- Hosted by KQED's "Political Breakdown," leading candidates for California governor are visiting KQED in San Francisco for a series of town halls.

On May 26th, Tom Steyer answered live questions from members of the audience to address the issues shaping California's future.

- Alright, thank you all for taking out the time and joining us tonight for our Town Hall with Tom Steyer.

I am excited to be hosting.

This is our third town hall, so if you haven't checked out the previous ones, we did one with Katie Porter and with Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco.

You can check those out on our KQED Live YouTube page.

I now wanna introduce Tom Steyer.

He's a democratic investor who founded the San Francisco hedge fund, Farallon Capital.

After stepping away from finance in 2012, he launched NextGen America, a youth civic engagement organization.

He's led numerous climate initiatives in California and in 2020 he ran for President Steyer is running for governor this year on a progressive platform of what he describes as shared prosperity, and you might've seen one or two of his ads along the way.

Please welcome Tom Steyer.

Guy.

Thank you.

Good to have you over here.

Okay.

I'm just gonna run through a little bit about how this evening will go.

We'll talk a little bit about your vision for California, your campaign.

Then we're gonna start getting some questions from our audience.

We try to select audience members with kind of a cross section of topics and questions.

Audience members are gonna read their own questions.

KQED did not edit these ahead of time and we did not share them with Tom Steyer ahead of time.

And then we'll give you a chance to respond.

Then maybe I'll have some follow ups along the way.

So if that's all okay, we can get started.

- Great.

- We are in the stretch run here one week until election day.

And it's been interesting hearing you kind of articulate your closing message to California voters.

I, I think a big part of that hearing from you has been this idea of, "Judge me by my enemies."

I've heard you say that kind of on, on the campaign trail as we get close to election day.

What does that mean to you, judge me by my enemies?

- Well, one of the things that's happened in this race is that I have been talking about the need for California to be affordable for Californians and that there are corporate special interests in this state driving up the costs in virtually every area.

And that for us to actually make California affordable for Californians, we're gonna have to make some structural changes that are going to disadvantage some of those corporate special interests.

And as a result, they have spent $50 million trying to prevent me from becoming governor and have spent an awful lot of money backing anybody but me.

So, you know, PG&E, which is the local electric monopoly, has spent over $12 million.

Chevron has spent a lot of money.

The second biggest oil driller has Meta, has Uber, has the largest lobby group against single payer has.

And then a lot of very rich people have been backing everybody but me.

And so I say, look, if, if you know that Chevron is spending millions of dollars against me, you know something which is I do have an environmental program.

I do think polluters should pay, and I've been talking about the need for a windfall profits tax.

And if PG&E is spending $12 million plus against me, you know that I'm gonna do something about electric rates and that they think I'm gonna do something about electric rates because no one, none of these corporations invest 'cause they like somebody.

They spend money against me because they don't like what I'm gonna do.

And so their opposition or the fact that Trump has posted negative things about me or the head of ICE has posted negative things about me, says something I can't get them to do that they're doing of that, of their own free will.

So if you look at the people who are spending money or going online to oppose me, it's a pretty good sense that, okay, I must be on the other side of those questions.

And in every one of those, I'm very proud to have those people opposing me because it... I am.

and I'm, I, I honestly would be ashamed to be some of the other people running for governor who are taking their money because by definition, if you're taking money from some of these corporations, then that means they believe for sure you're gonna do their bidding.

That's why they're giving the money that they're investing in their future bottom line.

And if I would be ashamed for that, because my whole goal in this campaign is to work without conflict and without compromise for working Californians in this state.

And if I'm ta, if I were taking money from some of these corporations, I'd know that I would have to compromise and that I would have to do their bidding.

And I'm not gonna do that.

- If you win, if you win this election and you become governor, all of those enemies are still gonna be there.

PG&E is still gonna be our, our largest utility in Northern California.

The California Medical Association is still gonna be there representing doctors at the Capitol.

So how would you build productive relationships with those?

- Well, I'd start by not using the words enemy.

I, I really would.

So that - Ends, that ends after - The campaign.

I don't see it that way.

I see it differently.

They're pursuing an interest, look, take, take PG&E, they're an electric monopoly.

They charge Californians twice as much as the average in the United States of America.

Okay.

I don't want Californians to pay twice as much as the average in.

I always go outside on a bright sunny day and go like, does the sun not shine in California?

Is there some reason we don't have cheap electricity here?

And so I want to represent - that doesn't make them an enemy.

They are following what we've set up in what is an electric monopoly where you get paid based on how many capital expenditures they make.

And they're doing that rigorously to make as much money and they're making record profits.

Okay, I want to change that.

And I don't believe in monopolies, like everyone acts like introducing competition to electricity generation, storage and distributions is communism.

It's like that's not communism when there's competition in the world.

That's how we keep prices down and that's how we take advantage of new innovation and you know, the ability of people to do things cheaper.

So I don't look that at that them as doing something evil.

I look at them as following their interests rigorously against the interest of working people.

And I'm on that side of working people, so I'm gonna change the rules to the extent I can.

So we drive down prices so people aren't paying twice as much.

It's just not right.

- Yeah.

You've talked about, I mean, change I think is, is also a big message, your campaign kind of taking on the status quo in California politics.

I'm curious if you see the current governor Gavin Newsom as the status quo and where do you feel like he, he's failed to make that structural change?

- Well, I think, I think that Governor Newsom actually is a progressive, and I think we share an awful lot of values.

I think that there are a couple of things that I want to do that he hasn't wanted to do.

Like what?

For instance, as an example, I've said for this state to work, the billionaires and big corporations need to pay their fair share.

Yes.

And frankly, for, for, for those of you who have watched every one of these debates, first of all, I pity you.

Second of all, look there, they, they had seven, the seven candidates with the highest, you know, polling numbers on stage and asked them who would, who would you know, vote to support a billionaires' tax?

And only one person said yes.

And it was me.

And yet we look at a state, we have the richest state in the country, we have the most billionaires, we have the highest poverty rate.

We don't have a school system in the top 10, we're somewhere in the thirties.

We used to be number one.

We are struggling in many ways to deliver the things that the people of California need.

And so, you know, I look at this, I think I look at that as something that has to happen in a smart way so that we can have what I call shared prosperity.

We have prosperity, it's just not being shared.

And that, you know, I always say 12 trillionaires and 40 million people who can't make rent is not success.

On average it looks like success.

But if you go around California and see how people are living and you see people fully employed for 20 years living in their cars, you see people giving up healthcare to make rent.

You see people really, really struggling who are fully employed, who have, you know, done, played by the rules, done the right things, it's not working for them.

We need to make some substantive changes and I want to do it in a way that we keep our prosperity.

But I absolutely believe that the working people of this state are struggling way more than fair and they're not getting served the way they should.

And part of it is about that.

And you know, I, we could go through all the different things I'm doing.

Some of them are different, certainly from anyone else running for governor.

- You've spent an awful lot of your own money on this campaign.

I think it's up over $213 million at this point.

I'm curious how you think about the ways in which you might use your wealth as governor.

- So the plat, we are the largest, most populous, richest state in the United States of America.

We are the leading voice for progressive ideas and imagining a just future in the United States of America.

If California can't get this right for working people in the 21st century, when we are half of the growth in the United States, when we are 60% of the world's AI valuations.

California, with the kind of money we have, with the kind of wealth we're creating, if we can't make this work broadly for the 40 million people who work here, I think that's a terrible statement for the world.

And it's terrible for the people who work here.

I am going to commit, I mean my wife Kat Taylor is sitting in the front row and we have worked together over the decades to get, you know, on multiple things and we're completely committed to getting kind of a just equitable, successful, prosperous California.

And you know, when you ask me what am I willing to do, look, we, we've pledged to give our money away while we're alive.

We are.

I know what you're asking.

You're asking me am I gonna run propositions with my money guy?

Yeah, I know that's your question.

And I'm asking a, I'm answering in a broader way to say which we are in this period.

We are in this for everything we have in terms of energy, everything we have in terms of wealth we are in to try to make this state better.

And that is what we've been trying to do.

This is not new running for governor is com and the what things I'm pushing for are completely consistent with what I've been doing for the last 14 years.

And certainly Kathryn's been doing it as well.

We are absolutely committed to working for working people, for preserving the natural world to, you know, to addressing the structural issues in California so people have better lives and to prove to people again, that the government of the state can make their lives better.

That they can actually think about buying a home.

That that's a possibility.

That we can expect to have great education, that the government is going to succeed in getting things done and that we're building a great society together.

That is, you know, there is no limit to how much I care about that.

- Yeah.

Alright, let's welcome up our first questionnaire this evening.

- Good evening.

My name is Bathsheba Turnage.

I'm an energy consultant, energy conservation consultant from Concord.

And my question is, economic vitality, affordable housing and top tier education crucial to California's future compete for resources very often.

As governor, how will you balance keeping businesses in state while expanding housing and raising education standards for all?

- So that's a great question.

Let me say this.

In the past 15 years, I've run three statewide propositions.

All of them have raised or protected billions of dollars for California in either education or healthcare without costing Californians, Californian citizens a penny.

And none of them have hurt us economically.

So, you know, if you look at what I'm proposing in this race, I'm proposing to close a corporate real estate tax loophole called Split Roll that's failed before, which is worth $20 billion a year to the state of California and specifically to the counties.

A little under half of it, under Prop 98 will go to education.

The rest of it will go overwhelmingly to healthcare.

In answer to your question, do I believe specifically there that that will harm our economy in some way?

No.

As I like to say, no one is moving Disneyland to Austin, Texas, Miami, Florida, or, or Reno, Nevada.

The truth is doing things.

We have big tax loopholes.

People are not paying their fair share and the, we have to think about actually getting, raising revenues in ways that are, do not cause people to businesses to wanna leave the state that actually are practical that get the job done without giving disincentive or hurting businesses.

So the other thing that we're talking about doing, just so you know, for instance, we're talking about something called water's edge, where corporations get to declare what, where they make their money for part of their income and it costs the state about 4 to $5 billion a year.

Does anyone in this room get to declare where they earn their money and they say it's Ireland?

I don't.

So I mean, to a large extent, I absolutely believe that the billionaires in corporation should pay their fair share.

And I want to do it in a way so that they are good citizens so they pay their fair share so that they can take pride in creating the kind of society we all know California should be, but it doesn't give them, doesn't hurt their business and doesn't give them an incentive to move someplace else.

And I'm, you know, I went to Stanford Business School, I built a business from zero to $38 billion.

I think I know something about business.

And so I'm gonna be very intent on making sure that we do this in a way that works and works for business.

So that's why I said to Guy, I don't, I don't wanna call these people my enemies.

I don't want that.

I'm for shared prosperity.

And you know what, you can't share prosperity.

if there's no prosperity.

- Disneyland might not be going anywhere.

But here, here's the office vacancy rates we're dealing with in, in first quarter of 2026 in the Bay Area: 31% in San Francisco, 31% in San Jose, almost 38% in, in downtown Oakland.

Is now the right time to be raising taxes on?

- Well, let me make a point.

Let, let's talk for a second about commercial real estate office real estate in the Bay Area.

Something happened.

What happened was we had a COVID epidemic and a lot of people decided that they could work from home.

And as a result we had a awful lot of people who didn't wanna make the commute, didn't have to make the commute and realize, oh my God, an hour and a half each way is three hours a day that I can spend with my family and have a better life.

And so we have reduced demand for office space in the Bay Area.

Okay?

I agree with that.

That isn't something about people leaving the Bay Area.

That isn't a knock on San Francisco.

That's a change in our society where people want to do just the way do distant learning, they do distance medicine and they wanna work from home to a large extent.

I completely understand that.

The question in my mind is when we look at those cities where we don't have enough housing, and I'm one of the people who believes that we should be building houses in the city around public transportation.

Okay, does anybody see we have buildings we don't need and buildings we need to build in the same place.

- But you're saying to those office landlords, you wanna raise their taxes?

- The the taxes will be based on the value of the building, Guy.

So that Disneyland, the value has shot up.

You're talking about value in things.

An empty office building is not worth a lot, you guys, just so you know, it's worth the land underneath it.

So in every one of these cases, there's no injustice here.

Okay?

There's no injustice here asking people to pay real estate taxes based on the actual value of their real estate.

For corporations that's not unjust.

That's completely fair.

Truthfully.

- Love to welcome up our, our second questioner.

- Hello, I'm April Northrup.

I am a school board member in Belmont Redwood Shores School District.

Many school districts in California are facing declining enrollment and subsequently declining funding from the state leading to layoffs and school closures.

Will you work with the legislature to increase per pupil spending?

- So let me say this.

When I talk about split roll that I'll call a special election on day one to basically close this corporate real estate loophole by law, almost half of that money goes to schools.

And I, I absolutely want that to happen 'cause I want to talk for a second about education.

And let me say both of the teachers unions in this state have endorsed me.

The school employees have endorsed me and there's a reason for it because there is a myth in California that we're paying a lot for teachers and they're not doing a good job.

And that somehow the system and the accountability is broken down.

The truth is, if you look on a cost adjusted basis, we pay something in the thirties out of 50 states, we're not close, we're not in the top half and we're not close to it.

If you go to the research, the number one thing that makes kids have good outcomes is excellent teachers.

It's not, I always thought it was teacher student ratio, but the number one thing by far is how good are the teachers.

So if you think about that from a common sense standpoint, you want excellent teachers, you have to recruit them, you have to train them, and you have to retain them.

It's very hard to hire teachers in California because they can't often, they can't afford to live in the districts where they're teaching because they're not very well compensated for California, We don't spend enough on training.

Kathryn and I have a good friend who's a third year teacher.

She's had one hour of training in those three years and then it's hard to retain them.

So I want that money to go through the teachers so that we get the outcomes for the kids.

And I think it's absolutely critical and I want it to go disproportionately to the school districts that are most vulnerable where the kids need it the most.

But that's something where, look, great societies take care of their kids.

The kids are literally the future of our society.

If we're not training them for the 21st century, I don't know how we think that we're gonna be competitive with people around the world.

So I'm, my mom was a teacher, you know, taught in some very, you know, low income public schools and then she taught in prison when she retired from teaching in public schools.

My brother's been a advocate for at-risk kids his whole life.

I'm absolutely intent on making sure that the young people in our society are taken care of, that we deliver for them and we have the money for it.

And that's a big reason I'm for, you know, passing split roll.

Yeah.

That money is needed in our school systems for this state to be great at schools.

And we absolutely have to be great at school if we're gonna be the state we want to be.

- That idea though, raising split roll, raising commercial property taxes, you hinted at this, it was on the ballot in 2020, huge democratic electorate.

The, the measure did not pass.

So gimme one way your campaign would be different.

- So let me say this, I've, we took on in 2010 the oil companies and they were trying to gut cap and trade and everybody told us, you never beat the oil companies in the state of California.

You're a fool, you're a naive fool.

And I did it with a a, a Republican George Shultz who was a good friend of mine and I believe to be a good man and we got 70% of the vote.

And George who was 89 years old would always say, we're not gonna beat the oil companies.

We're gonna smash the oil companies.

And we did and we took on the tobacco companies in 2016, 20 years the legislature had not passed adequate tobacco taxes.

Once again.

People said this is never gonna work and we easily won.

Look, this is an idea whose time has definitely come.

They lost 52/48 in 2020.

I know that.

I also know this is an idea whose time has come and we need to make that clear to people.

And every time, and the third time people also said we'd lose to the out-of-state companies that were rooking us on their state income taxes in California.

And we beat them handily too.

This is something that is fair.

We're not asking for something unfair in any way, shape or form.

The money is necessary for California to progress.

And so I in the past when that's been true, I've picked my fights when I believe it's absolutely just and absolutely necessary.

And we've won by a lot.

And I expect to win by a lot if you want know the truth because - To me this, I mean people would say harder to, harder to take on, you know, when you're talking about property taxes, it's businesses across the state.

It's one thing to beat a tobacco company.

This seems to be a more difficult task, no?

- Well first of all we'll have a, it'll only be larger company.

So it's not gonna be all the small mom and pop businesses.

But also, look, there's a sense in California, certainly on the corporate side that they own us.

Honestly.

I mean the, the idea that PG&E thinks they have a right to a legal monopoly in the state of California and they will do anything to protect it.

I, I mean, pardon me, but I disagree completely.

The idea that literally the head of the Western States Power Association, which is the lobby for the oil companies and for Chevron said in in in a hearing in Sacramento two weeks ago, it is the duty of Chevron to extract every penny they can from Californians and use the Iran war to do it.

Do do I think that's okay?

No.

And do I think it's, you know, do I believe that we're running this state for corporations?

I don't.

I believe we're running this state for working people and that is actually what this entire race for governor is about.

Is are the working people of this state gonna be fairly treated or not?

And this is a perfect example.

There's no reason that corporations should be paying real estate tax based on 1970s valuations.

It's a loophole.

It's a straight up loophole and everybody loves loophole.

If the people in this audience and you and I had a $20 billion loophole, we would think of an explanation for why it's unfair to change it.

But the truth is, it isn't unfair to change it.

And what I'm talking about doing is not unjust.

It's actually fair and that's why I brought it up because Disneyland should pay taxes based on the value of Disneyland, not the value of Disneyland in the 1970s.

And that's the truth.

And they're making billions of dollars.

So, you know, empty office buildings are not gonna pay high taxes 'cause they're not worth anything.

But in all of this stuff, in thinking about how to change this, and this was my point, we need to have the revenue to have this state deliver the services people need and we need to do it in a just way that doesn't hurt business.

Yeah.

And of course people are gonna argue that they don't want to pay more taxes because they always say that.

But this is an absolutely fair thing where they have a loophole that they should never have gotten and they've been riding it for 40 or 50 years and I don't, don't think it's fair and I think we should end it.

- Love to welcome our next questioner.

- Hi Tom.

My name is Lena Shaw and I have been executive assistant in the finance industry for over 15 years.

I live here in San Francisco.

I was fortunate to live in my rent-controlled apartment for over 20 years.

When I moved, the owner updated it and put it out on the market for $3,100 a month in rent from my $850 a month in rent.

So my direct question is how are you going to lower housing costs in California?

The how is what I'm asking?

As landlords seem to charge whatever they want.

- So let me start with the question about rent and then let me talk about how we're gonna drop both the, the cost of housing overall because ultimately the only way we drop the cost of housing is by building a lot more housing, a lot cheaper.

But in the meantime, I want to make sure that people understand I'm for greatly expanding the renter's credit.

Because if California is unaffordable for Californians, the biggest bill at the end of every month from almost everybody is their housing bill.

It's either their rent check or their mortgage check and it is eating people up.

So I want people to know, I want to greatly expand the renter's credit because people get to write off their mortgage payment but they don't get to write off their rent.

And that's not fair.

And I also wanna enforce the rental protections that prevent rent spikes.

But let me talk about how we're gonna build housing because it's, you know, there are tens of thousands of permitted zoned units in the city of San Francisco that are not being built because they can't be billed to a price that anyone can afford.

So it's not just a question of permitting and zoning, which is everybody's supposition.

So let's just start with, we do need to permit faster and cheaper.

That is time is money in real estate and we need to simplify this and you know, get a whole bunch of agencies doing conflicting permitting shorter.

And we do need to zone, I do believe what I was saying to you Guy, which is we wanna build in cities around public transportation or in towns around public transportation for a whole bunch of reasons.

Kathryn and I started a nonprofit community bank that has financed 17,000 low income housing units.

Let me say this, the state of California has a bigger balance sheet than we do by a fair bid.

We are not using that balance sheet effectively in terms of helping people build and helping people buy.

So that means not only lending money at subsidized rates, but also doing down payment assistance.

That is a huge balance sheet.

We can definitely use it to help.

And then there are two more things that I think are critical in terms of actually building.

I've said we'll build a million houses that people can afford.

We can't keep building the way we're building physically.

And there are technologies now to basically industrially construct houses offsite and assemble them onsite.

And that right now drives down the cost about a quarter.

And I believe that there are economies of scale that will, as they get bigger and get better, they will drive the cost down more.

And that is critical.

A 25% drop in cost per square foot by using technologies and we can use the government to help them do that and to drive it down further.

And the last thing is this, the counties of this state do not want to build housing.

They would all much rather have a used car lot that pays taxes and doesn't use services than have new housing that will be filled with what I think are called people who require services for healthcare.

They require services for the education of their kids and the counties don't have the money to take care of those people.

That's why they charge big upfront fees up to 20% the cost of the house.

And that's why they push back all the time to try and prevent housing.

And the point about passing split role, it is about education and it is about healthcare, but it is also about saying to the counties, building housing is not an unfunded mandate for you anymore.

We are not asking you to take care of people and not giving you any money to do it.

In fact, we're giving you the money to do it.

And that is something that I think is a huge lever to work with the counties to get them to stop pushing back against any housing which has gone on for decades.

California used to build a lot of houses, we don't anymore.

And the opposition of cities and counties is probably the single biggest reason for that.

And split roll is a very important lever using money to grease the skids to get housing bill.

- Quickly on, on rent.

Currently the state has a cap of around 10% for, they call it rent gouging, but for for rent increases that expires in 2030.

Would you support extending that?

Lowering the allowable rent?

Look, I, we absolutely have to have something like that.

That was actually a bill that was passed with the support of big property owners, big apartment holders.

We absolutely need something like that.

Personally I would like to see something lower than 10.

Okay, 10% if you do that compound, that is a really high compound you guys.

And so we are seeing, look, if you go around this state, you really do see people living in their cars who've been fully employed for 20 years.

The number one, the fastest growing people of homeless.

Of the homeless population.

The fastest group is over 65 years old.

These are people who can't make rent or lost their house.

So when we think about what's going on here, it is absolutely critical that we build this housing and that we drive down the cost.

It's critical and people are suffering.

So this is not something that we can take our time about and you know, scratch our heads and ponder it.

We have to get going and we've gotta do this because it really is hurting us and it is the number one cost for people.

And it's the number one reason.

It's, it's good for families, it's good for businesses.

It is a huge problem for businesses that housing is so expensive in California.

Yeah.

And that healthcare is so expensive.

It just is.

That's one of the reasons it's hard to be a business in California.

- We next question are Zach, Zach Komes, are you here?

Yeah.

- Hi Mr.

Steyer.

I'm Zach.

I'm an impact investor in Oakland.

My question is about AI and the effects on the workforce.

California is the world's capital of innovation.

It's also where some of the most consequential decisions for society will be made during the next governor's term.

According to the tracker jobloss.ai, over 250,000 people have been affected directly by AI related to layoffs so far.

And OpenAI and Anthropic's own research says this is just the beginning.

What specific policies will you put in place to best support workers in this period of change while also ensuring that we continue to be the hotbed of technological progress.

- So that of course is an incredibly important question in this governor's race.

But it's an important question for this state.

And I wanna say that one of the great policy failures of my lifetime has been watching the failure in the Midwest of the United States to protect workers, particularly in the auto industry.

But it, you know, it also in a lot of other industries when international competition and mechanization hollowed it out.

And if you look at what happened to the big cities of the Midwest, to Detroit, to Gary, to Akron, to Cleveland, it really was a hollowing out of the whole society.

And that is something that we cannot have happen in the state of California as a result of AI.

So you should say, I will say we have a very detailed AI policy on our website in all of these things.

If you want to get into more gory detail than I will tonight.

You're very, I encourage you to go on our website better than Sominex, cheaper.

But let me say this about AI, 'cause I, I shouldn't joke about it 'cause it's deadly serious.

The number one thing about AI is we have to protect workers and it's unclear exactly how much it's gonna affect workers.

'cause people have a lot of different estimates.

But this is something that could be absolutely brutal for workers in multiple across society.

And we have said we are, number one policy on AI is gonna be to protect workers.

And that is gonna be AI.

We want it to be a tool for workers, not a replacement of workers.

And we've said we are going to have to have a huge government effort upfront to make sure that we have training for people to get good jobs.

There are a lot of jobs in California that are going that need people.

And the question is, are people trained for those jobs?

And every one of the people we're gonna train for a specific job and we're guaranteeing, and let me say, how are we gonna pay for that?

Because one of the issues in this race is people are promising a lot of things, but they're not, it's not free to have a gigantic training program.

I think we'll do it through the community colleges, which I absolutely adore and that are set up to do this.

And we'll do it in conjunction with businesses and with government agencies so that you're working for a specific job at a specific wage at a specific time.

But the idea of how to pay for this, I shamelessly stole from the head of Anthropic, Dario Amodei who said, if this is gonna happen and it's necessary to take care of these people.

And what we'll do is we'll have a very small fee for every calculation done by an AI company and that that money will go to protect workers.

That first and foremost that will be to make sure that we're taking care of workers.

That if people lose their jobs, we're training, retraining them for young people.

We are training them for the jobs that they're no longer exist.

And let me say this, the estimates on AI, no one really knows exactly how this is gonna turn out.

And you know, I've talked to the, the most experienced people from the policy side and the heads of these companies, nobody really knows.

But the estimates are that it's somewhere between huge and unbelievably huge though.

That's the range.

And so if it turns out to be unbelievably huge, and this, the money for this is more than enough to protect workers, which, you know, this is all hypothetical, but if it is, we're gonna use that as a sovereign wealth fund for California so that we can do pay for things that we want to do, but we can't do now like childcare for everybody in the state of California.

Only 16% of the people who qualify for subsidized childcare get it.

And this is something where, look, when you think about, I mean the Pope just came out with an encyclical on this yesterday and he was basically saying we can't run a society for corporations and machines.

We're, we're a society of people.

And if we're going to have a new innovation, which we're very proud of, that California's leading the world again in imagining the future and creating the future, great.

But we can't have it hollow out the people of this state and leave them in the lurch.

We can't be so anxious to win at the very top.

And these, the people in these companies are creating wealth at an literally, historically unimaginable rate.

We can't have that happen where all these people are being put out of jobs are being impoverished as a result of a machine basically taking all the information and experience and creativity of society and charging for it and putting out of work all the people who actually have the experience and the creativity and have put in all the work so that that can happen.

- Yeah, Elon Musk has an opinion about all of this, unsurprisingly.

He said universal high income via checks issued by the federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.

And I think you hear some arguments like that that you know, when you talk about training, people think, oh here we go again with NAFTA promises of training and and getting people into new jobs.

Why not base it on just giving money to people?

- So lemme talk about that for a second.

And I'm gonna come out, I know this is gonna seem surprising.

I'm gonna come out on the side of the Pope instead of on the side of Elon Musk.

The Pope is talking about the dignity of human beings, the dignity of work, the meaning of purpose, supporting people in having a meaningful life.

And that's what I'm in favor of.

Just so you know.

And by the way, Elon Musk is creating money in California, built his companies in California.

California, subsidized the heck out of his companies.

And last I talk, he's talking about a lot of money going to people.

But he moved outta California for some reason to a state that doesn't have income tax.

So I'm not gonna listen too much to what Elon Musk says now or ever.

- But on the idea?

- Look, I know I'm telling you in my opinion, healthy societies have people participating, building things together.

Healthy societies, people work and use their talents to create things.

And that's what California has always been about.

And I don't, I think it's absolutely important in this state that we support working people, that we support them across the board, that we enable them, that we help train them, and that we take that as a serious charge for our state.

And I absolutely do.

And that's exactly what the Pope is talking about and I believe he's right now.

- Let's welcome our next customer.

- Hi Tom, I'm Julie Hamilton from Marin County.

I'm a director of growth strategy at an e-commerce company.

And my question is, women make 88 cents to the dollar that men earn and are overrepresented in lower paying roles and underrepresented in top paying ones.

Childcare has much to do with that.

How do you plan to improve women's ability to join and succeed in the workforce?

- So let me say that about childcare specifically.

I wanna start by saying I specifically referenced childcare with regard to the token tax or the fee on calculations for AI companies because childcare for working families in this state is like another mortgage and it is an absolute limiting factor on women's being able to succeed in business for sure.

And that's why I was saying I'm absolutely intent on if we have money left over from that, having it go to childcare because only 16% of the people who qualify for subsidized childcare actually get it in the state of California.

And it is absolutely critical.

But I wanna say something else about women in the workforce and structural gender-ization, I don't know if that's a word.

And racism.

If you go through and look at the jobs that were traditionally done by women, women.

So whether that's a teacher or a nurse or a home care worker or a childcare worker, those are jobs that traditionally have been dramatically underpaid compared to the jobs that are traditionally done by men.

And so as we watch the changes in society and you look and see, so if you ever have a chance to go and see what home care or childcare workers do on a daily basis, it's incredibly hard.

It's incredibly skilled.

They are very lowly paid, they mostly don't get benefits, they mostly don't get paid vacation and they mostly don't get retirement.

And that's a classic woman's job.

If you look at teachers, that is a profession.

Those are professional people who are critical for our state, they're critical for our society.

It's not a well-paid profession.

And that is traditionally a woman's job.

And that's why we're here.

And let me say that my goal in thinking about compensation, in thinking about fairness is to always try to call out the structural injustices in our society.

Because unless you call them out, then you don't intentionally redress them.

And so we're talking about women and specific women's jobs, but I can tell you this is certainly something that happens based on race.

And so there's structure, there has been structural racism.

That's really the reason Kat and I started a nonprofit community bank was to lend money and to create, to give credit to communities that the commercial banks had redlined forever.

And so I don't think it's possible to solve those problems without first announcing them and then trying to intentionally address them to the extent you can.

And I think for women it's very clear why that's true.

Going after childcare as a critical thing for justice as well as for, you know, productivity I think is a critical thing.

And so in every one of these instances, I'm gonna try and be proactive about pointing out the traditional injustice and therefore the need to intentionally address it's certainly true for women.

- Yeah, awesome.

I'd love to welcome up our final question this evening.

- Hello Tom.

My name is Ryan Motzek, I'm a Bay Area born and raised small business owner.

I also run a neighborhood organization in this neighborhood called the Mission Merchants Association.

We work with small businesses.

My question is, in places like San Francisco extreme wealth exists alongside worsening street conditions and in many ways that wealth seems to have exacerbated the problem rather than improved it.

How would you ensure that California's economic success actually translates into safer streets, better transit, and a higher quality of life for everyone?

- So let me say this is a critical issue in our state, and I've been trying to directly or indirectly address it throughout this campaign and throughout this evening that basically we have a state with the greatest inequality in the United States of America and it's worsening.

And therefore, when I think about it, I, what I'm saying about this state is this, and it's gonna come out in terms of how I think about what's a fair share and how people should be treated.

And my basic point about San Francisco and California and the United States is these places have been built by working people, sacrifices by working people.

Yesterday was Memorial Day sacrifices by poor kids who stood up for democracy and freedom for hundreds of years.

And as we look at this state, the idea that anybody earns their money themselves to me is not only wrong but upsetting because this is a society that has been built by the sacrifices of working people, of poor people, of illiterate people for hundreds of years to stand up to make it possible for people to come here and imagine the future and create these companies and have these great successes.

And I think it's only, I think it's absolutely important that when we think about the society we're trying to create to remember all those kids, the the ones for the last hundred years, the ones today, the people doing home care, the people teaching in the schools, the nurses, the people who make this state work and run and possible.

And so when I think about, look what I'm talking about, I want to have vibrant cities.

The future of California has to be building in cities.

They have to be safe streets and they have to be, we have the great advantage of being the rainbow coalition.

There's incredibly interesting people across this state that we all can learn from each other and have a very fun, wonderful experience in doing it.

And that is what these, these cities are have gotta be about.

And so to a very large extent, we need to have that and we've gotta invest in that and we've gotta create it.

And that is something that everybody can share and everybody can take pride in.

And that's exactly what my campaign about is about is trying to create that society that is shared prosperity, but it's also shared culture, shared learning, shared fun.

And I think that's what ca you know, California, let's remember for a second, this is a really fun place to live.

Like we've forgotten that it's supposed to be, this is incredibly gloriously beautiful, filled with brilliant, creative, fun-loving people.

Let's remember that and let's have that in our cities.

And remember how fun it is to be in a vibrant city with all kinds of different cultures, meeting and mingling and learning from each other.

And that's exactly what I want to do in this day.

- Yeah, I'm sorry to go from that beautiful tapestry to BART, but I do want to ask, Ryan did ask specifically about public transit that is a, a key part of, of vibrant urban life in California cities.

What would and so many of those agencies are?

We need to support our public transportation.

We absolutely do.

We need to, we need to make it cheap and available for people to get places.

We need to build transportation from the where there are places a lot of people to the places where they want to go to, that is gonna be a critical part of the state working.

We cannot have hour and a half commutes as the standard for this state for a whole bunch of reasons.

Transportation's by far the biggest polluted pollution in the state of California on a climate basis or just on a overall health basis.

We act we're gonna have to be doing our, we need to build and we need to build around public transportation and we need to build more densely.

And that's just the truth.

- Yeah.

I assume you're a Bay Area resident, you vote in San Francisco.

Are you supporting this?

There's gonna be a ballot measure, it looks like this November to fund BART, fund Caltrain.

I will.

On Muni, - Yes.

- And what do you see as the role of the next governor in all this?

Because this has been a, it seems like every year we're facing a fiscal cliff with a lot of these agencies.

- Yes.

So let me say something, I mean I think there's been a sense, and certainly there have been bestselling books written about how poorly we build and how poorly we act in the physical world in this state.

And it's true.

I mean if you look at the rate with which we're building houses and you look at some of our big public projects, how over budget they are and how behind schedule they are, you know, honestly, people are writing books about it on a historic basis and we just can't continue to do that.

And look, you're looking at somebody who built a business from scratch.

I do math, I do, I hold people accountable.

We are going to, we need to do things in the physical world and we need to do them at a price that people can afford and think about how to do that before we start and then we've gotta get it done.

And that's really who I am.

I'm a very practical person.

I want us to succeed.

I am Team California.

I am absolutely competitive for the people of this state to be prosperous and to succeed.

And I want to do it in a way that everybody gets brought along.

- Yeah.

Another thing Ryan touched on that with that question is, is the, you know, streets of our cities homelessness, clearly that was such a big issue for this last governor.

One year he spent his entire state of the state talking about just homelessness.

What do you think of the job Newsom has done on that issue?

What would you do differently?

- Well, look, I think the first thing to remember about homelessness is no one gets well on this street.

So keeping people off the street, giving rental assistance to keep people from becoming homeless is money.

Very, very, very well spent.

And getting people off the street as fast as possible is the second best thing you can do.

And let's talk, I mean the, the strategy right now is basically shelters and long-term supportive housing.

A lot of people on the street don't wanna move into shelters.

And that's the truth.

They, it's, they don't feel safe.

There's no privacy.

They can't bring their animals.

Those are three really big deals for people who are, who are living on the street.

We need to actually get people into something different that they want.

And I think that what's been working across California is emergency interim housing where you get a room with a key, you get shared dining and laundry facilities, you can bring your animal and you don't have to be clean.

That is something that solves people's needs and gets them something they want and they're willing to do.

And I think that to a very large extent, we need to be getting people for their sake.

The most compassionate thing we can do is get people off the street.

If you look, only one in seven people who be, who become unhoused have a mental health problem or some form of addiction, only one in seven.

But being on the street is so dangerous.

It is so stressful.

It is, you are so vulnerable that it creates massive personal problems that are not easy to solve.

And therefore keeping people off the street or getting 'em off the street as fast as possible is the most compassionate thing we can do.

It's the smartest thing we can do.

It's the most effective thing we can do.

And by the way, if we're gonna have, what I'm talking about is safe streets that kids can walk down, fun places for people to go.

That's a critical part of California.

- Yeah.

We have just about 30 seconds left before we wrap up.

I want to give you a chance to make closing comments to folks.

- Look you guys, everyone's talking like this is a complicated race.

It's not, there's 60 people on the ballot, but only three people could possibly be in the top two.

So let's talk turkey for one second here.

There's a hard right Republican who's endorsed by Donald Trump and I don't want to talk about him because I don't agree with him in anything literally.

So if you're gonna vote for him, you're not gonna vote for me.

Second of all, there's a corporate dem Xavier Becerra, who's been taking money from all the corporations that I'm talking about, restructuring their, their bottom lines, which is Chevron, the second biggest oil company in the state, Meta, Uber, all these, he's got money from the biggest lobby against single payer.

And being asked, he said the state's doing, asked what he would change last week he said the state's doing really well.

He didn't really have an answer.

If you want change in this state, if you believe this state is unaffordable for Californians, if you want to take on the corporate interest, there's only one person who can possibly be in the top two who's saying that, and it's me.

Yeah, I'm the change person.

I'm the person who's gonna take on the corporate interest and I'm the person that we, that working people are behind.

That is the choice in this, in this election.

Do we want to change?

Do we want to take on the corporate interest?

Do we want to drive down costs?

If you do, I'm the person.

- Alright, Tom Steyer, thank you so much for your time this evening.

I really appreciate it.

And I wanna let folks know this is, as I said, the last of our town halls with gubernatorial candidates.

You can watch the previous ones that we did at youtube.com/kqedlive.

For more election coverage and resources, You can check out our voter guide, that's at kqed.org/voterguide, and you can listen to all of our interviews with the leading candidates for governor, not all 62, but a few of them on "Political Breakdown" wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks to all of you for taking time tonight to attend, for everyone watching at home, listening at home, and have a great night.