The DSA's Endorsement of Tom Steyer Is a Betrayal of the California Left

And It's Predictably on Brand

The California gubernatorial race has been a chaotic spectacle, and with it comes a familiar refrain from establishment-adjacent “progressive” organizations: this is the most important election of our lifetime. Again. As always. Forever and ever, amen. The California Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has now deployed this well-worn script to justify one of the most ideologically fraught endorsements in recent memory. California DSA is urging their members and sympathizers to vote for Tom Steyer, a billionaire with a profitable record on fossil fuels, private prisons, and Israel, while simultaneously discouraging votes for Dr. Butch Ware, a candidate who represents precisely the kind of platform DSA claims to stand for.

California’s jungle primary system sends the top two vote-getters to the general election, regardless of party. This structure creates a perennial anxiety among Democratic-aligned organizations: what if two Republicans advance? In a state as reliably blue as California, this scenario has occurred before, but treating it as a near-inevitable catastrophe in a statewide governor’s race requires a significant stretch of political imagination. California has not elected a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger over two decades ago. The Republican base in California is fractured, underfunded, and deeply unpopular outside of a shrinking geographic footprint. Even if a Republican was elected governor, could we expect any worse from them?

Yet California DSA leans into this fear-mongering with enthusiasm, warning voters that “the chance of the top two candidates both being Republicans is still very real.” Socialist organizers do not concern themselves with a red vs. blue capitalist governor. It is the same rhetorical maneuver that has been used for decades to funnel left-wing energy into the Democratic Party’s waiting arms, election cycle after election cycle, producing precious little in the way of material gains for working people. When socialists adopt the logic of lesser-evilism wholesale, they become indistinguishable from the centrists they claim to oppose.

To California DSA’s credit, their voter guide does not pretend the Democratic field is healthy. The guide accurately catalogs a depressing roster of establishment candidates. Eric Swalwell, once a frontrunner, exited after credible accusations of sexual assault and misconduct. Xavier Becerra was quickly adopted by the establishment after Swalwell’s collapse, and he brings decades of public office experience and a platform that DSA rightly describes as “milquetoast,” more of the same corporate Democratic non-governance Californians have endured for years. Antonio Villaraigosa is flush with oil lobby money and carries the endorsement of the scandal-ridden Karen Bass; he is perhaps best remembered for accelerating the privatization of Los Angeles public schools. Katie Porter, despite her firebrand reputation, has refused to support the DSA-endorsed billionaire tax, has a documented history of supporting genocidal Israel, including praising Benjamin Netanyahu, and has faced her own staff abuse scandal.

The picture California DSA paints of the Democratic field is, frankly, damning, and it raises an obvious question. If the Democratic Party’s bench in the most “progressive” large state in the country has produced this field, why is the solution to hand a billionaire the socialist seal of approval?

Who Is Tom Steyer, Really?

Let us be clear about who California DSA is asking you to trust. Tom Steyer is a billionaire. Not a millionaire. Not a successful small business owner. A billionaire. He built his fortune at Farallon Capital Management, a hedge fund with documented investments in private prisons and coal mining; these are industries that have caused immeasurable harm to working-class communities, communities of color, and the planet. California DSA’s own voter guide acknowledges this directly, noting that “his wealth was earned through the exploitation of the working class” and was “accumulated by the same things he now decries.”

And yet they endorse him anyway. Because he supports the billionaire tax. Because he has endorsed state-level Medicare for All; a reversal of his previous position. Because he has called ICE a “violent extremist group” and outlined prosecutorial strategies against ICE agents as governor. Because he has been endorsed by politically powerful labor unions including the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers, AFSCME 3299, Unite HERE, the California Nurses Association, and the California Labor Federation. These seem like something, but further buying out already-bought-out unions, which lack working class consciousness is not enough. These reasons must be weighed against the totality of who Steyer is and where his wealth came from, and that weighing is one California DSA performs too quickly.

The guide’s own language is telling. Steyer is described as “somehow running the most progressive campaign.” The word “somehow” is doing enormous work there and concludes with the caveat that “time will tell whether he’s truly a class traitor.” This is the bar DSA has set: not that Steyer is a class traitor, but that he might eventually become one. The DSA is crossing their fingers as an endorsement.

On Palestine, California DSA deserves genuine credit for not looking away. Their voter guide directly addresses Steyer’s refusal to call Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, and his claim that he “honestly does not know what genocide means.” The guide calls this “pulled from the same Zionist playbook that motivates genocide denial across the political spectrum” and states plainly that “playing dumb about the daily horrors and atrocities Israel commits is not ‘progressive’ in any way.”

This is the right analysis. And it is precisely why the endorsement that follows it is so logically jarring. California DSA correctly identifies Steyer’s genocide denial as ideologically disqualifying by any honest standard, and then tells you to vote for him anyway. The guide notes that Steyer has “disavowed AIPAC’s influence on Democratic primaries,” but also points out that AIPAC does not involve itself in non-federal races, making this disavowal cost him nothing. For socialists, for organizers, for the communities directly impacted by U.S. complicity in genocide, this should register as more than a footnote.

The Charges Against Ware Don’t Hold Up

California DSA cites specific criticisms of Butch Ware to justify their illogical endorsement. Even though Ware blocked me and many other communists on x.com for questioning his stance on the “Uyghur genocide,” we will examine the criticisms honestly because DSA does not.

DSA cites a MoveOn piece regarding abortion, attacking Ware for saying, “Of course, there have to be limitations.” This is presented as evidence of an “anti-abortion” position. Read in full context, Ware was responding to a broad question, and DSA dishonestly frames him.

DSA cites Ware saying “I don’t think that biological males should play in female sports.” This may be a legitimate point of criticism. However, DSA’s cited source also includes Ware’s position when asked specifically whether he as governor would ban transgender student athletes: “The governing bodies of sports should make those decisions. Why would I, as the governor, be involved in a conversation about who gets to play which sport? There are people whose job that is.” Calling this a “doubling down” strains credulity when the candidate explicitly declined to support any government-level ban.

On the "house slave" comment directed at Shirley Weber: Butch Ware is a Black man invoking the language of racial betrayal to describe a Black official he believes is doing the bidding of a capitalist political establishment. That is his prerogative. The history of such a critique is long, legitimate, and has been made by Black thinkers and activists across generations. [Editor's note: This article's editor is Black and agrees that the good Lady Weber's behavior around freezing out another Black candidate in service to the likes of Gavin Newsom rise to the level of house slave behavior.] California DSA's framing emphasizes that Weber is "a Black woman" as though that fact settles the moral question, while omitting that she is also the Secretary of State whose office is currently the subject of a lawsuit filed by Ware's campaign over what his team describes as a politically motivated disqualification. The DSA is silent on the substance and loud on the packaging.

The Ballot Suppression That DSA Won’t Mention

Here is what California DSA’s voter guide does not tell you. Butch Ware did not simply “fail to qualify for the ballot.” His campaign was notified of a disqualification challenge with ten minutes remaining before the close of business on a Friday afternoon which marked the deadline for submissions. The reason stated was an unredacted phone number on a tax document; a redaction that, under California law, is the legal responsibility of the Secretary of State’s office, not the candidate. The Secretary of State is Shirley Weber; that “house slave” Ware mentioned.

The campaign responded with two separate legal actions within 24 hours, represented in part by the same attorney who successfully defeated Weber’s office on a nearly identical challenge in the 2021 recall election. Dr. Jill Stein, Ware’s former running mate, called it “the kind of lies and treachery the Democrats have used for decades to silence the opposition they’re terrified of.”

California DSA’s voter guide describes Ware as someone who “failed to qualify for the ballot” and “has lashed out against Californian Left,” without a single word about the procedural circumstances of his removal. Their omission is not neutrality; it is used to uplift a genocide-denying billionaire.

The DSA Is Not an Honest Actor

Let’s dispense with the charitable reading. California DSA’s voter guide contains all the information needed to reach a damning conclusion about Tom Steyer. DSA recognizes his billions extracted from private prisons and fossil fuels, his genocide denial dressed up as philosophical uncertainty, his class position that no amount of policy positioning can dissolve — and then they endorse him anyway? They possess the analysis and abandon it at the moment it matters. Meanwhile, Ware’s rhetorical choices apparently warrant explicit voter warnings, while the circumstances of his ballot removal (a ten-minute Friday afternoon deadline, a legal obligation the Secretary of State’s office failed to meet, and two lawsuits filed within 24 hours) warrant no mention at all?

The Republicans-could-win panic deserves one final word before we let it go entirely: Republicans and Democrats are two management styles in service of the same capitalist order. The choice between a Republican governor and a billionaire Democrat who made his fortune on private prisons and coal is not a choice between harm and safety. Steyer has spent over $100 million on this race and remains behind the top two in recent polling. The working class of California has not been inspired by his money. They should not be manipulated into voting for him either.

Build Power Where It Lives

Electoral politics, at best, is one limited terrain among many. At worst, and California DSA’s performance here illustrates the worst, it becomes a mechanism for disciplining the left, absorbing its energy, and returning it to the Democratic Party on a four-year cycle with nothing to show for it. The answer is dual power: tenant unions, mutual aid networks, labor organizing, community defense, and the construction of institutions that serve working people regardless of who sits in Sacramento. The American Communist Party is working on all of the above.

The California governor’s race will resolve itself one way or another, and the working class will wake up the morning after in the same housing crisis, facing the same landlords, the same wage theft, the same food insecurity, the same genocide funded by their tax dollars. California DSA has shown you who they are. Maya Angelou said “believe them,” so let’s build something they cannot co-opt.

What do you think? Is there still a role for socialist electoral organizing in California, or has the DSA’s capture by Democratic Party logic made independent institution-building the only honest path forward? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.