[macmaw]

Is the steering wheel leather?

 

[macmaw]

In any case, don’t use a magic sponge on it, that will only remove colour.
As above, a lot of leather wheels can have sticky coating on them, if this is from products applied over the years, poor dealership prep, factory coating issues, then the best thing is to remove the wheel, chemically strip with something like Furniture Clinic Leather Prep, and use their steering wheel restoration kit. If you have an air brush, mini compressor or normal compressor then great, if not, one of their air propellant cans would do the job. Their air brush is very good too.