When President Biden visits, wallets open: Bay Area fundraisers net big checks from “bundlers”
The presidential election will be fought in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. But President Biden’s reelection campaign will be paid for, in no small part, by Bay Area billionaires.
Biden, who landed at Moffett Field on Thursday evening, planned to meet and greet Silicon Valley’s tech elite at two megawatt fundraisers on Friday: one in Portola Valley at the home of venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, and the other with former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in Palo Alto.
“You come to the ATM of California to tap into the dollars from tech zillionaires,” said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State. “The only thing that matters is money, cash, dollars. M-C-D.”
California has proven to be the Democrats’ largest cash cow state — bringing in $60 million to Biden and affiliated organizations and political action committees that support him since the election cycle began last spring, amounting to nearly 25% of all his fundraising nationwide.
San Francisco alone contributed some $23 million, while the Oakland and San Jose metro areas both added more than $3 million each. Menlo Park, where fundraising host Khosla has his office, is responsible for donating $10.6 million, while Portola Valley — a small town of 4,200 where he lives — accounts for $1.4 million, the 11th highest amount when broken down by ZIP code across the country, according to the Open Secrets political website that tracks presidential campaign donations.
Some of Biden’s most prolific donors do more than open their own pocket books. They bring their friends — and their checkbooks. For that, they are given a snappy moniker by the campaign: They are called “bundlers” and show up on a list all their own.
Their names are familiar: During the 2020 campaign when Biden first faced Trump, numerous Silicon Valley luminaries each raised at least $100,000 for his campaign and outside groups, according to Open Secrets. They include LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffmann, who hosted a top-dollar fundraiser for Biden at his Los Gatos home last year; Steve Westly, who held a fundraiser at his Atherton home; venture capitalist John Doerr; and veteran Democratic fundraiser Susie Tompkins Buell. Since 1990, records show that they and their spouses have contributed millions of dollars to federal candidates, parties and political action committees.
It’s not difficult for Biden to find friends in California and the Bay Area, which reliably have supported him and other Democrats. The president supports clean technology to combat climate change, the business model of numerous Silicon Valley startups, and he championed the CHIPS and Science Act that allocates $52 billion in federal money to manufacture computer chips in the U.S.
“It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he is wanting to raise money in Silicon Valley to continue to garner support from those who agree with those policies,” said Oakland-based political strategist Doug Linney.
Indeed, Donald Trump, who is on trial in a hush money scandal in New York, reportedly met with oil industry executives last month and offered them a “deal,” according to the Washington Post: Raise $1 billion for his campaign in exchange for his promise to dismantle Biden’s clean energy agenda that encourages 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 might have attracted Silicon Valley billionaires, his motorcade heading to the fundraisers likely will be passing protesters who disagree with his support of Israel in the midst of a war with Hamas. Those protesters are mostly young, a key demographic that Biden would need to beat Trump in a close race.
So far, Biden’s re-election campaign has raised $129 million and spent $90 million, touting the fact that it has raised more for the 2024 race and for the DNC than at this point in the previous election. Trump’s campaign has raised $96 million and spent $63 million, according to data from the FEC compiled by OpenSecrets. Both candidates also have several PACs and independent committees raising and spending millions to support and oppose them.
When individual contributions — which can exceed no more than $6,600 for the primary and general election campaigns combined — are sorted by city, the Bay Area clearly dominates in donations to Biden. San Francisco is the city with the most cash contributed, $2.5 million, more than Los Angeles, which has quadruple the population. If you calculate the total contributions per capita of the 15 cities whose residents contributed the most, Portola Valley tops the list with an average of $75 contributed to Biden’s campaign. Atherton came in second at $32, whereas San Francisco residents contributed enough to equal out to $3 per person. In Los Angeles, it’s 56 cents per resident.
On Friday, checks of up to $250,000 each will be written out to the Biden Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee. This allows big donors to give one large sum, higher than the individual contribution limits for any candidate or committee, which is then split up between Biden’s campaign committee, the Democratic National Committee and state-level Democratic parties, following the FEC limits for each.
“For general election candidates for the presidency, this is how fundraising is done for them,” said Brendan Glavin of Open Secrets. “It’s been growing over the last number of cycles.”