The Best Campaign Money Can Buy

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.—Was it dancing? Marching?

Tom Steyer pointed his hands and pumped his knees on the way into the park for the Blue Jamboree, with a big band behind him. He hired it from a nearby college. Sixteen trombones, 10 tubas, 10 bass drums, 12 snares, a mass of saxophones and horns and cymbals. Four young women danced at the front; 11 more ran through flag routines at the back.

There was no ignoring them, and so there was no ignoring him.

“One! Two! One, two, three, four!” called out Harold Mitchell, the former South Carolina state representative who was Steyer’s first endorsement in the state, with a little boogie in his step as he reminded people of the issue that Steyer, arguably more than anyone else in America, has made mainstream: “Im-peach-ment! Here we go!”

These were people who chose to spend a Saturday afternoon sitting through hours of stump speeches, but they were with Steyer as he ticked through his examples of what he calls a “broken government” so entangled in corporate corruption that it needs a corporate expert to undo. He touched on his term-limits proposal, which, he pointed out, would