Maximum donations from two companies controlled by same people to Republican Chad Bianco, the Riverside County Sheriff, could run afoul of state rules.
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SACRAMENTO – Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco received maximum donations from two closely linked Corona companies that have been run by the same siblings, which could violate California campaign finance law.
Bianco, a Republican seeking to replace Gavin Newsom as governor, has received $78,400 donations from M&D Development and Downs Energy, the maximum amount allowed for an individual donor.
Contributions from companies that are controlled by the same person or people should be aggregated, or treated as contributions from the same donor, according to the Fair Political Practices Commission, which regulates campaign donations and enforces California’s campaign finance laws. If the donations from Downs and M&D were aggregated, they would represent $156,800 in contributions from the same source, which would exceed the limits placed on political donations in California’s 2026 governor’s race.
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M&D Development, a limited liability real estate firm founded in 2007, and Downs Energy, which since the 1940s has specialized in fuel and lubricants and was acquired last September by a subsidiary of Pilot Travel Centers, have been under the direction of siblings Sherry Messner and Michael Downs, according to numerous records.
Downs Energy is a frequent contributor to Republican candidates running for state office in California, according to campaign finance records.
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On March 7, 2025, Downs Energy donated $39,200 to Bianco’s campaign, the maximum amount allowed from a single donor to a candidate in California’s June primary election. On Dec. 30, Downs Energy donated $39,200 to the campaign, the maximum amount allowed for the November general election. On the same day, M&D Development made two $39,200 donations to the campaign.
Bianco’s campaign did not respond to questions for this story. Downs did not respond to messages from the Chronicle seeking comment. A man reached by phone who described himself as Messner’s husband asked that questions for his wife be sent to him for forwarding. After doing so, the Chronicle did not receive a response.
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Messner and Downs have worked at Downs Energy since the 1980s, according to a press release announcing the company’s acquisition late last year. Downs was appointed president of the company in the 1990s, and he and his sister have overseen an expansion to the business in the years since.
M&D Development was registered with the California secretary of state’s office in 2007, with Messner listed as the responsible agent. Since then, she and Downs have signed various documents on behalf of the company, according to public records.
The two companies are closely linked in public records:
–A 2022 Corona city staff report described M&D Development as the “owner, operator” of Downs Energy.
–Both companies are registered with the Secretary of State’s Office at the same Corona mail box service. Both businesses have listed another Corona address as their headquarters.
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–Former Assembly Member Bill Essayli honored Downs in 2023 with an Assembly Small Business of the Month award. On Instagram, Essayli described Downs as the owner of Downs Energy and a “managing partner” of M&D Development. Essayli now works in the Trump administration as an assistant U.S. attorney.
–Messner, Downs’ sister, describes herself as the owner of Downs Energy on her LinkedIn page. She is listed as a responsible officer for M&D Development in Bianco campaign filings with the secretary of state’s office.
Shery Yang, a spokesperson for the FPPC, said she could not comment on the Bianco donations specifically.
Dan Schnur, a political science professor at UC Berkeley and former FPPC chair, said that there’s no way to know whether anything improper was done without more information from the Bianco campaign. If there’s nothing wrong with the donations, it would “make political sense” for the campaign to reveal more information.
“It would be helpful to understand how one donor made their contribution independently of the other,” Schnur said.
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Bianco has also received large donations from various other businesses and the Peace Officers Research Association of California, a law enforcement group. Bianco is running on a campaign of cutting regulation and increasing police funding. He has raised $4.2 million for his campaign.
Despite being a Republican in liberal California, Bianco is a frontrunner in the crowded governor’s race. He and the other leading Republican, former Fox News host Steve Hilton, are polling at the top of most polls. Eight major Democratic candidates, meanwhile, are dividing the liberal vote into so many pieces that most polls show them trailing Bianco and Hilton.
California’s jungle primary system, in which all candidates run in the same primary and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election, means that Bianco and Hilton have a chance of shutting out the Democrats in the primary on June 2, guaranteeing one of them would become governor.
Bianco has been enmeshed in controversy recently for his decision to seize hundreds of thousands of ballots in Riverside County outside of any official recount process in response to complaints raised by a local advocacy group about voting totals in the 2025 election. In that election, California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, Newsom’s effort to redraw congressional districts to favor Democrats.
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Election experts have criticized Bianco’s investigation, saying it is not founded on reliable evidence and represents an overreach by the sheriff. Bianco has argued it’s appropriate for his department to oversee a “fact-finding mission” to determine whether votes were counted accurately.