After a special session of all three California working groups joined by Bill McKibben on April 6, Third Act’s California contingent has agreed to endorse Tom Steyer for governor. Bill has personally endorsed Steyer and filled us in on why.

The current gubernatorial primary situation is concerning since two Republicans, neither of them champions of either climate or democracy, are leading in the polls. With California’s “jungle primary” system that sends only the top two vote-getters to the primary, the state could end up with the two Republicans as the only two gubernatorial candidates on the November ballot.

Bill told us that Tom Steyer approached him many years ago to discuss climate change and see what kind of role he might be able to play. Bill said he was skeptical at first because he believed that most people in Steyer’s position (he was at that time a wealthy hedge fund investor) were not serious about the issue. Bill said he was proven wrong.

Steyer’s commitment to avoiding a climate disaster led him to try to convince his hedge fund colleagues to stop investing in fossil fuel companies. When they refused, he left the firm and has worked hard and given a lot of money trying to change the minds of powerful policymakers and business leaders to course-correct our climate trajectory.

Steyer is, Bill says, absolutely the most serious person on climate of all the candidates because he fully understands the consequences if we continue on our current path.

We also learned of the Center for Biological Diversity’s well-researched scorecard that ranked Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell much further behind on these issues. (Swalwell has just dropped out of the race.)

Bill made it clear he would not ask a working group to endorse, because Third Act is not a top-down organization. He also said that he thought all the Democrats in the race would be “fine” on the environment, although none have the energy or the resources Steyer has given to this existential issue.

Our talk moved from the environment and democracy to issues inherent in supporting a billionaire. As Bill said, we would all be better off if billionaires became millionaires this year and resources were freed to address climate and inequality. But that’s not going to happen right now.

Beyond our core issues, there was broad agreement that a great candidate must work to get substantive policies that serve working people and reduce income inequality. We want anti-billionaire policies, as do the very progressive endorsers of Steyer – the United Domestic Workers Union, California Teachers Association, and others.

By endorsing Steyer, we would add our voice to an already existing bloc of climate organizations influential in California, and we hope that we might help break the logjam before the primary that threatens to keep a Democrat off the ballot entirely. Bill also shared one striking observation about Tom Steyer, about his deep ethical thinking, uncommon in professional politicians, and said that Steyer would be the kind of person to “do the right thing” and possibly pull out of the race if his presence were creating the likelihood of a two-Republican general election.

The chatter in email and in the 15 minutes before Bill joined the Zoom was pretty mixed, polite but anxious. We gave a poll to the attendees after the discussion and Q&A. The results were strongly supportive of endorsing Steyer. Endorsements in Third Act are governed by the Third Act Guidelines: They must pass by consensus of the Coordinating Committee within the working group.

The three groups had started working for the first time late last year on questionnaires for candidates that would help us with either an endorsement process or an educational process. We have drafted questionnaires but not sent them out, as our original goal targeted the general election. It’s been a useful process for a young organization, but we will not have our own process in place for the primaries – ballots drop in early May.

The coordinating committee for each working group is composed of some of the most active members of the group, people who are active in or leading our campaigns on climate and democracy, and our functional teams, Communications and Membership and Inclusion. On April 7, after reviewing the preferences of activists who attended the April 6 session and discussing the issue, our Bay Area coordinating committee voted unanimously to endorse Tom Steyer for governor of California. Shortly after our meeting, we learned that the Bay Area Coalition, a group of pro-democracy activist organizations that does not normally endorse in primary races, also agreed to endorse Steyer.

We hope our efforts in climate and democracy will be successful and that your active partnering will make that happen. Thank you for such gracious and thoughtful dialogue on this.

To learn more about Steyer’s platform and opinions, view this late-2025 conversation with Bill McKibben and this probing interview by journalist Emily Atkin on her recent Heated podcast.