not abstract.
A Becerra vs. Hilton November is a choice between the status quo and a MAGA wrecking ball. A Becerra vs. Steyer November is a genuine debate about what kind of California we want to build.
I know which conversation I'd rather have.
The Beautiful Irony of the "Class Traitor" Candidate
Here is the part of this story that is almost too good to be true — except it's completely, documentably real.
Tom Steyer built a multi-billion-dollar fortune at Farallon Capital, one of San Francisco's most powerful hedge funds. He knows exactly how the machine works because he helped build it. And now, corporate PACs funded by Chevron, PG&E, McDonald's, DaVita, and the California Chamber of Commerce have dumped over $32 million in attack ads specifically designed to destroy him — on top of $13 million in direct support for Becerra.
The billionaire class is spending historic sums of money to stop a fellow billionaire from becoming governor.
Read that sentence again. Let it marinate.
They're not scared of Becerra. They like Becerra. They've been funding Becerra. The California Democratic establishment has received over $153,000 from investor-owned utilities like PG&E, Southern California Edison, and Sempra — the same utilities that have been raising rates, sparking wildfires, and operating as regulated monopolies that answer to shareholders before ratepayers.
Steyer, by contrast, has promised to break up PG&E's monopoly, slash utility bills by 25%, and force corporations to pay property taxes based on actual current values rather than 1978 assessments frozen in amber by Prop 13. To the establishment, a standard politician is like a vending machine — insert money, receive favorable legislation. A self-funded billionaire who answers to no one? That's a vending machine that gives away free snacks and then smashes the machine.
The Full Platform — Because Details Matter
Steyer's education agenda isn't a bumper sticker. It's a blueprint:
- Close the corporate real estate tax loophole → $11 billion/year directly to public schools
- Universal Pre-K starting at age three — address the achievement gap before kindergarten
- Freeze charter school expansion and ban for-profit charter models entirely
- Oppose school vouchers — no public dollars to private institutions that can cherry-pick students
- Triple Title I funding to equalize resources for high-poverty schools
- Federal 2-to-1 teacher pay match — for every dollar a state raises teacher salaries, the federal government matches two
- Full IDEA funding — finally, actually, fund special education as promised
- Universal free school meals — because a hungry child is not a learning child
- Tuition-free community college and expanded pathways to higher education
And beyond education:
- One million new homes in four years with 90-day permit mandates — because teachers can't teach in classrooms they can't afford to live near
- Single-payer healthcare via CalCare — a notable evolution from his 2020 presidential position
- State-level wealth tax on extreme wealth
- Split-roll Prop 13 reform for commercial properties
The Bottom Line
I have watched the billionaire class buy school boards, fund charter chains that discriminate against the most vulnerable students, defund and demonize traditional public schools, and then have the audacity to call it reform. I have watched enrollment collapse, teacher shortages deepen, and the promise of California public education — once a genuine ladder of opportunity for working-class families — get quietly sawed off at the bottom rungs.
Tom Steyer is not a perfect candidate. No candidate is. But he is the only one in this race who has looked directly at the structural rot — the corporate tax loopholes, the utility monopolies, the privatization machine — and said: I know how this works, I helped build it, and I'm going to use every tool available to tear it down.
For a voter who has spent 40 years watching the other approach fail our children? That is not just enough.
That is everything.
🔗 For more on the California Governor's race and the fight for public education:
- The Golden State Hustle: Why California's Billionaires Are Terrified of One of Their Own
- The Billionaire Tom Steyer, Class Traitor Extraordinaire
- California's Governor's Race: A Voter's Field Guide to Not Getting Played
- When Billionaires Buy Your School Boards
- Billionaires Are Winning the Race to Destroy Public Education in California
#TomSteyer #CaliforniaGovernor #CAGovernor #CaliforniaElection #Vote2026 #PublicEducation #BigEducationApe
