Big Tech donors contributed historic sums to political campaigns up and down the ballot in California this primary season. But with votes being tallied in the wake of the Tuesday primary election, Silicon Valley’s efforts to influence the state’s elections appear to be meeting with mixed results.
In the closely watched governor’s race, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, who received millions from top tech executives, conceded only minutes after polls closed.
Mahan raked in more donations from the tech industry than any other candidate in the gubernatorial primary, including from Google co-founder Sergey Brin and Patrick Collison, the co-founder and chief executive at fintech platform Stripe, among other big-tech figures. Yet with roughly 60% of ballots counted as of Friday afternoon, according to The Associated Press, Mahan has garnered just 4%, trailing the leading candidates in the race by more than 20 points.
Tech entrepreneur Ethan Agarwal, whose bid to oust long-time Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna and represent Silicon Valley in Congress won the backing of tech executives including DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang and Y Combinator chief executive Garry Tan, also looks to be headed for a double-digit loss.
Khanna will advance to defend his seat in November’s election, the AP has called. One other, yet-to-be-determined candidate will also move forward, but with 64% of votes counted, Agarwal has garnered only around 6%, per the AP, currently putting him behind not just Khanna—with nearly 60%—but also two Republican candidates.
Read more: How Does California’s ‘Jungle Primary’ Work?
In another nearby House race, however, Scott Wiener, whose campaign for retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s seat has been supported by a super PAC called Abundant Future that received funding from Tan and billionaire Christian Larsen, who co-founded the crypto company Ripple Labs, is set to advance to the general election. The AP has called the primary race, with Wiener securing 41% of the vote and fellow Democratic candidate Connie Chan 29% with just over half of ballots counted.
And Big Tech donors’ favored candidates are also staying alive in some down-ballot races. Cerritos City Council Member and Mayor Pro Tem Mark Pulido and Santa Ana Mayor Pro Tem David Penaloza, who are running for State Assembly seats, each received donations of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the super PAC Grow California, which is funded largely by Larsen and venture capital investor Tim Draper. Pulido’s bid also received almost a quarter of a million dollars from the super PAC California Leads, to which Meta and Google each contributed $5 million. Though votes are still being counted in both primaries, both Pulido and Penaloza currently appear on track to advance to the general election, per California’s unofficial election results tracker.
In the race for the state’s Insurance Commissioner, meanwhile, another candidate who received support from a Larsen-backed super PAC, Democrat Ben Allen, could also be on track to move forward, according to the tracker.
Political experts tell TIME that the mixed success of the tech-favored candidates in the primaries shows that such backing is not enough in itself to put a campaign over the top.
“Support and tech money doesn’t allow candidates to short circuit the traditional paths to electability in California politics––establishing a record, running for office, letting voters know who you are,” Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California San Diego, tells TIME.
The limits of Big Tech’s backing
Money alone cannot win big-ticket races, Neil Malhotra, a professor of political economy at Stanford University’s Business School, tells TIME—and the appearance that candidates are tied to Big Tech may actually hurt their cases in some ways.
Malhotra explains that earned and paid media are two very different types of political exposure, and that the former translates much more into votes. Financial contributions from tech executives and other donors can be put toward paid media, promotional material like direct mail or televised ads that are funded by campaigns, PACs, or advocacy groups. Earned media, meanwhile, is a more organic form of exposure arising out of public attention and engagement, such as word of mouth support from community members or media coverage, that is not paid for.
“If there’s an underlying, unpopular candidate, the media is not gonna help at all, and that’s why earned media is considered a better signal,” Malhotra says. “The reason you go viral is that you have a message that resonates.”
He also contends that it can be risky, if not disadvantageous, for candidates to seem to be linked to the tech industry, which he notes draws “bipartisan skepticism.”
“Sometimes when people think of the tech industry broadly, they have negative views on it,” he says.
A Brennan Center study published earlier this week found that a large bipartisan majority believes campaign contributions from big corporations and billionaires are a leading cause of political corruption. And a 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that nearly 80% of Americans think social media companies have too much influence in politics.
“I think the lesson a lot of California Democrats get is that actually being tech-aligned—at least overtly so—may not be that electorally beneficial,” Malhotra says.
For his part, Kousser, of the University of California San Diego, says that tech donors haven’t necessarily harmed the campaigns of the candidates they’ve contributed to. But they evidently have, he says, “failed to elevate them above their other vulnerabilities as candidates.”
The future of Big Tech in politics
Despite the losses of tech-backed candidates in some high-profile races in California’s primaries, Kousser stresses that tech figures play, and will continue to play, an integral role in all aspects of the state’s politics, specifically when it comes to those surrounding AI and data center regulation.
He points to the ways that Big Tech has become involved in the political systems that shape such regulations and other policies impacting the industry, including the millions of dollars tech firms spend on lobbying Congress and seeking to influence policy on the state level.
A report from the nonprofit Issue One, which seeks to limit the role that money plays in politics, found that based on federal lobbying reports Big Tech companies spent roughly $20 million on congressional lobbying in the first three months of this year, amounting to $226,000 per day. In California, meanwhile, a CalMatters analysis found that major companies specializing in AI and crypto spent more than $39 million in their efforts to influence state politics last year, including campaign contributions, lobbying, and donations made at the requests of lawmakers.
“Tech firms and tech moguls … have given themselves a seat at the table that doesn’t go away with just one or two candidates losing,” Kousser says. “Technology firms, their lobbyists, and their leaders are at the table for every negotiation in state politics.”
Regardless of what happens in this year’s elections, Kousser contends that tech leaders will continue to try to sway elected officials and maintain influence over their industry––“even if the tech-candidate for governor didn’t succeed.”
“Because tech is the industry of California, tech is going to ensure that they’re tied to every politician who gains office,” he says.
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