SACRAMENTO — Solely one of many candidates for California governor will seem in a splashy Tremendous Bowl advert on Sunday, although a rival has locked in a helpful spot on Animal Planet’s lighthearted, cuddly “Pet Bowl” earlier than the large recreation.
A Silicon Valley-backed impartial expenditure committee booked $1.4 million in airtime on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service, which is able to characteristic the large recreation together with NBC, and on different broadcast networks on Sunday to introduce Matt Mahan, the mayor of San José who entered the governor’s race in late January.
A 30-second advert depicts Mahan, a reasonable Democrat, as a “fixer of issues” in an enormous metropolis “simply miles from the large recreation” and touts his file lowering homelessness, constructing housing and lowering crime.
The advert was produced by a committee run independently of Mahan’s marketing campaign and funded largely by Silicon Valley executives, together with $1 million from Michael Seibel of Y Combinator and $500,000 every from Riot Video games co-founder Marc Merrill and his spouse, Ashley.
“This Tremendous Bowl advert kicks off our help for Matt Mahan’s run for governor,” mentioned committee spokesman Matt Rodriguez. “His unmatched file on tackling crime, homelessness and housing in San José whereas specializing in the fundamentals that Californians care about could be very totally different than the outdated playbook of poisonous politics.”
The committee has to this point raised greater than $3.2 million, in keeping with Rodriguez, who supplied the details about the contributors.
Different monetary backers embrace Neil Mehta and Brian Singerman, two Bay Space enterprise capitalists, together with Paul Wachter, an investor who has suggested former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and movie star figures similar to LeBron James and Dr. Dre on their enterprise ventures.
As an impartial committee, the group is barred from coordinating with Mahan and his marketing campaign. A spokesperson for Mahan declined to touch upon the committee or its recreation day advert.
Mahan, a reasonable Democrat, has damaged with Gov. Gavin Newsom on crime and different points and is pitching himself as a pragmatist who would prioritize outcomes over get together politics or preventing with the Trump administration as Newsom has. Mahan’s marketing campaign is just not but required to reveal donations however mentioned it has raised greater than $7 million since he entered the race, greater than any candidate in addition to Tom Steyer, a progressive billionaire whose marketing campaign is primarily self-funded.
Steyer, an investor turned local weather activist, has already spent greater than $27 million on his marketing campaign. Most of that cash went to producing and airing advertisements by which Steyer touts his wins supporting varied poll measures and pledges to interrupt up utility monopolies to decrease prices.
His newest advert debuts throughout Animal Planet’s “Pet Bowl,” a pregame present that options two groups of adoptable canine tussling over toys in a mannequin soccer stadium. Within the spot, a Realtor tells a pair that with the intention to afford a house, they may want to return in time to 1980, “when the typical residence in California value $100,000.”
With a burst of sparks, Steyer seems contained in the time-traveling DeLorean from the 1985 movie “Again to the Future” and says, “You shouldn’t have to return in time to afford a house in California.” He then pledges to cease “Wall Avenue speculators from shopping for up properties” and pricing out “common Californians.”
To have a authentic shot at profitable a governor’s race in a state as huge as California, residence to among the nation’s most expensive media markets, candidates should increase tens of millions of {dollars} to air advert campaigns strong sufficient to introduce themselves to voters or undercut their opponents.
Based on marketing campaign finance disclosures, former Rep. Katie Porter raised $6.1 million in 2025, essentially the most of any candidate in addition to Steyer. However Mahan’s entry into the race has excited the tech and enterprise pursuits which have till now prevented giving.
“The race is now kicked into gear,” and a few candidates who’ve been fundraising for months — or years — “could discover themselves lapped by the Mahan machine,” mentioned Andrew Acosta, a Democratic strategist.
Although tech funders look like coalescing across the Silicon Valley mayor, he’s “not going to come back out of the gate lighting the marketing campaign on fireplace as a result of nobody is aware of him,” Acosta mentioned. With three months till main ballots begin hitting mailboxes, it’s a problem for Mahan — although one which may very well be solved with sufficient cash.
Steyer’s marketing campaign criticized the wave of tech figures flocking to Mahan, saying enterprise titans don’t spend their cash with out anticipating one thing in return.
“This isn’t charity — it’s an funding in order that they get richer whereas everybody else will get priced out of California,” Steyer spokesman Kevin Liao mentioned. “Whereas San José stays the least reasonably priced housing market on this planet, Tom Steyer is able to tackle highly effective particular pursuits, make billionaires and companies pay their fair proportion, and make California reasonably priced for working individuals.”
With the specter of a proposed billionaire’s tax on California’s November poll, new restrictions on AI and social media simmering within the Legislature and the approaching exit of Gov. Gavin Newsom — who has been a dependable tech ally throughout his tenure — Silicon Valley leaders have made strikes in latest weeks to spice up their affect in California politics.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin and a handful of different CEOs lately loaded $35 million right into a poll measure committee and spent a few of it on two separate efforts to decrease housing prices.
Meta and Google have additionally ramped up spending on lobbying and tremendous PACs in an effort to elect tech-friendly candidates and combat towards AI regulation in statehouses each in California and across the nation.
