Independent expenditures are political spending that is not coordinated with a candidate's campaign. Under Citizens United v. FEC (2010), corporations, unions and individuals can spend unlimited amounts in support of or opposition to a candidate, as long as they do not coordinate with the campaign. The dashboard tracks every committee with documented IE spending in the CA 2026 governor race.
The single biggest story is anti-Steyer. About $58.1 million in independent expenditures opposes Tom Steyer, by far the largest target of outside money in the race, while almost nothing is spent for him. The opposition specifically targets Steyer's utility-breakup, Prop 13 commercial reform and ICE-prosecution planks, which industry sees as actual threats.
El que paga para que pierdas, te dice todo lo que teme.
No on Steyer for Governor 2026.
CAL-ACCESS filer ID: 1489677
Per CAL-ACCESS via cagovtracker.com, this committee's documented opposition to Steyer totals about $58.1 million (synced May 19, 2026). The four contributors below are the complete CAL-ACCESS list for the reporting period of January 1 through April 18, 2026, totaling $14,025,000. The wider $58.1 million figure spans this committee plus linked anti-Steyer vehicles (CRAE, JOBSPAC).
Documented top funders:
What these funders represent: Real estate brokerage industry, monopoly utility, building industry general contractors, prison guards' union.
Why they oppose Steyer: Steyer's platform proposes commercial Prop 13 split-roll reform (raises commercial property taxes), public-power utility breakup (dismantles PG&E's regulated monopoly), and ICE prosecution (legal exposure for federal-state cooperation). Each plank directly threatens these industries' business models.
Formed: April 7, 2026. Documented funders: PG&E $9.975 million, IBEW Local 1245 $75,000. The dollar-amount precision indicates a single major underwriter (PG&E) with a token co-funder for partisan plausibility.
CAL-ACCESS: Search at cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees for the CRAE filer.
Estimated total: $2 to $3 million per CalMatters reporting. CCPOA is the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, the prison guards' union. They oppose Steyer's anti-private-prison adjacencies and the decarceration positions in his platform.
Supporting Matt Mahan for Governor 2026.
Total raised: approximately $15 million. Cash on hand: $6.5 million+.
Documented top funders:
FPPC complaint pending: Filed April 22, 2026 by Raul Claros alleging illegal coordination between the committee and Mahan's campaign over an April 6 Zoom call where Moritz and Caruso participated and Mahan's strategy slides were screen-shared.
Tech and finance donor network founded by Stanford lecturer David Crane. Contributed $300,000 directly to Mahan plus $1.5 million to California Back to Basics. Has been investigated by the state for alleged campaign-finance violations.
Historical funders include Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Sergey Brin (Google), Michael Moritz (Sequoia), Joe Lonsdale (Palantir/Founders Fund).
Dual-endorses Bianco and Hilton with an explicit "two Republicans into the November top-two" strategy. Funder details and exact totals require a direct CAL-ACCESS filer search.
El dinero callado también deja huella.
The governor's race is where most of the documented outside money is concentrated this cycle. Several down-ballot races are competitive, but the public record on independent expenditures in them is thinner. Below is what the sources actually document. Where no confirmed large outside spending exists, we say so plainly rather than estimate.
The LA mayor's race between incumbent Karen Bass, Council Member Nithya Raman, Spencer Pratt and Rae Chen Huang is competitive, but as of the May 2026 reporting it is being driven by candidate fundraising rather than by large independent-expenditure committees.
No confirmed large outside IE spending has been documented in this race before the primary. The cagovtracker LA Mayor tracker notes that Bass is the likely target of anti-incumbent independent expenditures, and that progressive housing-justice infrastructure may be activating around Raman, but it states that no confirmed large outside spending had surfaced for or against any candidate before June 2. This is an honest gap in the record, not an absence of interest.
Candidate-side fundraising for the same period is on the special interests page.
Source: cagovtracker.com LA Mayor tracker, drawing on the LA City Ethics Commission, CalMatters and The Wrap, data current as of May 2026.
The constitutional offices below the governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Controller, Attorney General, Insurance Commissioner, have so far drawn far less outside money than the governor's race.
Source: cagovtracker.com statewide tracker, citing CAL-ACCESS, data current as of May 2026.
The most-watched competitive House races in Southern California, CD-45 (Derek Tran), CD-47 (Dave Min) and CD-27 (George Whitesides), are widely expected to draw heavy spending from national party committees and outside groups in the November general election. For the June primary specifically, the public record does not yet document committee-level independent-expenditure totals for these districts.
Independent-expenditure totals for these House primaries are not yet available in our sources. What is documented is candidate fundraising: CD-27 incumbent George Whitesides had raised more than $2.8 million for the 2026 cycle with more than $2 million in cash on hand as of the Q3 2025 filing, one of the top Democratic frontline fundraising totals in the country. That is direct campaign fundraising, not independent-expenditure money.
Source: cagovtracker.com Congress tracker, citing CAL-ACCESS and FEC-derived figures, data current as of May 2026. Federal congressional independent expenditures are reported to the Federal Election Commission rather than to CAL-ACCESS.
The official California source for every IE committee filing is CAL-ACCESS. Pull the raw filings:
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