COLUMBIA, S.C. — It is easy to dismiss Tom Steyer as a dead man walking — a candidate polling at just 2 percent in national surveys whose campaign rolls forward mainly on the weight of his large personal fortune.
But it’s worth noting what Steyer has accomplished in South Carolina. While other candidates are trying to show they can appeal to black voters ahead of Saturday’s primary here and on Super Tuesday, Steyer has done just that. He’s built a swell of support in a state where he had little name recognition and no personal history.
Steyer did this by putting in the time. He has held 50 events in South Carolina since 2018, nearly twice as many as former vice president Joe Biden and more than anyone else still in the race. His money has surely made a difference. He’s spent millions on ads, and he has hired a small army of local consultants and vendors to help him. Depending on how you look at it, he’s built — or bought — loyalty.
He has done well here by not just telling voters that he will put the interests of black, brown or disenfranchised people at the heart of his administration’s agenda but rather showing them what he has already done with his nonprofit bank on the West Coast.
When he talks about providing loans at competitive rates to business owners unable to get financing in traditional banks — it strikes a chord among voters who pay the equivalent of a “black tax” or “poverty penalty” when they try to buy homes, cars or finance their entrepreneurial dreams. Steyer can talk powerfully and credibly about the higher interest rates and more burdensome repayment terms that black, brown and low-income Americans face even when they are credit worthy.
While some candidates run briskly through their broad plans and policies, Steyer name-checks the affordable housing developments and the individuals who are thriving in California because of funding and support from the Beneficial State Bank that Steyer founded with his wife, Kat Taylor.
(The bank is not a perfect narrative; Steyer has been criticized for a high rate of auto loan defaults and lawsuits. The Steyers say this resulted from aggressive tactics used by another California bank they acquired in 2016 and are working to reduce auto loan interest rates that were as high as nearly 28 percent.)
But Steyer also talks about the need for reparations to African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved and about returning religion to Democratic politics instead of ceding that ground to Republicans and evangelical Christians. You can imagine the “amens” those conversations generate in the Bible Belt.
The rest of the country may think of Steyer as the slightly goofy dude in all those ads calling for impeachment before that word became fact. But many voters in South Carolina have come to see something different: A candidate who walks into a room and comfortably riffs about watching his parents campaign for Shirley Chisholm; a candidate who quotes his wife’s work and scholarship when he talks about income disparity and economic injustice.
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Steyer’s traction in the state helped to explain why former vice president Joe Biden blasted him in the debate Tuesday about once investing $90 million in a private prison company that allegedly mistreated prisoners at a facility in South Carolina. Steyer said he sold his interest in the company when he learned about its practices. Biden, who has complained that Steyer has siphoned away black voters, needed to take Steyer down a peg.
Steyer has no chance of winning the nomination. Even if he gets a big bounce from Saturday’s primary, he has no clear path to the nomination. He will face a difficult choice ahead of Super Tuesday — which includes a primary in California. He has long considered running for statewide office there and may not want to stay in the presidential race if he comes in fifth or sixth in his home state. And it didn’t help Steyer when an even richer billionaire jumped into the race late last year.
But before Steyer disappears, the remaining candidates should study his ground game and listen to more than his farewell. He is the rare Democrat in the race who has learned how to talk to African American voters not merely about what he is planning, but what he has actually done. When you come to the fight, it helps to bring actual receipts.
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