Tom Steyer Presidential Campaign Stops in Fallon

by Rachel Dahl -- Members of the Tom Steyer presidential campaign made a stop in Fallon on Friday to meet with voters and discuss issues ahead of the Democrat Presidential Caucus scheduled for February 22^nd. Sam Steyer, the oldest of Tom and Kat Steyer’s four children, spoke to voters at the Telegraph coffee shop. Accompanying him on Valentine’s day was his fiancé, Tessa. They plan to be married at Lake Tahoe in late June. “It has been one of the great joys of my life to get to be on the campaign with my family,” said Sam. His mom is on the campaign full time in South Carolina, his sister is also full-time in Nevada, and their two brothers, although at school are doing as much as they can. There are also two cousins working on the campaign, as well as two of the family dogs. Sam explained that his father’s campaign grew out of two main areas: corporate influence on Washington D.C. and the climate crisis. “My dad has been leading grassroots movements against over-arching corporate reach on government for years.” He said that NextGen America, founded by Steyer has registered well over a million people to vote. “We also need to respond to the climate crisis like an emergency and rebuild our infrastructure and make sure we have clean energy and clean water, and also move toward a carbon neutral economy.” According to Sam and the Steyer campaign, “There is way too much corporate influence in the way of lobbying and donations on the federal government.” He said that “any policies we have that don’t make sense and are wildly unpopular with Americans, usually it’s an industry that is benefitting from that status quo.” Sam said his father is doing exactly what he believes in. “He is doing this out of a deep concern that if we don’t get these two things right, taking back our government from corporations and responding to the climate crisis, that we might be heading to a very dark place and if we do get them right we will literally be saving the world.” To the Steyer campaign, Nevada is vital for their success. “It’s the third state to vote,” said Sam, “but it the one that by far, more resembles the country as a whole.” He said it is diverse, has both great cities and strong rural communities and “for us, doing well in Nevada we see as the start of our path to the nomination and is absolutely vital so we want people to be with us both as volunteers, sharing their ideas, and helping us out at the caucus.” He said the campaign has a great team on the ground led by Jocelyn Sida, which has been doing a great job with outreach. “When I go around talking to Democrats and asking them what their most important issue in this campaign is, overwhelmingly they say that it is beating Donald Trump. In order to get the country back on track and the progressive policies that we as democrats believe in, that is the first essential step." Sam said Trump is already running for reelection on economic issues. “As someone who actually did build a global business and understands what makes an economy thrive,” he said, “my dad is perfectly positioned to call out Donald Trump and say an economy that has a high stock market because we’ve cut corporate taxes and taxes for the richest people in the country, in which many people are going without health care and people are working two or three jobs to get by, that is not economic success.” He said success is broad access to education and health care, economic growth, but economic justice at the same time. “My dad will build and economy where people’s lives actually get better.” When he isn’t on the campaign trail with his family, Sam works in the clean energy industry as a software engineer, developing applications for wind and solar and energy efficiency. Before the campaign he co-founded “a very small software company called Station A that builds software for clean energy.”       Sign up to receive updates and the Friday File email notices. Support local, independent news – contribute to The Fallon Post, your non-profit (501c3) online news source for all things Fallon.