by Jeanne Kuang and Jeremia Kimelman – CalMatters
Published May 28, 2026 | Updated June 11, 2026
Campaign donations are both a measure of popular support and an indicator of which candidates special interests believe they can influence. Before the June primary, corporate political action committees, grassroots small-donors, and self-funding billionaires poured an unprecedented amount of cash into the race to succeed Gavin Newsom, making it the most expensive primary campaign in California’s history.
Now that election officials have tallied the bulk of the ballots, the ultimate test of all that money has played out. The real-world data reveals exactly where the money went, where the votes landed, and what it means for the upcoming November general election.
Outside corporate money successfully powered Xavier Becerra to the top
It was a record-breaking primary cycle for independent expenditure committees—outside groups that can accept unlimited donations. These entities reported spending over seventy-nine million dollars leading up to the primary, more than double the outside spending seen across the entire twenty-eighteen general election cycle.
A massive chunk of that cash was deployed to protect the status quo by backing the Democratic establishment candidate, former United States Health and Human Services Secretary and California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
A coalition representing doctors, contractors, and several major labor unions spent more than thirteen million dollars through political action committees to boost Becerra. Major corporations hedged their bets heavily on him. Chevron, McDonald’s, dialysis giant DaVita, and prominent state oil driller California Resources Corporation each contributed five hundred thousand dollars to pro-Becerra independent groups. Tech giants Meta and Airbnb chipped in roughly one million dollars each. Health insurance corporation Centene, which runs California-based HealthNet, put in one hundred thousand dollars.
The establishment bet was a resounding success. Despite aggressive progressive pushback targeting his oil and corporate ties, the wave of institutional spending allowed Becerra to consolidate moderate and mainstream Democrats. The Associated Press officially projected Becerra as the first candidate to clinch a spot on the November ballot, leading the field with roughly twenty-seven percent of the vote.
Tom Steyer’s massive blitz crashed against a corporate wall
No one in California history has ever self-funded a campaign to the scale of billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer. By election day, Steyer’s personal spending topped an astonishing two hundred sixteen million dollars. He used his immense wealth to blanket the airwaves, pay social media influencers, and deploy mobile billboard trucks to hammer his opponents on gas station pricing.
However, Steyer’s progressive, anti-monopoly platform—which included promises to dismantle Pacific Gas and Electric’s monopoly in much of Northern California and reassess commercial property taxes—made him a massive target for corporate interests. Steyer had promised to pursue a ballot measure requiring more accurate property tax assessments on business properties, a move that threatened to upend the commercial real estate market.
A political spending committee called California Is Not For Sale poured thirty-two million dollars into relentless attack ads against Steyer. This opposition committee was heavily funded by a powerful network including the California Chamber of Commerce, the state Realtors association, Pacific Gas and Electric, and the state’s electrical workers’ union.
Steyer proved that money can buy a megaphone, but it cannot always buy an election. His history-making primary run blew past the previous ninety-four million dollar self-funding record set by Meg Whitman in twenty-ten, which equates to about one hundred forty-two million dollars today. Yet, it yielded a brutal return on investment. Steyer is currently marooned in a distant third place with twenty-one point five percent of the vote, shut out of the top-two runoff as voters seemingly developed fatigue from his non-stop media blitz. Progressive unions like the California Nurses Association and United Domestic Workers spent a comparatively modest one point four million dollars on mailers and digital media boosting Steyer, which was not enough to counter the opposition.
Silicon Valley’s multi-million investment in Matt Mahan evaporated
The tech sector believed it had found its champion in San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a moderate Democrat who entered the race late to much fanfare from Silicon Valley. A wave of tech billionaires and venture capitalists—including Michael Moritz, Brian Singerman, DoorDash Chief Executive Officer Tony Xu, Intuit founder Scott Cook, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, and Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso—urged the mayor to run.
They were enamored with his platform of government efficiency and rigid opposition to new taxes, positions that would shield them from the Legislature’s growing appetite for artificial intelligence regulation and wealth taxes. Independent political action committees spent nearly twenty-two million dollars trying to launch Mahan into the stratosphere, vastly overshadowing the nine million dollars his own campaign managed to raise.
Mahan’s campaign was a spectacular failure. In the final weeks, committees began quietly returning money—including a one million dollar refund to Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings, who cryptically posted on social media that he had not asked for the money back. The refund acknowledged that backers failed to raise a final ten to fifteen million dollars needed to move the needle. Mahan ultimately finished with a dismal three point nine percent of the vote, proving that Silicon Valley’s deepest pockets cannot manufacture statewide name recognition out of thin air in a matter of months.
Steve Hilton consolidated the grassroots base and a Trump bump
While Democrats slugged it out with multi-million dollar ad buys, conservative political commentator and former Fox News host Steve Hilton quietly built a massive grassroots operation. Hilton ran on a platform focused heavily on state affordability, slashing environmental regulations to build housing on undeveloped suburban land, and lowering middle-class income taxes.
Hilton amassed the highest number of raw individual campaign donors in the entire field, topping twenty thousand contributors. Reflecting his national media profile, nearly a quarter of those donors lived outside of California. Outside groups spent one point eight million dollars opposing him, but his fundraising experienced a distinct, late-stage surge after receiving an official endorsement from Donald Trump.
Hilton successfully consolidated the fractured California Republican electorate. He captured roughly twenty-six percent of the vote, holding a commanding lead over Steyer for the second general election spot. While millions of late mail-in ballots are still being processed by election officials, Hilton is heavily favored to hold his second-place position, setting up a traditional, high-stakes Democrat versus Republican showdown against Becerra in November.
Grassroots favorites fizzled out in the financial arms race
The campaign finance data from the final weeks accurately forecasted the collapse of other prominent campaigns that failed to keep up with the structural shift of funds.
Early in the cycle, groups like DaVita, the California Medical Association, and the California Professional Firefighters Association backed former Representative Eric Swalwell before he dropped out amid sexual assault allegations. An analysis revealed that after Swalwell dropped out, more than five hundred of his campaign donors immediately migrated to Becerra, cementing Becerra’s early establishment stranglehold. Meanwhile, Swalwell, who also resigned from Congress, continued using his inactive campaign committee to pay more than three hundred thirteen thousand dollars to an attorney defending him against the allegations, while refunding about two hundred fifty thousand dollars to roughly fifty donors.
Former progressive darling and progressive Congressmember Katie Porter boasted the second-highest donor count in the race, with more than fifteen thousand grassroots contributors. She prided herself on her headline-grabbing time grilling corporate chief executive officers in Congress, her reliance on grassroots donors, and her refusal to take corporate contributions. She also had the highest share of donors outside California, reflecting her national fame. However, her fundraising completely dried up by mid-May, bringing in less money than even the stalling Mahan campaign. That financial drought translated directly to the ballot box, where Porter finished a distant fifth with just four point five percent of the vote, as progressive voters looking for an alternative to the establishment ultimately broke for Steyer’s well-funded operation instead.
