The man on stage does not look like someone who is $ 1.6 billion. Tom Steyer wears gray jeans, tie with plaid and his shirt is half a size too big.
But either the billionaire from California does not care about such looks - or maybe the casual Friday look is even wanted. The former hedge fund manager, # 1477 on the Forbes list of the richest in the world, wants to rally the masses of America.
Not to become president, like some of his entrepreneurial colleagues, who dream of crowning professional success with a political career. Steyer wants to hunt out the incumbent Donald Trump from the Oval Office long before the 2020 election. "Do you think he is a criminal?" He shouts into the crowded hall. Fervently, there are hundreds of throats this evening: "Yeah!"
People from all over America followed Steyer's call to Washington: a kind of two-day anti-Trump training camp, in the basement of a hotel, a mile from the White House. In October 2017, just over a year after Trump's election victory, Steyer launched his organization "Need to Impeach". The only goal: to force the US Congress to initiate an impeachment against the president.
The leadership of the Democrats has so far rejected because she fears that the parliamentary process in the end fails anyway in the majority of Republicans in the Senate, but then superimposed on all other promising campaign issues.
Steyer heats up the pressure
But at the base of the pressure is growing - and it is Steyer, who heats the boiler. He has already invested around $ 50 million in the campaign, about as much as the SPD and CDU have jointly spent on the 2017 general election campaign. This year, the ex-banker wants to invest another 40 million in his campaign: in TV spots and building a grassroots movement that makes the deputies fire under the butt. "If we can not throw a White House criminal, how can we talk about implementing any reform in this country?" He scolds.
The 61-year-old is a political outsider who feels "super lonely" between the professional politicians and full-time lobbyists of Washington according to their own admission. But he is not a phantast, but one who knows what he puts his money on. His investment strategy: high risk, high profit.
The Yale and Stanford student worked for Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and founded his own hedge fund in San Francisco in 1986. Farallon Capital, named after a popular with sharks group of islands off the west coast. Farallon made it to the ranks of the world's largest hedge funds, thanks to a strategy that used investment opportunities "aggressively" wherever they opened up, as the industry magazine Institutional Investor once acknowledged. When Steyer sold its stake in 2012, the former $ 15 million start-up had turned $ 20 billion into asset management.
"Trump acts like Michael Corleone in 'The Godfather 2'"
But even the hedge fund manager itself had changed over the decades. The financial shark became an activist and philanthropist who fought climate change and promised to spend at least half of his fortune on a better world.
And Steyer's view of this better world is that the 45th President of the United States, whom he calls himself simply "he" or "Mr. Trump," is removed from office as soon as possible. By chance, he tells his listeners in Washington, he just saw "The Godfather 2". The parallels are frightening: "He acts like Michael Corleone," says Steyer and laughs his long harsh laugh, which fits more on the rodeo square than in a conference room.
The financial strategist is not a rousing speaker, he still reads index cards after more than 40 town hall appearances in the country. But he has what makes successful campaigns: a simple message and inexhaustible resources.
In Congressional year 2018 Steyer and his now separated wife of the database were Opensecrets.org according to the largest single donor of the Democrats after the former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In the future Steyer only wants to support those politicians who support an impeachment procedure. "If you're against impeachment, do not bother to go in. Save time." Uber, "he advises the parliamentary candidate in an interview with The Atlantic magazine.
More supporters than the weapons lobby NRA
More than seven million signatures have already been collected by "Need to Impeach," more than the notorious arms lobby has NRA members. Even Trump has not escaped: Steyer seem "like a wild become and stumbling madman who will run out of money pretty soon," Trump etched after a CNN interview of the opponent. The Twitter attack indicates that the president takes the attacker seriously.
He has every reason to do so: What Steyer does, he does completely. As a hedge fund manager, his attitude was clear, one of his clients told Reuters, "Everything is done to make money." And he delivered.
Today, the billionaire has another mission: "I will do whatever it takes to remove a president from office, no matter how long it takes."
Many Democrats are afraid, Steyer believes. They preferred to wait for the presidential election in 2020, or at least the results of special investigator Robert Mueller. It reminds him of the tactics of the cigarette industry and the climate change deniers who wanted to "wait for another study before they acted:" But we know: cigarettes cause cancer, the world is warming, and this guy is a criminal. "
In the hall they applaud enthusiastically. Then a listener, a former soldier, answers. He agrees with everything, says the man. "But when are you going to run for president?"