Apparently, Los Angeles socialism runs on billionaire money.
That is the increasingly absurd contradiction unfolding inside Los Angeles politics, where hard-line left-wing donors tied to Silicon Valley and Bay Area fortunes are pouring massive sums into candidates and activist movements that regularly condemn wealth, capitalism, and the billionaire class itself.
The checks, however, keep clearing.
Campaign filings show a small network of ultra-wealthy progressive donors helping finance political organizations and independent expenditure campaigns tied to Democratic Socialists of America candidates and criminal justice activists operating in Los Angeles politics.
One major funding vehicle is Smart Justice California Action Fund.
Transparency USA records show Patty Quillin — the wife of Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings — contributed roughly $1.8 million to the organization. Elizabeth Simons, daughter of hedge fund billionaire Jim Simons, contributed nearly another $1 million. Kaitlyn Krieger added more than $134,000.
The earlier donor network also included Quinn Delaney, a longtime progressive activist and heiress who helped finance George Gascón’s rise.
The money is now surfacing in current Los Angeles races.
The same fund has put $800,000 behind efforts benefiting Marissa Roy, the DSA-backed candidate for Los Angeles city attorney, $300,000 into efforts supporting Councilwoman Eunisses Hernandez, and $200,000 tied to Westside candidate Faizah Malik while opposing Councilwoman Traci Park.
That is not theory. It is a live effort to decide who runs City Hall.
Roy has been linked to a proposal for a temporary freeze on misdemeanors during the first 100 days — exactly the kind of idea that sounds bold in activist circles and reckless to people who have to live with the consequences.
Which raises an obvious question: If billionaires are supposedly dangerous to democracy, why are socialist candidates so dependent on billionaire money?
Apparently, billionaires are only a threat when they support the wrong causes.
That hypocrisy has become a defining feature of modern progressive politics. The activist Left attacks wealth concentration while relying on one of the most elite donor networks in American politics. Billionaire philanthropy, Silicon Valley money, nonprofit political machines and massive independent expenditure campaigns now fuel movements that claim to oppose concentrated wealth and power.
Los Angeles is becoming one of the clearest examples.
Even modest direct checks can be magnified by the city’s public financing system, which can match eligible contributions at 6-to-1. So the same movement denouncing concentrated wealth can use both billionaire money and taxpayer-subsidized campaign cash to win power.
Many of these same political and donor networks helped finance the rise of former LA County District Attorney George Gascón and the criminal justice reform movement that took over Los Angeles politics after 2020. The result was years of public backlash over crime, disorder and collapsing confidence in the justice system before voters finally removed him from office.
Now many of the same ideological forces are trying to expand deeper into City Hall.
The people funding these movements will not personally live with most of the consequences. They are not worrying about crime near struggling small businesses. They are not riding unsafe public transit late at night. They are not choosing between private security and a broken public safety system.
Ordinary Angelenos are.
That is why the billionaire-socialist alliance matters. Los Angeles politics is increasingly becoming a luxury ideological project financed by wealthy elites insulated from the policies they promote.
The same pattern plays out at the statewide level. Tom Steyer is the statewide version of the same hypocrisy.
He made his fortune at Farallon Capital, where billions flowed through coal, oil, gas, pipelines, and even private-prison investments. Then he reinvented himself as a climate crusader and criminal-justice reformer. Now he has spent well over $200 million from his personal fortune, first running for president and now for governor, while selling himself with the laughable pitch: “I’m the billionaire that can take on the billionaires.”
That is the modern progressive bargain. Billionaires are bad, unless they are funding the Left. Capitalism is corrupt, unless it produces the fortune being used to buy campaign ads. Concentrated wealth is dangerous, unless it helps elect socialists.
Los Angeles voters should not be fooled by the slogans. This is not a grassroots uprising. It is top-down politics dressed up as rebellion.
And after the Gascón years of crime fears, disorder and collapsing confidence in public safety, many Angelenos may reasonably wonder whether they want to live through another round of billionaire-funded political experimentation.
Jon Fleischman, a longtime strategist in California politics, writes at SoDoesItMatter.com.
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