Billionaire Tom Steyer drops $12 million to support Proposition 50

As California voters receive mail-in ballots for November’s special election, which could shake up the state’s congressional boundaries and determine control of the House, billionaire hedge fund founder Tom Steyer said Thursday he will spend $12 million to support Democrats’ efforts to redraw districts to bolster their party’s ranks in the body legislative.

The ballot measure was proposed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California Democrats after President Trump urged Texas leaders to redraw their congressional districts ahead of next year’s midterm elections. Strengthening the Republican Party’s numbers in Congress could help Trump continue to implement his agenda during his final two years in office.

“We must stop Trump’s takeover by rigging the election,” Steyer said in a statement. “The defining fight until November 4 is the passage of Proposition 50. To compete and win, Democrats cannot continue to play by the same old rules. This is how we fight back and stick with Trump.”

Steyer’s announcement makes him the largest backer of the pro-Proposition 50 effort, surpassing billionaire financier George Soros, who contributed $10 million to the effort.

Steyer founded a hedge fund whose investments included massive fossil fuel projects, but after learning of the environmental consequences of these financial decisions, he divested from it and worked to combat climate change. Steyer spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting Democratic candidates and causes and more than $300 million on his unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign.

Steyer plans to debut a scathing ad Thursday night that imagines Trump watching the election results on Nov. 4 and furiously throwing fast food at a television when he sees Proposition 50 succeed.

“Why did you do this to Trump?” asks the president. The ad then shows a fictional TV anchor claiming that the success of the vote makes it more likely that Trump will be investigated for corruption and that the files of convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein will be released. “I hate California,” Trump responds.

The commercial is scheduled to begin airing Thursday night during “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” » The late-night show was in the spotlight after being briefly suspended by Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC last month under pressure from the Trump administration over a comment Kimmel made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The esoteric process of redistricting typically occurs once every ten years after the U.S. Census to account for population shifts. The maps, historically drawn in smoky backrooms, protected incumbents and created oddly shaped neighborhoods, like the “Ribbon of Shame” along the California coast.

Over the past several decades, good-government advocates have fought to create logical, geographically compact districts that don’t disenfranchise minority voters. At the forefront of this effort, California voters passed a ballot measure in 2010 to create an independent commission to draw the state’s congressional boundaries.

But this year, Trump and his allies have urged leaders in Republican-led states to redraw their congressional districts to improve Republicans’ chances in next year’s midterm elections. The House is closely divided and retaining Republican control is crucial to Trump’s ability to implement his agenda.

California Democrats, led by Newson, responded in kind. The state Legislature voted in August to call a special election in November to decide redistricting that could give their party five additional seats in the state’s 52-member congressional delegation, the largest in the nation.

Proponents of Proposition 50 have widely denounced committees opposing the measure. Steyer’s announcement comes a day after Charles Munger Jr., the opposition’s largest donor, explained publicly for the first time why he contributed $32 million to the effort.

“I’m fighting for the ordinary voter to actually have a say in their own government,” Munger told reporters. “I don’t want Californians to be ignored by the national government because all districts are strongholds for one party or the other.”

A longtime opponent of gerrymandering, the bow-tie-wearing Palo Alto physicist financed the 2010 vote that created the independent commission to draw California’s congressional districts.

Munger, the son of a billionaire who was investor Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, declined to say whether he planned to provide additional funding.

“I neither confirm nor deny the rumors regarding campaign tactics,” Munger told reporters. “Talk to me after the election is over.”