came from top tech companies<\/a>, such as Google and Meta, as well as from dozens of executives and venture capitalists.<\/p>\nThe candidate grabbing the most headlines was Matt Mahan, the San Jose Democratic mayor who in January threw in his hat for governor and quickly became a Silicon Valley favorite. He amassed roughly $50m in donations, largely from the tech industry, including from former and current executives at Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, DoorDash, Palantir and more, public records show.<\/p>\n
While his loss \u2013 Mahan conceded on Tuesday night after gaining just 4% of the vote in early results \u2013 was bruising to the tech industry, it was just one among what appear to be several wins. Scott Weiner, tech\u2019s pick to replace Nancy Pelosi as senator, won the most votes and is advancing toward the midterms in November. And while votes are still being counted, it looks like Ben Allen, the industry\u2019s choice for state insurance commissioner, could also advance.<\/p>\n
Super political action committees (Super Pacs) funded by the tech world also saw a series of wins in smaller district races for the state legislature across the state.<\/p>\n
Grow California, which has a combined $20m from crypto moguls Chris Larsen and Tim Draper, contributed millions to six local races, while also spending to oppose five candidates, according to public records. And California Leads, a Super Pac funded with a combined $10m from Google and Meta, also spent millions to support eight local assembly and senate candidates in the state.<\/p>\n
The long-term strategy for both Grow California and California Leads is to work on the state\u2019s legislature to get their preferred candidates in place \u2013 something both Super Pacs outline on their websites. Grow California\u2019s stated goal is to \u201crebuild a state capital\u201d and California Leads writes: \u201cOur work is grounded in a simple idea: who serves in the State Legislature matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
One candidate the Super Pacs both donated heavily to was Mark Pulido, a Democrat who\u2019s running for state assembly in a small district in Orange county. He received around $2.25m from the two Super Pacs and got the votes on Tuesday to advance to a run-off against the Republican candidate in November. With the exception of one candidate, all of the races that Grow California and California Leads backed, are advancing to the November ballot.<\/p>\n
The two Super Pacs appear to have mostly targeted Democratic districts. They supported one favored Democrat, so that candidate would make it to the midterms and essentially get unfavorable Democrats off the ticket.<\/p>\n
Even though the tech industry won quite a bit on Tuesday, it also poured millions into losing races, like Mahan\u2019s, proving that political donations are an expensive business.<\/p>\n
Election watchers say, however, that the tech industry\u2019s massive spending on the primaries was just the beginning. \u201cIt was just like a drop in the bucket of what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d said Francesco Trebbi, a public policy professor at the University of California in Berkeley.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy September, you\u2019ll probably see records being broken for midterm campaign spending,\u201d Trebbi said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be exponential.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s sure to happen as the fight over California\u2019s proposed one-time 5% wealth tax on billionaires edges closer to a vote. Tech billionaires have already spent many millions to defeat the tax<\/a>, which is on the November ballot.<\/p>\nGrow California declined to comment and California Leads did not respond to request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Silicon Valley had a big night in California\u2019s primary election, proving that the tens of millions of dollars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-345779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345779","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=345779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}