Quick Take
Rose K. Murphy argues that Tom Steyer’s environmental and economic rhetoric clashes with the investment record of the hedge fund he built at Farallon Capital Management. From water rights fights in Colorado to private prisons and overseas fossil fuel projects, the Watsonville resident writes that Steyer, now running for California governor, has never fully answered for the profits tied to environmental damage and corporate exploitation.
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I first learned about Tom Steyer in 2001, when I was researching the Yale University endowment with other recent alums and students. We optimistically believed that we could convince Yale to make ethical investment choices.
The first thing I discovered about Yale’s private equity investments was a partnership called Baca Partners, managed by Farallon Capital Management. Vaca Partners had unsuccessfully sued to get the rights to export and sell water from underneath the land adjacent to what was then the Great Sand Dunes National Monument in Colorado. For decades, local people had been trying to stop the water grab because of its environmental impact. When I got in contact with the local activists to tell them that Farallon and Yale were the hidden investors, they told the media.
The deal to sell Baca Ranch to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which had been stalled because Farallon wanted to make a profit, suddenly came to fruition.
We learned more about the investments Farallon made while Steyer was in charge. These included investments in:
- oil and gas drilling in countries in Africa where there were minimal environmental safeguards;
- a coal-burning plant that caused air and water pollution on the densely populated island of Java, Indonesia;
- a telecom company in Argentina that charged such high rates that the government sued it — at a time when the poverty rate was 60%;
- a private prison company that expanded the number of prison beds across the United States; and
- an attempt to privatize Brown Field Aviation Park that fell through, after which Farallon and its associates sued the City of San Diego.
Years later, I read about Steyer’s decision to distance himself from Farallon Capital Management, but not from all the profits he reaped and continued to collect until at least 2024.
As he runs for governor, we have to ask where he now invests his estimated $2.4 billion in assets. Does he still profit by exploiting the absence of environmental protections and government regulation of utilities around the world, while claiming to care about them in California?
Steyer says he wants to hold corporations accountable, but he has never held himself accountable for the environmental harms in Indonesia, across several African countries, or even apologized to the people of Colorado. He has never been held accountable for the profits he made on the backs of Argentines in poverty, prisoners who suffered in bad conditions in private prisons, or the residents of San Diego who had to pay the settlement.
Steyer’s plans are to increase taxes on us to enrich private corporations to solve the problems they profited from creating. He wants universal healthcare without challenging the immense profits being moved offshore by large hospital systems, like Sutter Health. He wants to build housing, without challenging the developers who have driven up the cost of new construction with high profit margins and a focus on luxury housing.
Steyer hasn’t told us what he’s invested in, but we know it isn’t in demonstration projects for affordable housing, or giving grants to stabilize small, rural hospitals that have been gutted by private equity.
The policies that allowed Steyer and others like him to accumulate vast amounts of wealth by fleecing poor communities and destroying local environments around the world are incompatible with the utopian vision he espouses. He led a private hedge fund, a large business and a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization. He used his money to buy special access to politicians but never held an elected office. He has never been accountable to a community for his policy statements. He does not know how to compromise in ways that move policies forward without getting bogged down in lawsuits from businesses that believe they will be harmed.
Steyer says all the right things. His actions over the past 25 years show that they are just words.
Rose K. Murphy is a disabled activist and artist. She has lived in Watsonville for 14 years.
