John Podesta, Tom Steyer / AP
The White House’s newest staffer is John Podesta, the 64-year-old founder of the Center for American Progress (CAP), the head of President Obama’s 2008 transition team, a former chief of staff to President Clinton, and a former lobbyist and cofounder, with his brother Tony, of the Podesta Group. You know: an outsider.
…
Podesta is the vehicle through which a radical billionaire’s energy policies are about to enter the Oval Office. I am speaking of Tom Steyer, the incredibly wealthy hedge fund manager who retired from his firm, Farallon Capital Management, in the fall of 2012 for a second career in political activism. Long a donor to Democratic campaigns, like many liberals Steyer has become obsessed by global warming, and sees the Keystone Pipeline as a metaphor for whether Americans are serious about, and are committed to stopping, the rise in global temperatures. (Temperatures that have been flat for the past 15 years.)
Steyer is also a pioneer in the dark money universe of post-Citizens United campaign finance. He is one reason Democratic Super PACs outspent Republican ones 2-to-1 in 2013. He has bankrolled ballot initiatives in California, helped defeat the pro-Keystone, and pro-labor, Democrat Stephen Lynch in the Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary, and most recently spent $8 million in the Virginia governor’s race electing Terry McAuliffe. That, according to Politico, is “more money, on a per-vote basis, than the famously prolific conservative donors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson spent in the 2012 presidential election.” But it is also pittance of Steyer’s $1.5 billion fortune.
