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Tech-favored candidates fell short on California's primary night

Tuesday's primary night was a poor showing for California's tech billionaires and founders who viewed statewide politics as the next frontier for their ambitions

By Christine Mui and Chase DiFeliciantonio

Vote tallying in California’s primaries could drag on for days, but one trend is already hard to miss: tech-bred and tech-backed candidates are striking out.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan threw in the towel Tuesday after falling woefully short in the gubernatorial race, as Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton lead the pack and billionaire Tom Steyer stays in striking distance.

Mahan, who’s likely to finish in the single digits when the dust clears, is not alone among former tech entrepreneurs turned candidates. Ethan Agarwal’s bid to represent Silicon Valley in Congress also flopped. And Adam Miller’s long-shot campaign for Los Angeles mayor fizzled out so quietly that most Californians are asking, “Wait, who?”

The poor early showing amounts to a reality check for the billionaires and founders who viewed statewide politics as the next frontier for their ambitions — expecting to scale up the centrist, abundance-flavored formula that found success in places like San Francisco across California.

It’s an awkward start for donors whose unprecedentedly expensive push this cycle was meant to be the beginning of Silicon Valley’s transformation into a durable electoral machine.

Mahan and his wife, Silvia Scandar Mahan, alternately bemoaned and joked about the mayor’s late entrance into the race during his election-night party in downtown San Jose. The city’s first lady predicted her husband “would have been the leading Democratic candidate” with better name recognition.

The two took the Caltrain commuter rail down to the party from San Francisco, picking up a few dozen young supporters along the way. Mahan struck a positive tone on the way down, posing for photos with supporters and keeping up the energy despite the long odds during a pre-written concession speech.

Staffers switched off CNN around the time he and his wife took the stage, never turning it back on.

“While this campaign for governor ends tonight … our mission has only just begun,” the ambitious 43-year-old Democrat said less than half an hour after polls officially closed.

Mahan’s foes in labor who chafed at his billionaire backing took a victory lap. California Federation of Labor Unions President Lorena Gonzalez posted on X, “good job billionaire tech bros! Bye bye Mahan!”

Asked afterwards if a stronger showing from his tech backers could have moved the needle for his candidacy, Mahan declined to be drawn in, telling POLITICO that he was grateful for his campaign volunteers, staff and donors. As far as the immediate future is concerned, Mahan said, “I’m all about San Jose.”

Agarwal, who said he voted for Mahan, told Decoded “it’s sad to see him lose,” and argued the mayor and candidates like him have yet to run their course.

“You stay with it. If there’s one thing the tech industry has learned, it’s that politics is not a seasonal thing that you take part in and then disappear,” he said. “There’s always going to be lessons and mistakes made.”

After challenging Ro Khanna in part over the Silicon Valley congressman’s support for a proposed state wealth tax, Agarwal is trailing behind two Republicans in the deep-blue district. The political newcomer, flush with cash from former Khanna supporters like crypto billionaire Chris Larsen and Mahan fans like Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, mustered only 6 percent of the votes, with roughly half of them counted.

About 40 of his supporters — including former Rep. Mike Honda, who Khanna unseated back in 2016 — gathered in a Silicon Valley Indian restaurant with Agarwal to watch the batches of votes come in. Although he put on a brave face, some suggested there had been poor turnout, and one person remarked, “Let’s just wait. We’re staying optimistic.”

Khanna, who handily won the primary, posted that the results proved the progressive movement’s staying power despite “the tech lords” recruiting Agarwal.

“We showed that you can stand up to billionaires in the heart of Silicon Valley and prevail,” Khanna said Tuesday night on X.

Agarwal disagreed that Tuesday night was a decisive rejection, pointing to the struggling performances of former Rep. Katie Porter and tech centimillionaire Saikat Chakrabarti, who has criticized the industry in his self-funded campaign.

“If there’s an argument that tech was doing something, Saikat was the complete opposite of that,” Agarwal said. “There’s candidates on both sides that are still losing and winning, so it’s still early to say.”

But tech’s backyard is not immune to the populist currents currently reshaping American politics. In San Francisco, a measure to tax companies with large pay gaps between executives and rank-and-file workers was running too close to call, as of Tuesday night.

We’ll know within weeks whether the statewide wealth tax makes the next ballot in November — a prospect so dreaded among Silicon Valley leaders that it has inspired some tech luminaries to flee the state and coaxed some previously apolitical billionaires into opening their checkbooks.

Races remain uncalled early Wednesday, including for many of the legislative seats targeted by a new generation of tech-funded political spenders aiming to counteract organized labor’s influence. Super PACs bankrolled by the AI industry and wealthy moguls, currently spending in their first election cycle, joined seasoned Sacramento players like Uber to pour millions behind candidates or against their more progressive opponents.

In one of the night’s more under-the-radar outcomes and a boost to anti-AI politics, California’s first-ever measure to ban data centers is shaping up to be an absolute shellacking. About 87 percent of roughly 6,000 votes counted by Tuesday night approved a measure barring data centers within the Los Angeles County city of Monterey Park.