California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer makes a campaign stop in San Luis Obispo
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (KEYT) - With less than two weeks to go until Election Day on June 2nd, California governor Democrat candidate Tom Steyer made a stop in San Luis Obispo Friday afternoon.
The appearance was part of Steyer's "A California You Can Afford" bus tour, which arrived from earlier stops in Southern California.
For about an hour, the billionaire businessman, philanthropist and environmental advocate spoke to an audience of about 100 invited guests at the San Luis Obispo Veterans Memorial Building and explained why he’s the best candidate in a crowded field currently running for California governor.
During his speech, Steyer highlighted many of his top campaign issues, including boosting affordability, decreasing the cost of education and a plan to build one million homes.
"This is a huge, diverse state and local communities all have different cultures and tastes," said Steyer during a brief interview with the local media afterwards. "Having said that, my predilection is for is not sprawl. My predilection is for denser towns, denser cities, walkable neighborhoods around public transportation, so people don't have hugely long commutes, so people and kids can live in a neighborhood and walk around safely, and so that we can have the kind of fun and diverse communities that are so great about California."
Steyer went into great detail about another one of his main issues, pushing back against what he called corporate greed, something he said is helping push up the cost of living.
"Affordability does start with housing, but it certainly includes health care," said Steyer. " It includes electricity costs. It includes gasoline costs at the pump and includes food costs. There's a very simple reason why it's not happening and the simple reason is behind every one of those extremely high costs in California is a corporate special interest that is absolutely killing it. Who is making record profits at the expense of Californians and they're very powerful and they're in this election. They're spending a record amount of money ever against me because they know that their profits come out of the pockets of working Californians and they love it."
Steyer also address a question about his past business ties to a private prison that now operates a controversial California immigration detention center.
"Those investments were made 22 years ago," said Steyer. "21 years ago, I decided to get out of them. I've been out of them for more than 20 years. In the interim, we have done an enormous number of things to stand up for immigrants. We have pushed to make this. We have people in Sacramento who've been working to make this a sanctuary state."
"If you look at my ICE policies, they're the strongest of anyone running for governor, and they include prosecuting ICE agents for racial profiling. That's illegal. Prosecuting ICE agents for violence against Californians, which is illegal. Inspecting the detention centers, which I'm sure they're crimes being committed there and big, well-funded legal defense funds for people who've been kidnaped from the threat of deportation."
"Let me say this, if you're wondering whether those are the strongest, you should know this, Donald Trump came out to say what a terrible person I am because of my anti-ICE policies and the head of ICE posted that I'm a terrible person because I'm unfair to ICE agents, so what you're talking about happened literally over 20 years ago. The truth is right now the head of ICE and Donald Trump are both saying my policies are too strong against ICE. I rest my case."
After he leaves San Luis Obispo, Steyer will head to the Central Valley, and later, make campaign stops in Northern California.
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