What Tom Steyer's defeat says about 2028

More than a week after voters went to the polls in California, we finally got a clear picture of the results this week.

Democrat Xavier Becerra, former HHS Secretary in the Biden administration, and Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News pundit, advanced to the general election to lead the country’s biggest state Becerra is now all but assured the governorship, a huge comeback for someone who was polling in the single digits until the race’s final weeks. But arguably the bigger story came in the election’s third-place finisher: Billionaire Tom Steyer, a liberal megadonor who ran a brief campaign for president in 2020, lost out on one of the top two spots despite breaking records with his personal spending. His failure to make the general election — California uses a jungle party system, in which all candidates run together on one ballot and the top two vote getters advance — was a blow to the organized left, much of which lined up behind his campaign. It also offered clues about the 2028 primary, and warning signs for the one Democratic billionaire in the mix, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.

The millions
Steyer was a late entrant into the gubernatorial race, and his campaign was almost entirely driven by his own money, both directly and indirectly. Running against Democrats with lengthy resumes, his top resume line was his philanthropic experience, which largely boiled down to large donations to organizations to battle climate change and impeach Donald Trump. By the end, he had personally invested more than $200 million in his gubernatorial effort, a record-breaking sum for a six-month primary campaign.

Pritzker’s wealth, too, has been an inextricable part of his political career. He spent more than $300 million of his own money in his 2018 and 2022 campaigns for governor, providing him a decisive financial advantage over both opponents (including a billionaire incumbent in 2018). So far this year, he has sent another $25 million to his own re-election campaign — one person told me to “absolutely” expect more — as well as $10 million to seed a super PAC backing his lieutenant governor’s Senate campaign this spring.

The money did not translate to landslide victories. In 2022, the governor ran about three points behind Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who was re-elected the same night. Both men’s experiences point to a potential warning sign for Pritzker’s potential 2028 campaign, which most observers expect he would similarly boost with his own money: in the modern information ecosystem, a traditional financial advantage may matter less than ever. If anything, the kind of ubiquity Steyer’s money was able to achieve could now end up turning off voters. “It's one thing to be deluged on TV,” Mike Madrid, a California operative and consultant, told me. “It’s another thing to be deluged on TikTok and Facebook, and broadcast and TV and radio and streaming and everything else. And that’s what was going on.”

Hair dye works. That's not the debate. The debate is what it costs you: the box every few weeks, the smell, the roots that give it away, the hairline that starts looking painted instead of real. You fixed the gray and created new problems.

Particle Anti-Gray Serum works differently. It targets the root cause of graying — restoring pigment gradually, naturally, without dye. Hair and beard. Results that look like yours, not like a product. Five seconds a day. Thirty-day money-back guarantee if you don't see a difference.

Over a million men trust Particle. This is the product that earns that number. Get 20% off and free shipping now with the exclusive promo code BH20.

Start Reversing Gray Risk-Free

The billions
Beyond how he spent his money, Steyer’s status as a billionaire may simply have been insurmountable, especially for the Democratic Party’s current moment. A November 2025 poll from the Washington Post found 75% of Democratic voters considered billionaires’ election spending to be bad, with 50% calling it “very bad.” And a March survey from Pew Research found 29% of Democratic voters consider being “extremely rich” to be “morally wrong.” Interestingly, young voters had even stronger thoughts: 33% of 18-29 year olds considered extreme wealth morally wrong.

For Lakshya Jain, the director of political data at The Argument, it’s enough to be skeptical of Pritzker’s chances. “I think there's just a whole host of roadblocks he faces,” he told me. “His wealth is probably one of the biggest ones.”

The outsider shot
On the other hand, there’s reason to interpret Steyer’s loss positively for figures like Pritzker. Beginning almost immediately after the 2024 election, some Democrats began to dream of their own version of Trump — an outsider who’s able to harness anti-establishment anger through an existing cultural profile. Names often floated for this lane include comedian Jon Stewart and sports commentator Stephen A. Smith. While neither has shown any actual momentum in polling, they are still regularly included on many pundits’ lists of 2028 contenders, and both have winked at the prospect. But Steyer’s fall adds evidence that Democratic voters, far more than Republicans, continue to prize government experience when it comes to high-profile executive positions. Even past Democratic governors who have run on their business experience, including Connecticut’s Ned Lamont, Pennsylvania’s Tom Wolf, and Pritzker himself, have brought with them actual experience in government.

Another example of this has come in recent results in deep blue congressional districts. This year, amid a spate of retirements from older Democrats, four of the ten bluest congressional districts in the country (as ranked by the Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voting Index) became open: California’s 11th, Pennsylvania’s 3rd, Illinois’s 7th, and New York’s 12th. In all four districts, ostensibly some of the areas most open to a burn-it-all-down outsider, the top two narrowed down to incumbent state legislators or city office holders (NY-12 votes June 23rd, but polling indicates the first and second place finishers will be two assemblymembers).

Together, the results indicate that, no matter what populist anger they may be feeling, Democratic voters are often still looking for experienced hands — and in 2028, that could particularly benefit those with existing executive experience, including Pritzker. 

One more thing on Pritzker
The Illinois governor joined the growing list of Democrats revolting against data centers, announcing last Friday he would move to freeze state incentives for new construction beginning this summer. Keep an eye for a deeper dive on the fast-changing politics of data centers in the coming weeks.

Worthy reads
Seema Mehta and Nicole Nixon at the LA Times have a worthy piece diving deeper into how Steyer’s excessive spending and the narrowness of his message helped doom his campaign.

And Russell Berman and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez at The Atlantic explore one of this newsletter’s hobby horses: the inefficiency of California’s interminably long ballot counting system.

Got feedback on today’s newsletter? Email me [email protected]