Dem donor Tom Steyer announces $30M plan to take back Congress

Christina Gregg
Updated ·2 min read
Dem donor Tom Steyer announces $30M plan to take back Congress
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Democratic donor Tom Steyer -- the billionaire behind a high-profile Trump impeachment campaign -- announced a plan on Monday to take back Congress from the current Republican majority.

Rolling out a $30 million "NextGen Rising" initiative aimed at increasing millennial voter turnout, Steyer says he's willing to do whatever it takes to "save our country."

"I'm going to continue to work on the grass-roots efforts we had in place, and amplify them, and make them bigger," Steyer said during a Monday press conference. “We're going to register voters, then encourage them to participate. That means we want to talk about issues people care most about. We need to — just go back and look at millennial turnout in 2014, the last midterms. It’s shocking how low it was."

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Steyer first entered the political sphere with his NextGen Climate push in 2013, and soon became a figure many thought would run for Congress or a Gubernatorial seat. Despite Steyer's increased visibility due to his "Need to Impeach" efforts, Steyer says he will not be running for office himself.

"People have been asking me for 12 months and five days what I’m going to run for," Steyer said in a pre-press conference interview on Monday. "I’m not going to run for anything. I’ve said all along, the question I always ask is: Where can I make the most differential impact? And when I look at the jobs I can run for in California, they all have reputable Democrats running for them already."

NextGen Rising will target GOP-held congressional seats and a number of swing seats in states including Florida, Arizona, Michigan, New Hampshire and Virginia.

Even as Steyer rolled out his new campaign surrounding the young vote, the donor is still firing on all cylinders when it comes to criticism of President Donald Trump and his administration. In the wake of Michael Wolff's explosive "Fire and Fury" release, Steyer recently said he has bought a copy of the book for every member of Congress, and would be working with citizens to have the books personally delivered.