A trio of wealthy men might soon be among The City’s most influential politicians as personal fortunes and outsider messaging reshape state, local races
There is a conceivable future in which San Francisco could be represented by a congressperson and led by a mayor and a governor who each tapped into his own immense wealth to propel himself into office.
Congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti and gubernatorial hopeful Tom Steyer are investing millions in their own political successes, hoping to duplicate what Mayor Daniel Lurie achieved here in 2024. Tech millionaire Chakrabarti is a leading candidate to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in Congress, while hedge-fund billionaire Steyer is among the front-runners in the splintered field running to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom in California.
As candidates, the three have been able to saturate social-media feeds, air television ads and canvass communities in ways other candidates — even those with backing from wealthy donors — have been unable to match. And all three share a similar message: The political system needs upending. Voters are attracted to wealthy candidates in part because they’re perceived as too well-off to be bought by outside interests, according to Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Chakrabarti, for example, touts in campaign ads that he doesn’t accept political contributions from corporate PACs.
“The dominant trend of American public opinion now is massive cynicism,” West said. “People don’t trust leaders — they figure they’re out for themselves. And the advantage that wealthy individuals have is they’re so rich that people think they’re not subject to normal political calculations, they can rule in the public interest more often, and they will be less swayed by political wheeling and dealing.
” Steyer, who became a billionaire running San Francisco-based hedge fund Farallon Capital Management, is dramatically outspending rival Democrats in the governor’s race. He spent $132 million on his candidacy for governor through mid-April, including more than $100 million of his own money since Jan. 1, according to CalMatters. His will likely end up being the most expensive gubernatorial campaign in California history.
Chakrabarti has thus far put $4.8 million of his own money into his congressional bid, easily outpacing his opponents, state Sen. Scott Wiener and San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan. Lurie, whose former Inner Sunset campaign headquarters Chakrabarti now occupies, is an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who dropped $9.5 million of his own money on his 2024 mayoral bid.
California is not the only place to draw political candidates from the affluent, nor is such interest confined to a single political party, according to Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political science at Northwestern University and author of “The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracy. ” But he noted that it’s a relatively new phenomenon in American politics, beginning with billionaire Ross Perot’s independent candidacy for president in 1992.
What money buys Billionaires are spending money to shape American politics and policy as much as ever. In 2024, billionaires and their direct family members accounted for 19% of all federal campaign contributions, according to a New York Times analysis. In San Francisco, Lurie, his mother Mimi Haas and billionaires Michael Moritz, William Oberndorf, Chris Larsen and Michael Bloomberg accounted for six of the eight largest donors in local political contests that year, according to city campaign finance data.
Historically, the wealthy have tended to exercise their power by supporting other candidates. Steyer and Bloomberg, for example, were already both major political donors prior to jumping into the 2020 Democratic primary for U.S. president as candidates.
“It used to be, people with large amounts of money wanted to influence things behind the scenes,” West said. “But now they prefer to run for office and make decisions themselves. ” Winters argued that the wealthy have been emboldened by victories like reducing the top federal marginal income tax rate from 94% in 1944 to 37% today, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that enshrined political spending as a form of free speech.
“Oligarchs have been winning so big for so long that they see no reason not to just directly run the country as the politicians themselves,” Winters said. The typical self-financing candidate exists outside the traditional political establishment and promises to disrupt the existing one. They enjoy numerous advantages in their quest to do so. An independently wealthy candidate is an inherently viable one.
Unlike their opponents, they won’t be forced to line-up early support from well-heeled donors before the primary campaign begins. Lurie, for example, not only tapped his vast personal resources, his mother, Haas, launched an independent PAC boosting his campaign with an early $1 million donation.
“It’s very hard to crowdsource that, because very often, no one knows you yet,” Winters said of early campaign cash. “so, if you have an oligarch or a mom who can jump in at a key moment and make you viable, then the chance that you are going to attract other resources becomes very high, and the chance that you’re going to actually be able to win becomes very high.
” Ex // Top Stories City may loan its financially ailing zoo $8.5 million to spur turnaround New CEO Cassandra Costello is charged with revitalizing the 97-year-old west-side attraction — an $8.5 million city loan could help SF home ownership requires hefty income, new report finds Payment prices are being pushed up by strong demand from high-income buyers New affordable grocery store coming to southeastern San Francisco Sunnydale Market will open next year, offering customers grocery items at prices below-average retail prices The classic way to build a political career has been to start at the local level, then ascend to the state level, and then take a run at federal office, West said.
“When you’re ultra wealthy, you can skip those earlier steps and just run for governor or senator,” he said. Once on the campaign trail, while other campaigns might have to scramble to raise cash, self-financed candidates can focus solely on the campaign. What money can’t buy Immense wealth has not always translated to success at the ballot box. Money can buy an endless stream of campaign mailers, but it can’t force the public to like an unlikable candidate.
Only two of the top 10 biggest self-funding spenders in the 2022 federal election cycle won their races, for example, according to Open Secrets, a campaign finance watchdog group. Money certainly gets a candidate’s foot in the door and allows them to put their name in front of people but, in the end, “people still have to take a liking to you,” said Brendan Glavin, director of insights at Open Secrets.
“That’s the final hurdle that it’s hard for the money to overcome,” Glavin said. By pouring so much money into a race, often at the very start, candidates also raise the threshold for the entire field, and “it creates an arms-race situation.
“You don’t have to beat them, but you have to be able to compete at a certain threshold — if you’re just not out there at all, then people are gonna forget about you,” Glavin said. There are advantages to the painstaking work of grassroots campaigning. Small donors are supporters who have a vested interest in a candidate’s success, can often be counted on for future donations, and are “more likely to actually go out and vote,” Glavin said.
Chakrabarti’s campaign has asked supporters to contribute $1 to prove he has grassroots support. At the same time, his resources have allowed him to dispatch paid canvassers, who Mission Local reported are compensated by up to $45 an hour, to help spread his campaign message in corners of San Francisco where he has little name recognition. But even paid canvassers can come with downsides, Gleason noted.
“There’s a difference between someone who volunteers to go talk to other people about why they should support you, and when you pay someone to do that, and the energy you’re going to get and the passion you’re going to get,” Gleason said. Will voters buy what the wealthy are selling?
One important outstanding question is how receptive the ostensibly progressive voters of San Francisco and California are to the argument that it takes a millionaire or billionaire to fix a system many voters believe has been rigged by them. In an ad displayed prominently on Steyer’s campaign website, he laments that “the richest people in America think that they earned everything themselves. ” “Bulls---,” he adds.
Chakrabarti, who supports a proposed tax hike on California billionaires, has made a federal wealth tax a central component of his platform.
“We’ve transferred tens of trillions of dollars from working people to the wealthy, so, yes, it’s time we tax the billionaires a lot more,” he wrote on Instagram. Being a billionaire doesn’t necessarily mean that, once elected, you’ll pursue policies that exacerbate wealth inequality, Winters noted.
"It’s just incredibly likely that you will do that,” he said, “but it doesn’t actually guarantee that you’ll do that. ” Voters will have their say June 2 in the congressional and gubernatorial primary elections.
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