The Billionaire Democrat Who Wants to be California’s Governor Just Got Caught Paying to Hide His Past

The Harris campaign paid millions to an agency that booked influencers to push Kamala on unsuspecting audiences.

Now a California billionaire took the same playbook – and a reporter got the memo.

What that memo says about how Democrats manufacture your neighbor's political opinions will make you think twice about everything you see online.

Billionaire Democrats Have Put Their Thumbs on the Scales for Years, Using Paid Influencers Without Telling Voters

Here's what the political class figured out and kept quiet.

Federal law requires "paid for by" disclosures on every TV ad, every radio spot, every mailer that lands in your mailbox.

Social media influencers? Nothing.

The Federal Election Commission specifically declined to require any disclosure when campaigns pay creators to push political content. The FEC had the chance to close that loophole in 2023 and walked away, ruling influencer payments fell outside their advertising rules.

So when a campaign pays someone to post friendly videos about a candidate – that creator has zero legal obligation to tell their audience who wrote the check.

The Harris campaign exploited this gap to the tune of $1.9 million to a single influencer-booking agency in 2024.

The Trump campaign spent $2.3 million on influencer marketing in 2020.

But Democrats took it somewhere new in 2026.

Steyer Already Spent $147 Million and Now He’s Faking Grassroots Support  With “Astroturf”

Tom Steyer has dumped $147 million of his own money into California's governor's race to replace Gavin Newsom.

That's the second-most expensive gubernatorial campaign in California history – and nearly every dollar is Steyer's own hedge fund money.

Yet $147 million wasn't enough to overcome what voters actually know about him.

Steyer built his $2.4 billion fortune running Farallon Capital – a hedge fund that invested in coal plants, private prisons, and CoreCivic, the company now housing undocumented immigrants in ICE detention centers.

His entire campaign pitch is "I'm the billionaire who wants to tax other billionaires."

So his team went looking for influencers to soften the contradiction.

Not famous ones. Not credible ones. Small creators willing to push content rehabilitating Steyer's image for $10 a video.

The Sacramento Bee obtained the campaign memo. The instructions told creators to acknowledge voter concerns about Steyer's billionaire status without making those concerns seem legitimate.

Frame him as the authentic outsider, the memo said.

A $2.4 billion hedge fund manager. Authentic.

The campaign routed everything through a third-party platform called SideShift – a layer of plausible deniability so the campaign's fingerprints wouldn't appear when the videos went live.

The FEC Loophole That Lets Democrat Campaigns Pay Influencers in Secret

One creator who turned the pitch down, Serabeth Mullaney, gave a blunt assessment: the scheme targets creators who need the money and puts undisclosed endorsements in front of audiences who have no idea the content is paid for.

That's the mechanism Democrats have built.

They know their candidates can't win authentic grassroots enthusiasm. So they manufacture it.

Biden's White House pioneered government influencer strategy starting in 2022, funneling creators into private briefings while Democratic PACs channeled money into their accounts. Harris paid $1.9 million to book more of them. Now Steyer is paying $10 at a time – with a campaign memo coaching each creator on how to spin his coal and private prison past.

The FEC's own commissioners called their inaction a "golden opportunity" missed – one that leaves voters unable to tell the difference between a genuine opinion and a paid campaign surrogate.

That's the point.

When you can't win on your record, you buy the appearance of a record people trust.

Steyer has called for abolishing ICE, proposed that California criminally prosecute ICE agents, and backed a billionaire tax that even Gavin Newsom opposes.

He is currently losing – polling third in his own primary at 15%.

And yet somewhere right now, a creator is posting a friendly video about Tom Steyer, hoping their audience never finds out who paid for it.

Democrats built this machine because it works – and because nobody's making them stop.

The next time someone in your life shares a political video that feels a little too polished, a little too perfectly timed – now you know what to ask.

Sources:

• Hannah Ruhoff, "Billionaire candidate for California governor catching heat for past business interests, wealth," The Sacramento Bee, April 6, 2026.
• "PRIMARY '26: Billionaire Steyer goes all in for California's gubernatorial race," San Diego City Times, May 1, 2026.
• "Tom Steyer runs for California governor on class traitor platform," Fortune, April 29, 2026.
• "Are there regulations preventing influencers from being paid to endorse or promote political candidates?" EPGD Business Law, January 15, 2025.
• "If 2024 Is The Influencer Election, Where's The FEC?" Tech Policy Press, August 28, 2024.