{"id":273,"date":"2026-05-22T12:03:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T12:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sanfranciscomovingguide.com\/?p=273"},"modified":"2026-05-22T12:03:41","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T12:03:41","slug":"more-big-tech-money-pours-in-to-california-governor-candidates-in-races-final-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sanfranciscomovingguide.com\/?p=273","title":{"rendered":"More Big Tech money pours in to California governor candidates in race’s final weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The primary election for California governor is 12 days away, and millions of dollars are still being dumped into the race.<\/p>

Read more SF treasure hunt ends after $10,001 prize found in Marin<\/a><\/p><\/div>

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This battle to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom has shaped up to be an expensive one. Eight candidates, six Democrats and two Republicans, are battling it out, and spending the big bucks on TV ads and mailers to get their messages across until the bitter end. There has been a combination of funding sources for the Democrats: Billionaire\u00a0Tom Steyer is funding his own campaign, former Rep. Katie Porter refuses to take corporate PAC money, San Jose Matt Mahan is raking in millions from Silicon Valley.<\/p><\/div>

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Longtime Democratic strategist Garry South, who has worked on four governor\u2019s races dating back to former Gov. Gray Davis\u2019 campaign, told SFGATE in a call Wednesday that any money coming into the race in the final weeks is unlikely to sway voters much.<\/p><\/div>

\u201cEarly money is always more important than late money in campaigns,\u201d said South. \u201cThe reason is that by the last month or few weeks voters are inundated and start tuning it out.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

Still, donations are flooding in from some notable donors from the Bay Area\u2019s biggest industry: tech.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

Meta, parent company of Facebook, recently gave nearly $1 million to Xavier Becerra, the former Health and Human Services secretary and, unexpectedly, now the Democratic front-runner. The company laid off 8,000 employees this week and has a prominent lobbying presence in California and across the country.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

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Steyer, who is close behind\u00a0Becerra in recent polling, seized on the $950,000 donation from Meta to try to knock out his opponent. \u201cMark\u00a0Zuckerberg wants a friend in Sacramento,\u201d Steyer wrote on X, with a screenshot of the donation record. \u201cI won\u2019t be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

\u201cBecerra\u2019s rise has been kind of astounding to me because it\u2019s come in absence of any financial advantage,\u201d South said. Becerra has raised under $10 million. That is a fraction compared with his opponents\u2019 deeper war chests.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

Candidates in the race are calling out Becerra for his unclear position on single-payer health care, something that has been unsuccessfully attempted for years. They claim that he has changed his position on single-payer after receiving big-dollar donations from the California Medical Association, the state\u2019s most powerful physician group, which gave him $500,000 earlier this month. Another labor group representing construction workers gave an independent expenditure committee supporting him $2 million.<\/p><\/div>

Chris Larsen, a big Silicon Valley crypto investor, has given money to\u00a0Porter and Republican Steve Hilton\u2019s campaigns. Hilton has also received money from Google co-founder Sergey Brin. Porter is largely receiving money from unions, auto workers and law firms, while Becerra has been backed by the auto and oil industries. Republican candidate Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff, has mostly received money from law enforcement associations.\u00a0<\/p>

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Nearly $40 million has gone toward\u00a0Mahan\u2019s candidacy, coming from various accounts, largely from big-time tech and venture capital executives.<\/p><\/div>

Mahan was the last major candidate to join the race, in late January and has barely inched up in the polls since; the most recent polls are finding he has between 4% and 10% likely voter support.<\/p><\/div>

That hasn\u2019t seemed to matter to the tech elite.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

Last month alone,\u00a0Mahan received $1 million from Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, $1 million from Louis John Doerr, a San Francisco venture capitalist and the chairman of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, and $1 million from Vinod Khosla, also a venture capitalist. Also in the million-dollar donation club is Michael Moritz, co-founder of the San Francisco Standard and former partner at legendary Bay Area firm Sequoia Capital. Also among Mahan\u2019s supporters are Rick Caruso, a billionaire Los Angeles real estate developer and former mayoral candidate, who gave $1.5 million over March and April, and Patrick\u00a0Collison, the CEO of Stripe Inc., who gave almost $1.5 million. San Francisco-based venture capitalist Neil\u00a0Mehta gave almost $1 million over February and March, and Gmail founder Paul\u00a0Buchheit also gave $1 million to him this spring.<\/p><\/div>

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Steyer\u00a0has largely been self-funding his candidacy, with the exception of a few thousand-dollar donations here and there. Recent disclosures show he has put a whopping $192 million into his own campaign.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>

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