Shasta election official Clint Curtis falsely claims on his Facebook page that “a lot” of his opponent Joanna Francescut’s donations to her campaign came from San Francisco. Screenshot from a video posted on Curtis’ Facebook page

The claim

“A lot of [Joanna Francescut’s] funding is coming from San Francisco.” 

The context

In recent weeks, Shasta County Registrar of Voters Clint Curtis has made claims on his campaign Facebook page that his opponent, former Assistant ROV Joanna Francescut, has received significant amounts of funding from San Francisco for her campaign. 

In a video posted on May 1, Curtis discussed the funding going into the race for ROV, which will be voted on in the primary election on June 2. He explained that Francescut has received about double the amount of donations he has, which is true. But he also stated that “a lot of her funding is coming from San Francisco.” 

In another Facebook video posted about three weeks later, Curtis compared the upcoming election to a special election last year, where California voters passed Proposition 50, a controversial measure designed to weaken Republican voter representation through gerrymandering. He said San Francisco stole voters’ representation in Congress, and “now they’re trying to steal this election as well, pouring tons of money into it for someone they know will follow their lead.” 

The analysis

Curtis’ claims about Francescut receiving significant donations from San Francisco are false. 

According to publicly available campaign finance records, Francescut has received just over $257 from San Francisco donors so far, making up only about 0.2% of her donation total of just over $125,000.

Even when adding in donations from donors who live in a larger group of counties sometimes referred to as Bay Area counties, only about 3.4% of Francescut’s donations are from that area. 

Francescut has received almost $11,500 from outside Shasta, making up about 9% of her campaign totals. In contrast, Curtis has received more than $6,500 in donations from outside Shasta County, or around 11% of his total donations. Overall, he’s raised only about $60,000, less than half of what Francescut’s raised. 

About 6% of Curtis’ donation sum has come from San Diego County, and 3% has come from outside of the state. 

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