It seems as if the Democratic playing field for the 2020 elections hasn’t quite settled yet, with Billionaire Tom Steyer announcing his candidacy via video on Tuesday.
As Buzzfeed notes, Steyer, a prominent Democratic political donor and hedge fund manager has invested millions of dollars into the political organizations he’s founded, including Need To Impeach, which focuses on pressuring Democratic members of Congress to start the impeachment process against the current president.
Back in January, Steyer said that he would not run for president, saying that he was focused on “strengthening [his] commitment to Need to Impeach.”
Now his tune has changed, with the release of his official campaign video titled “Fundamental Change.”
“I am running to end corruption of our democracy by corporations and give more power to the American people,” the caption of the video read.
And that was exactly what the video focused on, Steyer’s own biography and his commitment to using his wealth for good and to end corruption, especially at the hands of big corporations and big money interests.
“We have a society that’s very unequal and it’s really important for people to understand that this society is connected,” Steyer said in the video. “If this is a banana republic with a few, very very rich people and everybody else living in misery, that’s a failure.”
“Almost every single major intractable problem at the back of it you see a big money interest for whom stopping progress, stopping justice is really important to their bottom line,” Steyer added. “We’ve got to take the corporate control out of our politics.”