Today we're discussing a little story from Politico's California Playbook, which noted that California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter recently received a maximum personal contribution of $39,200 from billionaire Chris Larsen, co-founder of the crypto firm Ripple.
Why does that matter?
First, it signifies that Porter has perhaps made amends with California's crypto elites, whose Fairshake PAC poured $10 million into sinking her 2024 US Senate campaign.
It also signals that former Vice President Kamala Harris may not be interested in a run for governor. Larsen, you may recall, plowed $10 million into Harris's failed 2024 presidential bid. If he's betting on another gubernatorial candidate before Kamala enters the race, perhaps he knows something that the rest of us don't.
We also take a moment to dive into larger campaign financing for California Democrats, examining who in the governor's race is taking money from billionaires, landlords, developers, and AI interests.
Meanwhile in New York City, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani has secured the Democratic nomination to become the Big Apple's next mayor, despite the Israel lobby pouring ungodly amounts of money into smearing the young candidate, a Muslim who has openly spoken out against Israel's war crimes.
We recorded this one before Mamdani's historic primary result, but Max presciently thought it might be a good exercise to take a look at all the AIPAC dollars streaming into California politicians' coffers. It appears a lot of Democrats are just begging to be primaried.
Finally, we take a look at Governor Gavin Newsom's little spats with both mainstream and far-right media outlets. It appears he's mad at the Los Angeles Times for running a story on his relationship with single-use water bottles (which no one would have read, had his comms team not lost their minds over it). And then, of course, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post is taking shots from 3,000 miles away.
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