Forrmer Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has donated $200,000 to help defeat an attempt to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom, Politico reported on Wednesday.
The contribution from Mayer, who after leaving Yahoo co-founded Sunshine, a company using artificial intelligence to build consumer-focused apps, helps increase Newsom's significant cash advantage over Republican rivals and further shows the massive support Newsom has from California's powerful tech industry.
Other powerhouses from Silicon Valley have already stepped up to back Newsom, who was previously San Francisco mayor, in defeating the recall, with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings contributing $3 million.
The governor has also received six-figure donations from investor Ron Conway, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Laurene Powell Jobs, president of the Emerson Collective and widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, according to Politico.
Newsom has been able to legally obtain contributions without limits, because California does not cap money given to ballot measure committees, and the recall is considered a ballot measure.
Republicans trying to replace Newsom have recently launched their own ballot-measure committees in addition to their candidate accounts, but they have not been able to generate anywhere near the dollar amounts in contributions Newsom has.
The donations for Newsom come just a few weeks after California officials confirmed that a recall election will proceed, CNN reported.
This is only the second time in California’s history that a special election will take place to recall a sitting governor.
The recall drive was buoyed by anger over the restrictions Newsom put in place to halt the spread of the coronavirus throughout last year and during an alarming increase in cases in the state during December.
Last week, California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis announced that the date of the recall election will be September 14, Cal Matters reported.
The announcement came after weeks of procedural wrangling by Democratics to speed up the process for choosing a recall election date, as the party apparently calculated that Newsom had a better chance of defeating the recall if it was held sooner rather than later.
Voters will be asked two questions on the ballot, the first of which is do they want to vote "yes" or "no" on recalling the governor, who was elected in three years ago with nearly 62% of the vote, according to CNN.
The second question is which candidate voters would like to replace Newsom. Voters will pick from what is most likely to be a very long list of names, as candidates from different parties will appear on the same list.
Newsom is not permitted to add his name to the ballot as an option by law.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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