The presidential election will probably be held within the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But President Biden's re-election campaign is being paid for in no small part by Bay Area billionaires.
Biden, who landed at Moffett Field on Thursday evening, planned to satisfy and greet Silicon Valley's tech elite at two megawatt fundraisers on Friday: one in Portola Valley at the house of enterprise capitalist Vinod Khosla and the opposite with the previous Yahoo -Chief Marissa Mayer Palo Alto.
“They're coming to California's ATM to tap the dollars of tech zillionaires,” said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State. “The only thing that matters is money, cash, dollars. MCD.”
California has emerged because the Democrats' biggest money cow state, bringing in $60 million to Biden and his affiliated organizations and political motion committees which have supported him because the election cycle began last spring, nearly 25% of his statewide fundraising makes up.
San Francisco alone contributed about $23 million, while the Oakland and San Jose metropolitan areas each contributed greater than $3 million. Menlo Park, where fundraising anchor Khosla has his office, is liable for the $10.6 million donation, while Portola Valley – a small town of 4,200 where he lives – contributed $1.4 million. Dollars are eliminated, the eleventh highest amount when broken down by ZIP code across the country. According to the political website Open Secrets, which tracks donations to presidential campaigns.
Some of Biden's most prolific donors are doing greater than just opening their very own pocketbooks. They bring their friends with them – and their checkbooks. The campaign gives them a cool nickname: They are called “bundlers” and appear on their very own list.
Their names are familiar: During the 2020 campaign, when Biden ran against Trump for the primary time, quite a few Silicon Valley celebrities raised no less than $100,000 each for his campaign and outdoors groups, in line with Open Secrets. They include LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffmann, who hosted a high-dollar fundraiser for Biden at his home in Los Gatos last yr; Steve Westly, who held a fundraiser at his home in Atherton; enterprise capitalist John Doerr; and veteran Democratic fundraiser Susie Tompkins Buell. Records show that they and their spouses have donated thousands and thousands of dollars to federal candidates, parties and political motion committees since 1990.
It's not hard for Biden to seek out friends in California and the Bay Area who’ve reliably supported him and other Democrats. The president supports clean technology to combat climate change, the business model of many Silicon Valley startups, and he endorsed the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides $52 billion in federal money to make computer chips within the United States
“It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he wants to raise money in Silicon Valley to continue winning support from those who agree with these policies,” said Oakland-based political strategist Doug Linney.
In fact, Donald Trump, who’s on trial in New York over a hush money scandal, is claimed to have met with oil industry executives last month and, in line with the Washington Post, offered them a “deal” to lift $1 billion in exchange for his campaign promise to dismantle Biden's clean energy agenda, which promotes electric vehicles, solar energy and wind power.
“Maybe Trump is just saying it out loud,” said Linney, who supports Biden. “But I don’t see anything technically wrong with trying to get support from people who believe in the same issues and positions.”
Although Biden can have attracted billionaires from Silicon Valley, his motorcade on the option to fundraisers will likely pass protesters who disagree together with his support of Israel amid a war with Hamas. Those protesters are largely young people, a key group Biden would wish to beat Trump in an in depth race.
So far, Biden's reelection campaign has raised $129 million and spent $90 million, suggesting he has raised more for the 2024 race and for the DNC than he did at this point within the previous election. Trump's campaign raised $96 million and spent $63 million, in line with FEC data compiled by OpenSecrets. Both candidates even have multiple PACs and independent committees raising and spending thousands and thousands to support and oppose them.
When individual donations – which cannot exceed $6,600 combined for the first and general campaigns – are sorted by city, the Bay Area clearly dominates donations to Biden. San Francisco is the town with the very best money deposit at $2.5 million, greater than Los Angeles, whose population has quadrupled. Calculating the whole per capita contributions of the 15 cities whose residents contributed probably the most, Portola Valley topped the list with a mean of $75 donated to Biden's campaign. Atherton got here in second with $32, while San Francisco residents contributed enough to come back to $3 per person. In Los Angeles it’s 56 cents per resident.
“For presidential candidates in the general election, fundraising is done this way,” said Brendan Glavin of Open Secrets. “It has grown over the last few cycles.”
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