Steyer pledges to spend $100M on 2020 presidential bid, already going up with TV ads

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Who is 2020 hopeful Tom Steyer and how did he become a billionaire?

Billionaire progressive activist Tom Steyer is planning to pour millions of his own money into his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Billionaire progressive activist and Trump impeachment advocate Tom Steyer is planning to pour millions of his own money into his newly launched campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And he’s going to start spending some of that immediately.

Hours after Steyer announced his White House bid early Tuesday morning, his presidential campaign told Fox News that they would launch TV commercials starting Wednesday in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, the first four states to vote in the presidential primary and caucus calendar. News of the ads was first reported by Medium Buying, an outfit that tracks political ad buys.

WHAT IS TOM STEYER'S NET WORTH?

Steyer is worth some $1.6 billion, according to Forbes. And Steyer campaign spokesman Alberto Lammers confirmed to Fox News that Steyer would spend at least $100 million to finance his White House run.

But Steyer’s entry into the race isn’t sitting well with some of his rivals for the Democratic nomination, who’ve vowed to rid big bucks from American politics.

Tom Steyer talks to Fox News in Manchester, New Hampshire on Jan. 17, 2019

"I like Tom, he is a good guy, he’s a friend of mine, but I’m not a great fan of billionaires getting involved in the political process," Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said in an interview on MSNBC.

Sanders is mostly fueling his campaign with small-dollar donations from grassroots contributors and has eschewed fundraisers with top-dollar donors. So is Sen. Elizabeth Warren, another populist senator preaching progressive policies who’s among the top tier of Democratic White House contenders.

“The Democratic primary should not be decided by billionaires, whether they’re funding Super PACs or funding themselves,” the two-term Democratic senator from Massachusetts tweeted. “The strongest Democratic nominee in the general will have a coalition that’s powered by a grassroots movement.”

Another rival, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, when asked about Steyer's entry into the race by reporters during a campaign stop in New Hampshire, merely said "God Bless him" before adding: "I know why I'm running."

Gillibrand then highlighted that she’s “running on the idea that we need publicly funded elections” and argued that “the money interests have a corrupting influence on politics in America.”

Steyer announced his candidacy in a video sent to supporters and blasted out on social media. And in an accompanying statement, he touted his record “as an outsider,” highlighting that “I’ve led grassroots efforts that have taken on big corporations and won results for people. That’s not something you see a lot of from Washington these days. That’s why I’m running for President.”

Steyer’s entrance into the race could shake up the primary field.

The 62-year-old former hedge fund manager has become a force in national politics. Five years ago he created NextGenAmerica, a grassroots advocacy organization that helped drive the youth vote in 2018, helping the Democrats win back the House of Representatives. And over the past two years, he’s become one of the ringleaders in the push to impeach Trump -- through his ‘Need to Impeach’ movement.

Besides his vast wealth, his two organizations have a very large grassroots reach.

Steyer now has one week to receive contributions from 65,000 individual donors – one of two thresholds to make the stage at the second round of Democratic presidential nomination debates. The other way to qualify – reaching 1 percent in three qualifying polls – appears to be out of reach since Steyer has not been listed on most 2020 surveys.

That's because in January, he announced he wouldn’t run for president.

At the time he said he’d focus on pushing Congress to start impeachment proceedings against the president and vowed to spend $30 million behind his efforts.

Since then, Steyer's said he's become frustrated with the Democratic majority in the House over their pace in approaching impeachment.

But Steyer made no mention of impeaching Trump in his presidential campaign announcement. Trump was briefly seen in Steyer’s campaign video.

The Republican National Committee called Steyer the latest candidate “to join the Democrats’ clown car.”

“After a false start, left-wing extremist Tom Steyer has finally formalized his self-promotion tour under the guise of a presidential campaign. The only thing Steyer’s campaign will do is light more of his money on fire as he joins the rest of the 2020 Democrat field in pushing policies that are way outside the mainstream,” RNC spokesman Steve Guest said.

And Trump re-election campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said that "it doesn't say much for the whole Democrat field that the number one Democrat donor took a look around and decided that there's no one he can support. His presence in the race will just pull the whole group even further to the left."