The Numbers Are In — And They're Staggering

Tom Steyer hasn't just been running ads. He's been running the single most expensive political advertising campaign in the entire country this year.

As of late May 2026, Steyer has spent or booked more than $195 million on broadcast TV, cable, and radio ads alone, according to advertising tracker AdImpact as reported by the Associated Press. That's more than 20 times what his nearest competitor, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, has spent.

For national context: Georgia Republican Rick Jackson — running a competitive primary for governor — is in second place nationally at $83 million. Steyer has more than doubled that. Nobody else is close.

Blowing Past Meg Whitman

California's previous record was set in 2010 by Republican Meg Whitman, who spent $178.5 million on a losing governor's bid. That was the most expensive statewide race in U.S. history at the time.

Steyer just broke that record — and the primary isn't even over.

When adjusted for inflation, Whitman technically still holds the state record, according to AdImpact data cited by the AP. But Whitman's total was for the entire election cycle. Steyer has already eclipsed her raw dollar figure just in the primary.

The Influencer Operation

The ad spend is only part of the story.

Steyer has been running a parallel influencer payroll that dwarfs anything documented in prior California races. California influencers Beatrice Gomberg and Kaitlyn Hennessy spent weeks reviewing Steyer's campaign expenditure records, according to El País English. What they found: dozens of influencers on Steyer's payroll, with payments ranging from $10 per video on the low end to $10,000 checks on the high end.

At the top of that pyramid sits Carlos Eduardo Espina — a Uruguay-born, U.S.-raised TikTok creator with millions of followers across platforms who built his audience by explaining immigration and politics in Spanish to Hispanic Americans.

Espina was paid $400,000 by the Steyer campaign. The initial payment of $100,000 was first reported by The New York Times. Espina himself then disclosed the full $400,000 total — which Steyer's campaign managers confirmed to El País English — saying he was being transparent so no one could say it wasn't disclosed later.

The disclosure came from the influencer, not the campaign, and only after media scrutiny.

The Disclosure Problem

California passed a law in 2024 requiring content creators to disclose when posts are funded by a candidate or campaign. Texas passed a similar law the same year, according to El País English.

At the federal level, the FEC and FTC are still operating under older frameworks that weren't built for social media political advertising. There is effectively no federal requirement for influencers to flag paid political content the way traditional broadcasters must.

Steyer's operation didn't invent this loophole. But he is exploiting it at a scale nobody has matched.

The Democratic Response

Former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter — one of seven established Democrats in the race — has been the loudest critic. Her campaign explicitly called out Steyer for "trying to buy the governor's office," according to the AP.

She's not wrong about the dollar amounts. But Porter and the rest of the Democratic field have stayed remarkably quiet about the influencer disclosure issue specifically. That's the more uncomfortable part of this story — and it's getting less coverage than the raw ad spending.

Most mainstream coverage, including the AP's own reporting, focused heavily on the horse-race angle: record spending, Whitman comparisons, crowded field. The paid-influencer machine — with a six-figure payment to one creator targeting Hispanic voters — got far less prominent treatment.

The Record So Far

Steyer is not secretly doing anything. The money is on public record. Espina disclosed the total himself. But the system allowed weeks of "organic-seeming" content before the financial relationship became public knowledge.

Young voters watching Espina's videos on TikTok — videos featuring Steyer at campaign events, reggaeton music, selfies in Los Angeles and San Diego — had no reason to know they were watching a $400,000 paid endorsement.

California's new disclosure law is supposed to fix this. Whether it's actually being enforced is a different question entirely — and neither the Steyer campaign nor state regulators have been pressed publicly on compliance.

One billionaire. $195 million in ads. Dozens of influencers on payroll. A $400,000 check to a Spanish-language creator with millions of followers. And a regulatory framework that can't keep up. The voters of California will decide in November whether it worked.