California is home to more billionaires than any other state — and in modern elections, it shows.
One of them is a top candidate on Tuesday to advance to the November general election to be the state’s governor. Plenty of others are the benefactors of another, longer-shot hopeful. And there’s a billionaire or two engaged in almost every congressional race in the state, many of which are key battleground districts in the fight to control the House.
Here’s a look at all the cash flowing through Tuesday’s races in California:
What would it cost to elect Tom Steyer?
It is impossible to talk about the money spent in California without reckoning with what Tom Steyer has done.
Mr. Steyer, a former hedge fund investor and a longtime megadonor to liberal causes, has given about $216 million to his run for governor, according to state records. Throw in the roughly $342 million he spent on his 2020 presidential campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records, and the bill for his self-funded political ambitions rings up to about $558 million.
Mr. Steyer’s donations sponsored $204 million worth of ads, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact, enough that his ads appeared over 42,000 times on broadcast television in the month of May. He also paid a seemingly endless number of influencers and staff members.
The return on investment for Mr. Steyer? He is in position to potentially be one of the top two candidates who advance to November — but he is not a shoo-in. That might seem surprising giving his enormous spending advantage: He spent 19 times as much on ads as Xavier Becerra, one of his top rivals, and 135 times as much as Steve Hilton, another leading contender.
And yet, they may edge him out. After all these years, Mr. Steyer might remain a private citizen, $558 million the poorer.
Silicon Valley is on the ropes in the governor’s race
Silicon Valley’s rich and famous are more engaged in California politics in 2026 than they have been in years, diving headfirst into the world of big-money campaigns as part of an attempt to correct what some of them see as the state’s excesses.
One of their expensive projects has been trying to elevate Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, to the governor’s office. It hasn’t gone well.
Backed by some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, Mr. Mahan enjoyed about $31 million in spending by independent efforts, and yet he will need a major upset to make it past Tuesday.
His campaign and its allied efforts have been plagued by tensions behind the scenes, with ousted campaign aides and clashes over strategy involving his donors. Tactics aside, it does not appear that Mr. Mahan has enough mojo with California voters.
If he falls short, there will be some egg on the face of his supporters.
Tech money pours into California contests
One of those hyper-engaged Silicon Valley billionaires is Chris Larsen, a founder of the crypto company Ripple. Since last year, he has unfurled over $25 million on politics, making him one of the biggest spenders this election cycle.
Mr. Larsen has been trying in particular to challenge the power of the state’s labor unions, putting $15 million into his super PAC, Grow California.
Another major spender in California is the tech company Meta, which has dedicated $20 million to a new super PAC to elect lawmakers in the state who are friendly to the artificial intelligence industry.
And towering above all others in California is Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder, who has disclosed $85 million in donations for his advocacy efforts, many of them targeting a proposed billionaires tax in the state.
All of this activity is probably a precursor to the big spending that will come ahead of November if that billionaires tax makes the ballot.
High-cost House races
Congressional races in California are different from others around the country because of the state’s so-called jungle primary system, in which Democrats and Republicans run in the same primary and the top two advance to the general election.
That has opened up a lot of interest-group spending and maneuvering to try to set the table for victories in November.
Two races in California — in its battleground 22nd District and its heavily Republican 40th District — have each drawn over $12 million in advertising, according to AdImpact.
A Democratic self-funder north of San Francisco, Eric Jones, has financed $4 million worth of ads for himself in a primary challenge to Representative Mike Thompson.
In California’s 11th District in San Francisco, another wealthy candidate, Saikat Chakrabarti, is putting millions into his campaign to win the seat long held by Representative Nancy Pelosi, who is retiring. Mr. Chakrabarti, who made his fortune as a founding engineer at the payment platform Stripe and is a former chief of staff to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, has lent his campaign nearly $9 million as he tries to make it into the top two.
Laurel Rosenhall contributed reporting.
