For months, questions have swirled around who funded the contentious Congressional District 16 recount that broke a stunning tie for second place. New campaign finance reports filed this week finally revealed that most of the money came from allies of former San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo.
The March primary race to replace U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo ended with Liccardo in first place and Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian and Assemblymember Evan Low tied for second. But then, Jonathan Padilla, a former Liccardo mayoral campaign staffer and 2020 and 2024 Biden delegate, requested a recount of the more than 182,000 votes cast in the race.
What followed was two-and-a-half weeks of nail-biting vote counting in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, where the district is located, and Low emerging victorious by five votes.
The recount, however, came at a cost with each county charging $12,000 a day. The money came from a newly-established Super PAC called Count the Vote, which prompted local politicos — including Eshoo herself — to demand the group immediately disclose the donors instead of waiting until the July 15 deadline mandated by the Federal Election Commission.
In May, election filings revealed that Neighbors for Results, a pro-Liccardo Super PAC, transferred $102,000 into Count the Vote. The PAC has three donors: former NetApp CEO Daniel Warmenhoven, former New York City mayor and billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg and Cypress Semiconductor founder Thurman John Rodgers. Bloomberg was the largest donor, shelling out $500,000 to the PAC in February.
But that was only part of the picture. New election filings show that Count the Vote had five other donors aside from Neighbors for Results: Ripple co-founder Christian Larsen, Warmenhoven, Metropolitan Transportation Commission Vice Chair Nick Josefowitz, K McAuliffe and Padilla. The five contributions totaled $169,500.
Larry Gerston, a professor emeritus of political science at San Jose State University, said the number of donors doesn’t come as a surprise.
“That’s not unusual because you have to have a sizable check available and this kind of money is not the discretionary funds that mom and pop contributors have.”
Count the Vote ultimately raised $271,500 and spent $268,000 on the recount and still owes $50,112 to its attorneys at Rutan and Tucker.
Larsen, who Forbes estimates has a net worth of $3.2 billion, gave the PAC its largest check — $100,000. The cryptocurrency businessman also has been a major donor to Democrats nationally and has played a role in Silicon Valley politics, shelling out tens of thousands of dollars in recent elections for PACs backing San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez’s failed mayoral bid and a 2018 San Jose ballot measure endorsed by Liccardo.
Warmenhoven, who gave $50,000 to Neighbors for Results earlier this year, donated $63,500 to Count the Vote. In the past, the former NetApp CEO has contributed to Mahan and Liccardo’s mayoral campaigns. Warmenhoven also gave Liccardo the $6,600 maximum to his congressional campaign.
McAuliffe as well as Josefowitz — the former chief of policy for urban think tank SPUR who has previously donated to Liccardo — gave relatively smaller donations of $2,500. Padilla also contributed $1,000 to the recount he requested.
A spokesperson for Liccardo declined to comment, referring this news organization to an op-ed the former mayor published in April. In it, Liccardo calls for an automatic recount provision and said that he had no communication with Padilla or other donors to the recount.
“In addition to whatever commendable desire he might have to ensure an accurate count of every vote, we can presume that Padilla (and likely others) also did this for political reasons,” Liccardo wrote. “If true, that hardly renders Padilla’s recount request illegitimate; it merely puts it in the same category as every other recount request in U.S. electoral history. Elections are politically competitive.”
Low’s campaign was highly critical of the recount, even going as far as calling it a “page right out of Trump’s political playbook.” In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, his campaign doubled down.
“The recount was nothing more than a dirty trick, and it’s now clear Liccardo’s billionaire donors funded it, which hamstrung our fundraising and gave Trump Republicans a playbook to continue to undermine our democracy,” campaign spokesperson Lindsey Cobia said. Low’s campaign ended up spending $168,369 on the recount, according to recent election filings.
Padilla defended the recount and criticized Low for independent expenditures, which he has no control of, spent on his behalf. During the primary election, the Golden State Leadership Fund PAC, which had major funding from PG&E and the California Apartment Association, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars backing Low.
“Evan Low fought like hell to prevent an accurate vote count going as far to threaten a lawsuit to stop the vote and now he’s pushing a double standard to hide the contributions of his corporate paymasters like PG&E as long as possible,” Padilla said. “It’s the epitome of hypocrisy, but that’s to be expected from someone on the dole of special interests like PG&E who funnel more and more money to his candidacy while gouging ratepayers.”
