Californians love to reject billionaire political candidates. Will 2020 be different?

A poor man once said it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven. The Pearly Gates may be closed to billionaires, but Donald Trump proved in 2016 that the Oval Office is wide open.

As a result, 2020 will deliver the spectacle of two billionaires spending over $500 million, combined, in vainglorious efforts to save us from a third (supposed) billionaire. To win the Democratic nomination, however, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer must charm California voters. Bloomberg says California is key to his candidacy. Both men are blanketing the state with ads.

Here’s some free advice that can save them zillions of dollars: stop. Californians are notoriously hostile to mega-wealthy candidates who self-fund their campaigns. That won’t change in 2020.

Thank heavens! The moment billionaires can simply buy the presidency is the moment the presidency will become nothing more than a status symbol for ego-tripping tycoons. Don’t get me wrong: I think Bloomberg and Steyer are good, idealistic people. In fact, their fortunes funded some of the work I did before returning to journalism.

But turning the White House into a stocking stuffer for super-wealthy individuals would set a dangerous precedent. No non-wealthy politician will be able to compete in a future plutocracy where corporations, charities, news outlets and our government are all owned by a handful of magnates.

Fortunately, Golden State voters will hand stinging defeats to Bloomberg and Steyer on Super Tuesday. That’s because California politics is the graveyard of billionaires. We always swat down the highest hopes of the richest candidates. People like Michael Huffington, Al Checchi and Meg Whitman all tried – and failed – to buy our biggest offices.

California is home to more billionaires than any other state, and we elect plenty of millionaires to high office. But we don’t like it when mega-wealthy candidates try to buy themselves a crown.

“With very few exceptions, California voters have tended to want to see that people have worked their way through the chairs,” said Phil Trounstine, co-editor and publisher of Calbuzz. “California voters have never bought the idea that you can use your money to leapfrog to the top of the heap.”

“I think that, on a very basic level, there’s some thought like ‘I’m successful and I know how to make money and therefore I will be successful in running a country,’” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “Those two things don’t necessarily connect.”

Trounstine pointed to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (estimated net worth: $400 million) as an exception but noted that Arnold was also a world-famous celebrity (just as Trump, whether or not he’s a real billionaire, is famous for playing one on TV).

Why do Californians generally dislike self-funding politicians?

“Super-rich, self-funded candidates tend to give off the odor that they’re better and smarter than the average voter,” said Democratic political strategist Garry South. “We all remember the old F. Scott Fitzgerald line, ‘Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.’”

South, who helped Gray Davis defeat wealthy businessman Al “Checkbook” Checchi in the 1998 gubernatorial primary and has also advised wealthy politicos, said it’s easy to exploit the arrogant quirks of super wealthy candidates. For instance, Checchi and Whitman sought California’s highest office despite the fact that neither had bothered to vote regularly. The revelations put them on the defensive.

Unlimited financial resources can also conspire to turn off voters, said South. For example, billionaires seem to have endless appetites – and budgets – for putting their faces on TV, but such excessive vanity grates on the nerves of normal people.

“Tom....Love You. You are THE MAN,” wrote one commenter on Steyer’s Facebook page. “But to be honest..... WAY TOO MANY COMMERCIALS.”

In addition, while scarce funds force most politicians to make clear decisions on strategy and message, billionaires never have to make choices. They can spend zillions pursuing multiple and sometimes conflicting strategies, egged on by high-paid consultants.

“They don’t have to make the resource allocation decisions and trade-offs of normal candidates,” said South. “They tend to hire every consultant in the Western Hemisphere.”

The result: a dysfunctional, aimless and inauthentic campaign with a heavy emphasis on ads starring billionaires.

Sadly, billionaires are often the last to realize their hopeless predicaments. That’s because they tend to surround themselves with people who have no incentive to speak truth.

“They often have a distorted feedback loop,” Brad Klontz, a psychologist who works with the wealthy, told the New York Times in 2017. “People are drawn to them for their status and perceived power, so they tend to be surrounded by people who endorse their worldview and don’t challenge their way of thinking. Very few people are honest with them.”

While it may be impossible for rich people to buy truth from consultants, they can always count on brutal honesty from California voters. Polls show both men stuck in the single digits.

Perhaps they should accept the wisdom of Californians and scrap their vanity campaigns. The glory they’ll win by helping to defeat Trump is preferable to the disdain they’ll earn through failed attempts to emulate him.

Editor’s note: This piece has been updated to reflect the latest campaign spending figures from Bloomberg and Steyer.

This story was originally published January 7, 2020 at 5:01 AM with the headline "Californians love to reject billionaire political candidates. Will 2020 be different?."