2024 Santa Clara Election Spending Topped $3M, But How Much Did it Matter?

Campaign spending in the 2024 Santa Clara city election came close to $3.1 million, with PACs spending $2.9 million, dwarfing the $205,000 spent by individual candidates.

49ers Maintain Historical Spending, Related and Police Union Pull Back

The 49ers’ $2.4 million in spending was similar to what they spent in the 2022 election. Related spent $115,000 this year, less than half what the developer spent in 2022 — $250,000.

The Santa Clara police union PAC spent $223,000 in the election. The spending was almost entirely from union donations – a departure from the union PAC’s operation from 2016 through 2022, when the PAC financed its campaign activities with developer donations.

Despite the millions in spending, the 2024 election spending didn’t set a city record.

That record belongs to the Measure J election in 2010 when Santa Clarans for Economic Progress spent about $6 million ($8.6 million in 2024 dollars) to get voter approval for building Levi’s Stadium. The money was donated by the 49ers to the committee headed by Lisa Gillmor.

At the End of the Day, How Much Did Spending Matter?

Considering candidates for city elections can personally speak to nearly all of their constituents, it’s worth asking whether this bloated PAC spending significantly influenced results.

A superficial analysis is that three council candidates endorsed by the 49ers won, while only one candidate endorsed by Related and police union PAC won — i.e., money votes. That presumes that a) all voters lack independent power of thought and b) all candidates are interchangeable.  Correlation isn’t causation and a deeper dive yields a more complex picture.

Council Members Suds Jain and Kevin Park enjoyed the advantage of incumbency and strong bases of popularity. Teresa O’Neill was the first incumbent in 20 years to lose re-election, when she ran for a third term in 2020.* Park and Jain likely would have won without any 49er spending, and, if anything, the distraction of 49er spending detracted from their support.

Council dynamics may have had something to do with the election of two newcomers, Kelly Cox and Albert Gonzalez; neither of whom, however, made that the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Gonzalez may not be well-known to political mavens — the Mercury News described him as “absent from his own campaign” — but he’s been well-known for over 10 years on the Santa Clara Unified School Board. With a reputation for calmness and collegiality, Gonzalez is an appealing choice, considering the Santa Clara council’s typical sturm und drang.

Gonzalez surely benefitted when the 49ers threw its endorsement to him instead of well-known public figure Harbir Bhatia, who ran for council in 2020. Gonzalez’ other opponent, Satish Chandra, ran a negative campaign against his opponents.

Kelly Cox enjoyed two campaign advantages despite being little known. First, she ran against one candidate under indictment (Anthony Becker) and another who didn’t conduct any campaign (George Guerra) despite the 49ers’ backing.

Cox was upbeat and positive and came across as a likable person instead of running a negative attack campaign on her opponents.

* Santa Clara’s term limits only apply to council members elected in 2016 and forward. O’Neill was elected to her first term in 2012. When the term limits were approved by voters, she said that she hoped no one would take advantage of the loophole.