As the wide-open California governor’s race heats up, billionaire self-funded candidate Tom Steyer has spent nearly twice as much on his election bid as the rest of the field combined — but has yet to surge ahead of the pack in polls.
Steyer’s campaign has shelled out at least $27.4 million, primarily on a flood of television and digital ads, according to new election disclosures for the filing period ending Dec. 31. That’s compared to $15 million from 10 other contenders seeking to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose final term ends early next year.
That deep campaign war chest, however, has yet to thrust Steyer, a former hedge fund manager and environmentalist, close to frontrunner status.
A Dec. 4 poll by Emerson College had him at just 5%, amid a tightly packed Democratic field led by East Bay Rep. Eric Swalwell at 12% and former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter at 11%. Undecided voters made up 31%. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who entered the race just last week, was not included in the poll, which had a margin of error of three percentage points.
Steyer, who was set to debate several other candidates in San Francisco on Tuesday night, has sought to position himself as a progressive outsider in the race. Consider moving Steyer’s quote up immediately after this sentence so readers hear his voice before analysts critique him.
“Sacramento politicians are afraid to change up this system — I’m not,” he said in a recent YouTube campaign ad.
But even with nearly unlimited campaign funds, he may struggle to ensure that the message resonates with voters as the June primary approaches, said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University.
“He still has the albatross of being a zillionaire who has offshore money,” McCuan said. “He still has a plausibility and believability problem.”
Steyer is hardly the first uber-wealthy candidate to launch a bid for the state’s highest office. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, banker Bill Simon, and businessman Al Checchi are among those who lost elections after spending tens of millions of their own fortunes on campaigns for governor.
In 2020, Steyer himself flamed out in a Democratic presidential primary bid after spending at least $250 million on the campaign.
In the governor’s race, Steyer pumped a total of $28.8 million into his campaign through the end of last year, according to election filings. Porter raised the second-most money of any candidate during that period, at $6.1 million. She’s spent at least $2.9 million of that total.
“While other candidates rely on special interest donors or their own billionaire net worth, Katie’s campaign is the only one powered by the people of California,” campaign spokesperson Peter Opitz said in a statement.
Porter received contributions from more than 59,000 individual donors, according to the campaign. But election filings showed she also collected large donations from labor unions, including the California Teamsters.
Conservative political commentator and former Fox News host Steve Hilton, one of the leading Republicans in the race, had the next highest fundraising total at $5.7 million, having spent at least $3.9 million. He raised more cash than Porter during the final six months of 2025, a fact her campaign highlighted in an email to supporters on Tuesday.
Hilton and another Republican, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, topped the Emerson poll at 12% and 13%, respectively. The strong showing has raised concern among Democrats who worry the Republican candidates could pull ahead of a splintered Democratic primary field.
Democrats hold roughly a 2-to-1 advantage over Republicans in statewide voter registration. But under California’s primary system, the top two candidates with the most votes advance to the November general election, regardless of party affiliation. Some Democrats worry about a scenario in which the party splits the vote among its candidates, giving Hilton and Bianco enough votes to shut out Democrats from the general election.
Mahan, a 43-year-old moderate and former tech founder, appears to be seeking to capitalize on that uncertainty. While he faces a number of challenges in the race, notably limited statewide name recognition, his “back-to-basics” campaign message could resonate with a sizable segment of the electorate, said Larry Gerston, professor emeritus of political science at San Jose State University.
Mahan, the only mayor in the race, did not appear to have filed fundraising disclosures, as his campaign launched after the filing period. The campaign did not immediately respond to questions about its fundraising goals. The next major fundraising report deadline is in April.
Gerston said Mahan would likely seek support from his allies in Silicon Valley’s tech industry. Mahan has also been one of the most vocal Democratic candidates to oppose a proposed one-time billionaire’s tax that labor groups are aiming to place on the November ballot — a decision that could aid fundraising efforts.
“Where there are billionaires, there’s lots of money,” Gerston said.
Steyer’s pitch, in a social media post Tuesday: “I’m the billionaire who will fight billionaires.”
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