Opinion: Who is buying California's 26th State Senate seat?

A demand for change is building and the billionaires know it. If there is any risk that a new federal legislature comes for their wealth, then it behooves them to make sure that California, the nation’s biggest economy and its biggest laboratory for policy, stays centrist and cautious rather than bold and progressive. California has long been a place where future-facing ideas get tested. Corporations that have profited off of people’s pain would like it to stay the place where they get stopped.

Exhibit A: In California’s 26th State Senate District, outside groups have now spent over $8 million supporting Sara Hernandez, and voters deserve to ask what the people writing those checks expect in return.

The largest spender is Grow California, a PAC funded by crypto investors Chris Larsen and Tim Draper, which has put close to $4 million into this race and has openly cast itself as a counterforce to organized labor. California Leads, initially bankrolled by Meta and Google, has spent hundreds of thousands more. Housing Providers for Responsible Solutions, paid for by landlord and realtor interests, has spent more than $400,000. And a committee sponsored by the California Commerce Club card room, with money from a Hawaiian Gardens Casino fund, has added hundreds of thousands of dollars of its own.

Crypto. Big Tech. Landlords. Casinos. Ask yourself what that coalition has in common. It is not a shared passion for the Eastside. It is a shared interest in the status quo: A Golden State that stays 24 karat for the privileged few, yet fake gold for the rest — delivering phony promises from politicians and business leaders while the American Dream remains unattainable for anyone who doesn’t already own a multi-million dollar home and a seven-figure nest egg.

Nobody spends eight million dollars on a state Senate race in one of the bluest districts in America because they want a revolution. They spend it because they believe the candidate they are backing will not threaten the things they care about. Landlords want to hear “no” on statewide rent control, and Hernandez opposes repealing Costa-Hawkins and the Ellis Act, the state laws that limit how far cities can go on rent control. Tech and crypto want to hear “no” on a billionaire wealth tax, and when Hernandez was asked at an East Los Angeles forum whether she supported one to backstop federal healthcare cuts, she said no. Sarah Rascón, by contrast, supports repealing both housing laws and backs CalCare, a single-payer system that would take private insurers out of the center of our healthcare. Those are the seismic policy changes that would actually test the power of the interests now funding the other side.

This is not an isolated story. CalMatters has documented well over $100 million in outside spending on legislative races this cycle, eclipsing 2024. The money is not only flowing into congressional contests and high-profile ballot fights like Proposition 40, the one-time tax on billionaires. It is pouring into Assembly and Senate districts, where rent rules, healthcare policy, labor protections and corporate regulation are actually written. The wealthy understand something that too many voters are never told: the Legislature is where the status quo is either defended or dismantled.

And look at how they are fighting. If these interests could win by openly arguing for what they want, they would. But nobody votes for “keep rents unregulated” or “protect the crypto billionaires.” So the money does not make that case. 

Earlier this year in Chicago, where I watched crypto, AI and AIPAC-aligned donors pour millions into primaries through PACs named Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now, not one ad argued for the donors’ real priorities. The ads talked about “affordability.” One even used the damaged voice of former Congressman Bobby Rush to praise a rival of the candidate they feared. The goal was never persuasion. The goal was to blur the choice.

The same playbook is running here at home. Direct mail paid for by Housing Providers for Responsible Solutions, sent to voters in this district, tries to paint Sara Hernandez as a more progressive candidate than Sarah Rascón. Spanish-language radio ads paid for by Grow California, playing across Southern California and into the Inland Empire, make the same claim. It is not true. A candidate who opposes repealing Costa-Hawkins and the Ellis Act, who rejects a billionaires tax, and who is the preferred choice of landlord, crypto and casino money is not the more progressive option in this race by any honest measure. Calling it that is not an argument. It is a label, and the people paying for it are counting on you not to check.

They are counting on exhaustion, and they have good reason to. Latino voters, and honestly voters of every background, are working multiple jobs. Many of us are the sandwich generation, getting kids through homework, getting aging parents to doctors’ appointments, putting food on the table, keeping the lights on and the rent paid. Nobody has an hour on a Tuesday night to decode committee names, trace sponsors and fact-check a postcard. That is not a failure of the voter. It is how a system designed to favor deep pockets is supposed to work. The ads are built to land in three seconds, because the truth takes much longer.

So let’s take the time. Read the sponsor line at the bottom of the mailer. Ask who formed the committee and who funds it. Compare the candidates’ stated positions on rent control and healthcare, and ask why interests that usually fight both are spending at this scale in a district this blue. Can we see the game being played in front of our eyes?

There is a larger story behind all of this. In the 19th century the Supreme Court decided that corporations had the same rights as people. In the 20th century they said that spending on behalf of political causes was free speech and could not be regulated. We have been fighting to stop corporations and billionaires from buying our democracy for a very long time.

This is not about Sara Hernandez. I have considered her a friend. And I have friends who are supporting her. This is about the need to ask questions about the spending we are seeing in this race to represent a 60% Latino community where home ownership is lower and poverty is higher than in neighboring areas. The next Senator from the 26th District will vote on rent, on healthcare, on workers and on corporate power. Voters should know exactly who spent millions to choose them, and what those spenders were hoping to protect.

Those of us who can only afford small donations, not checks with one, two or three commas, must retain the power to make this, and every other race, one that can be decided by voters. We cannot allow unscrutinized spending to become the norm. We cannot passively consume TV, radio, web, social media, direct mail and other forms of promotion without asking who is paying for it and what they want in return. If we do, then things will only get worse.

The blue wave will crash upon Washington D.C. regardless of who wins any state legislative race. We know those with money and power want to keep both. It behooves those powerful and monied interests to buy as many candidates and airtime as are needed to keep California centrist. That for me is reason enough to vote for a Democratic Socialist like Sarah Rascón.