What would you do if you suddenly received a check for $100 million? Many Americans would probably embrace a more lavish personal lifestyle: a bigger house, more expensive car, fancy overseas trips. Most would probably use the opportunity to pay off outstanding student loans, medical debt, or mortgages. Parents would invest in their kids’ education. Some might donate much of the sum to charity. A few might even turn it down.

All of those ideas make more sense than blowing it on a doomed presidential campaign, as Tom Steyer, a billionaire liberal donor and environmentalist, has decided to do. Steyer announced his candidacy on Tuesday, posting a video on Twitter in which he frames himself as a populist who would fight big corporations that have hijacked the nation’s political system. “Really what we’re doing is trying to make democracy work by pushing power down to the people,” he said.

It’s an admirable goal and a nonsensical way to achieve it. Steyer enters an already crowded field with 23 other Democrats vying for the nomination. Though he’s mirroring the language of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other candidates who are running on themes of inequality and corruption, it’s unclear whether a hedge-fund manager with no experience in elected office is the best evangelist of that message. His candidacy, if anything, seems to represent the problems that he says he would fix: A Steyer spokesman told The New York Times that he would be willing to spend “at least” $100 million to win the election.



There are better ways for someone with Steyer’s resources to tilt the balance of American political power in their preferred direction. The 2020 election cycle alone offers a few key opportunities, so long as you can afford it. He could fight Republican gerrymandering in the states, help Democrats retake the Senate, help millions of Americans register to vote, or even, given his conviction that Trump should be impeached, fund a primary challenge to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The best investment for a reform-minded liberal billionaire concerned about the state of American democracy would be to spend lavishly on state legislative races. While every election cycle matters, the upcoming 2020 census means that the stakes are far higher than usual. All but six states will be electing new lawmakers in 2020. Those lawmakers will play a crucial role in redrawing the state legislative maps and congressional districts that will shape the next ten years of elections (with the exception of a handful of states with independent redistricting commissions).