{"id":299410,"date":"2026-05-04T17:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T17:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/299410\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T17:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T17:34:09","slug":"what-do-jeanie-buss-colin-jost-and-dave-winfield-have-in-common-a-stake-in-l-a-mayors-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/299410\/","title":{"rendered":"What do Jeanie Buss, Colin Jost and Dave Winfield have in common? A stake in L.A. mayor’s race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The roster of campaign contributors to Los Angeles mayoral candidates has something in common with the courtside seats at Lakers games: Both are sprinkled with the rich and famous.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s Colin Jost, \u201cSaturday Night Live\u2019s\u201d Weekend Update host, popping up as a donor to Councilmember Nithya Raman. Mayor Karen Bass, meanwhile, counts former Major League Baseball star Dave Winfield among her contributors.<\/p>\n

Lakers governor and part-owner Jeanie Buss is there too, as a donor to reality TV personality Spencer Pratt. All three gave the maximum $1,800 contributions to their chosen candidates.<\/p>\n

With Los Angeles at the center of the entertainment industry, big names like Jost, Winfield and Buss (none of whom responded to requests for comment) are par for the course in local elections. There might have been even more celebrity contributions were it not for the late-breaking entries of Pratt and Raman in the race, said political consultant Mike Trujillo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very short timeline that is not usual for a mayor\u2019s race where you\u2019re challenging an incumbent,\u201d said Trujillo, who isn\u2019t affiliated with any of the mayoral campaigns. \u201cIt takes a while to get these celebrities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trujillo said he expects more big names will contribute if no candidate wins a majority in the June 2 primary, which would trigger a runoff in the Nov. 3 general election.<\/p>\n

In 2022, \u201cE.T.\u201d director Steven Spielberg gave $1,500 to Bass\u2019 first campaign for mayor as well as $125,000 to the independent expenditure group \u201cCommunities United for Bass for LA Mayor 2022.\u201d J.J. Abrams, the director of \u201cStar Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,\u201d also gave $125,000 to the group. <\/p>\n

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the co-founder of DreamWorks Animation, gave nearly $2 million<\/a> to the pro-Bass group.<\/p>\n

Winfield and Buss weren\u2019t the only names associated with the sports world to wade into the mayoral maelstrom. <\/p>\n

Brian McCourt, son of former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, contributed the maximum $1,800 to Bass\u2019 reelection campaign. He is the president of the McCourt Foundation, which runs the Los Angeles Marathon.<\/p>\n

Magic Johnson\u2019s son, Andre Johnson, who now runs Magic Johnson Enterprises, also gave the maximum to Bass. <\/p>\n

Bass also collected donations from \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy\u201d actor James Pickens Jr. and from Pauletta Washington, Denzel Washington\u2019s wife. In 2025, Bass received $1,800 from Edythe Broad, the widow of billionaire developer Eli Broad and co-founder of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. <\/p>\n

Raman received dozens of contributions from successful Hollywood writers, producers and directors. She is married to Vali Chandrasekaran, a writer for hit TV shows including \u201c30 Rock\u201d and \u201cModern Family.\u201d She took in maximum contributions from stand-up comedian Adam Conover as well as musician Joanna Newsom, the wife of Andy Samberg. <\/p>\n

The most recent campaign contribution reports showed Pratt raising nearly $540,000 since Jan. 1, more than any other candidate. About $131,000 of his contributions were in so-called un-itemized contributions of under $100, significantly more than any other candidate. <\/p>\n

Among the itemized contributions, Pratt reported getting $1,800 from Rick Salomon, the professional poker player who is known for a 2004 sex tape with Paris Hilton. Salomon\u2019s daughter Tyson Salomon, a social media influencer, gave $1,250 to Pratt.<\/p>\n

Two other mayoral candidates, tech entrepreneur Adam Miller and community organizer Rae Huang, also raised more than $200,000 each, though there were fewer household names in their contributions<\/p>\n

Miller loaned his own campaign $2.5 million. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The roster of campaign contributors to Los Angeles mayoral candidates has something in common with the courtside seats…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[12858,23087,126854,49511,126853,126855,38327,64873,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,126856,16857,36877,2211,32081,7756],"class_list":["post-299410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bass","tag-co-founder","tag-colin-jost","tag-contribution","tag-dave-winfield","tag-edythe-broad","tag-jeanie-buss","tag-l-a-mayor","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-maximum","tag-other-candidate","tag-pratt","tag-race","tag-raman","tag-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}