How Tom Steyer's unexpected alliance with progressives vaulted him into the top tier of California's governor race

When the Bernie Sanders-aligned Our Revolution endorsed Tom Steyer in the unwieldy California governor’s race, the irony of a progressive group founded on an anti-billionaire ethos backing a multibillionaire wasn’t lost on its leader.“If you had asked me a year ago, ‘Oh, are you going to endorse a billionaire for anything?

When the Bernie Sanders-aligned Our Revolution endorsed Tom Steyer in the unwieldy California governor’s race, the irony of a progressive group founded on an anti-billionaire ethos backing a multibillionaire wasn’t lost on its leader.

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“If you had asked me a year ago, ‘Oh, are you going to endorse a billionaire for anything? I think that would have been highly unlikely,” Joseph Geevarghese, Our Revolution’s executive director, said in an interview.

But Geevarghese said he’d been impressed with Steyer’s policy platform and engagement with liberal groups in the state.