“Aside from getting around contribution limits, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to go through this extra effort,” said Stan Oklobdzija, a visiting public policy professor at UC Riverside who researches campaign finance. Some experts also questioned whether it’s a way for its small cadre of wealthy donors to evade contribution caps designed to limit anyone from having an outsized influence on state politics. But Ann Ravel, former head of the Federal Election Commission and California’s campaign finance agency, said its chapter donation operation was “undemocratic,” albeit similar to the model organized labor unions use. None of the campaign finance experts CalMatters spoke with said they thought Govern For California was doing anything illegal. The 11-year-old organization - the brainchild of 68-year-old Stanford lecturer David Crane, and funded primarily by a group of Bay Area venture capitalists, tech executives and philanthropists - opposes what it regards as excessive sway of labor unions over state policy. Govern For California characterizes its 18 chapters as “force multipliers” that amplify the influence of its donors on state politics and government. In the 2022 election cycle so far, the network has donated more than $3 million to more than 110 candidates across California, the vast majority of the money going to 82 running for the state Senate and Assembly.

But Assemblymember Rivas is hardly the only beneficiary of Govern For California spending.

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