Peter Thiel weighing bid for CA gov: https://t.co/gXWB9rrg3W At last the state's oppressed tech douche minority will get their voices heard.
— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) January 15, 2017
From the Politico article:
… Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook, has been discussing a prospective bid with a small circle of advisers, including Rob Morrow, who has emerged as his political consigliere.
Morrow has worked at Clarium Capital, the San Francisco-based investment management firm and hedge fund that Thiel started.
Those who have been in touch with the 49-year-old entrepreneur are skeptical that he’ll enter the race. He is a deeply private figure, and California is unfriendly territory for a Republican — particularly a pro-Trump one. The president-elect won just over 30 percent of the vote there.
But they add that Thiel has conspicuously yet to rule out a bid and that those around him continue to discuss it…
Thiel, who is worth an estimated $2.7 billion, would fill an important need: the ability to self-fund. Waging a gubernatorial bid in California, where campaigns are famously expensive, could cost over $100 million.
He isn’t the only billionaire who may run. Environmentalist Tom Steyer, a prolific giver to Democratic causes, is also seen as a possible contender.
With Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown term-limited, several high-profile Democrats, including former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Treasurer John Chiang have already launched campaigns…
I’m assuming, from my perch here on the opposite coast, that Thiel is just drafting in Trump’s slipstream, getting his vanity stroked by Repub apologists like Politico without having to task his highly evolved brain with grubby political calculation.
Another sign of the President-Asterisks’s negative effects on the general political sphere — he hasn’t even been inaugurated, and he’s already encouraging the worst sort of anti-human grifters to speculate about following his slimy path.
i hope he gets his shit stomped and goes broke filing five million lawsuits against california voters https://t.co/Nv1OHCrZ7j
— Piss POTUS Jeb Lund (@Mobute) January 14, 2017
Late Night California Nightmarin’ Open Thread: Guvernator ThielPost + Comments (71)