Tom Steyer proves things can get worse than Gavin Newsom in California

Tom Steyer proves one thing about California politics: As bad as things get, they can always get worse.

After Jerry Brown, a true intellectual whose ideas were often at odds with reality, we got Gavin Newsom, an ideological fashionista driven by vainglory and ambition.

The two combined to create a California reality that worked for their friends — greens, oligarchs, nonprofits and public employees — at the expense of pretty much everyone else.

Now our political descent seems to be accelerating. Unless Steve Hilton pulls off an unexpected miracle, our likely next governor will either be the utterly uninspiring Xavier Becerra or, even worse, private-equity-billionaire-turned-progressive-firebrand Tom Steyer.

Under Becerra, a man who impresses few here or anywhere else, we will get a zombie Newsom, a faithful follower of the familiar priorities of the all-powerful Democratic machine. Steyer, on the other hand, represents something even more lethal: one environmental lawyer called him “a raging narcissistic lunatic” who would make Newsom seem, well, like Pete Wilson.

To my shock, recent casual conversations with upper-class Democrats show a hard-to-explain attraction for Steyer. To be sure, Steyer is polling third, behind Becerra and Hilton.

But Becerra, besides being a nonentity, is threatened by a scandal involving his own campaign funds. Tom Steyer is spending millions, and even tens of millions, to convince the public that Becerra is just another corrupt machine politician.

So, what would happen if Steyer became governor? As a longtime funder of enviro groups, he would no doubt double down on climate stupidity — accelerating the destructive drive to net zero emissions, stifling what is left of our once-powerful fossil fuel industry, and forcing future housing development by building the pack-and-stack housing most Californians do not want.

At a time when “apocalyptic environmentalism” is losing its grip, with even New York reconsidering its climate goals, and Newsom is looking to keep some remnant of our oil and gas industry, Steyer is unlikely to budge — and he might even expand the green machine.

Steyer continues to claim “green energy” is cheaper, which would be something of a surprise to consumers in Britain, Germany and California, all places where gas and electricity prices are among the highest in the world.

Read the rest of this piece at Yahoo News.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and and directs the Center for Demographics and Policy there. He is Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas in Austin. Learn more at joelkotkin.com, follow him on Substack and Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.