Tom Steyer spent over $200 million of his own money to land third in the California governor’s race, and Silicon Valley favorite Matt Mahan’s billionaire-backed campaign put him in sixth place.
But in San Francisco, the moguls did just fine.
Almost every billionaire, multi-millionaire or big business that paid out enough to become a top-20 donor to San Francisco’s primary won their contests:
- Chris Larsen, the crypto billionaire and No. 1 donor to the June races, helped beat back Prop. D, the “Overpaid CEO” tax, with a $700,000 spend; he also helped pass Prop. A (the earthquake bond) and Prop. B (term limits).
- Michael Moritz, a tech venture capitalist and the financier of the San Francisco Standard, gave $625,000 to tank Prop. D and $250,000 to elect Alan Wong in District 4, alongside funds for Prop. B.
- Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, the realtor- and tech-backed interest group that’s long interceded in city races, put $860,000 into killing Prop. D, and a token $5,000 into Prop. B.
- Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder who has reportedly taken a sharp turn to the right, put in $500,000 to successfully beat back the Overpaid CEO tax.
- And a host of businesses and wealthy individuals — including San Francisco-based companies like Visa and the Gap, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu, and the SF Believes PAC, bankrolled by Mayor Daniel Lurie’s allies — all spent six-figure sums on measures that won. The bulk of the group’s spending went to defeating the Overpaid CEO tax.
Of note: Moritz did however lose out in the governor race. He contributed a total of $3 million to Matt Mahan’s campaign, which fell flat by election day.
The lone exception in San Francisco was Saikat Chakrabarti, the self-stylized class traitor who shelled out more than $10 million in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to replace Nancy Pelosi: He lost to Connie Chan and, as of the latest totals, received only 18 percent of the vote to her 30 percent.
“Money goes really far, and it buys name ID and it can totally sway public opinion,” said Catie Stewart, a political consultant. “But it’s not the be-all and end-all.”
Chakrabarti’s sums did not help him. While he had the resources to get his message across and pay hundreds of canvassers $45 an hour, ultimately his campaign failed to resonate with most San Francisco voters.
Chakrabarti came in as a total outsider and pitched himself as anti-establishment to constituents who, it turns out, were not anti-establishment at the polls.
“The money helps get the message out — it’s not, in and of itself, a predictor of who is going to win,” said Stewart, who works on political campaigns and was previously Senator Wiener’s communications director.
Fundamentally, having more money isn’t helpful if the campaign message is off, and if a candidate doesn’t have the relationships with and endorsements from local officials, she explained.
A better predictor in this election, Stewart and other consultants said, was Mayor Daniel Lurie’s endorsement.
Lurie is riding a popularity high: From top to bottom of the ballot, every single measure or candidate he endorsed won in the June election.
“He’s had an unusually long honeymoon,” said political consultant David Ho. “I’ve never seen a mayor not have a sophomore slump.”
Perhaps crucially, where Lurie’s endorsement went, the money followed. The mayor’s endorsement did come with a cash injection to several campaigns, namely from the mayor-aligned SF Believes PAC that spent more than $1 million in the June election.
The campaign against the Overpaid CEO tax, “Yes on C, No on D,” “didn’t even have a strategy until the mayor fell onto their lap,” said Ho, who ran the competing campaign.
While ultimately the campaign with the most resources was able to capture voters in that race, “I think the mayor single-handedly took down D,” said Ho.
Now, said Todd David, a consultant working on Wiener’s campaign, the question is: “What does the mayor do?”
“Does he continue to play it safe, or does he really go for some big reforms in the city?”
Although Steyer is a billionaire, who spent alot of his own money (or a little, depending), Beccera is a classic corporate who seemed to go out of his way to promise he would do even less than the current fraud. Becerra’s biggest donor was PG&E, which has been ripping off California for over 100 years, not to mention a criminal enterprise that has been convicted of multiple. A billionaire in politics goes beyond goes beyond bank accounts. Steyer is the only serious candidate (sorry P&F) in my memory who called for busting PG&E. Billionaires will be very happy Becerra if he wins
Sergey brin is now allegedly a nevada resident. why is he influencing elections for a place he does not live in, vocally does not like, and has already parted ways with?
Disappointing but not surprising.this has been at least a decade in the making. Venture capital and tech especially have displaced or priced out many of the empathetic and smart low to middle class voters on this side of the bay area
All the handwringing in the world will not obscure the fact that Prop D was poorly written as hell. One day I hope the city’s progressives will look at themselves with humility rather than turn again to the camera like eric andre after shooting hannibal buress after yet another one of their wide swings misses spectacularly
ML’s recent reporting on the extensive and expensive roster of political consultants and pollsters employed by Malibu Dan suggests to me (admittedly a hard core Lurie hater*) that we the readers could benefit from some investigative reporting on these behind the scenes figures. I imagine they don’t want to distract from their paymaster’s “leadership”, “vision”, etc. but inquiring minds want to know. Does he really have any ideas or does he buy them off the rack like that corny Nehru jacket of his?
* I’ll hate on a [mayor] until he’s totally broke and ain’t got nothing like me, because that’s what real hating is all about.
Prop. D was more correctly “The Envy Tax”, rather than the “Overpaid CEO Tax.”
The radicals who proposed have used one of the 7 Capitol Sins. i.e. ENVY, to divert
from the fiscal and social catastrophe which they have spawned over several
generations, starting with the People’s Temple-Jim Jones debacle in the 1970s.
Now, productive populations are fleeing San Francisco, as evidenced by the
depopulation of the SFUSD, which in 1970 had 92,000 + students with an overall
population of some 720,000 residents versus the 2026 SFUSD student population
which has shrunk ( and continuing to shrink) of 49,000 among an overall population
of some 820,000. Commerce, not political machines, is the lifeblood of any
community. Spending and over taxation on all levels are the problems in San Francisco, and, for that matter, California. Just witness the fiscal-engineering
fiasco of the Bullet Train, the Golden State’s Train To No Where!
What are you writing on that result in those insane line wraps?