Did SB 1439 Change Local Campaign Finance?

When Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 1439 into law in 2022, many political observers expected a shake-up in how local candidates raise money. The new rules restrict local elected officials from voting on issues involving donors who contributed $250 or more within the previous 12 months. While the goal was to reduce donor influence over official decisions, many anticipated the law would push more campaign money into independent expenditures—spending by outside groups not coordinating directly with candidates.

What We Analyzed

Now that the first cycle under these rules has wrapped up, we can look at real data to see if those expectations played out. We used campaign finance information from Netfile, which provides reporting software to many agencies across California. We focused on 95 agencies that had complete data for 2020, 2022, and 2024, ensuring a consistent comparison.

• Candidate Committees: We tried to exclude contributions made to non-candidate committees and any contributions from candidates to themselves (since those can distort the totals).

• Independent Expenditures: We simply gathered transactions labeled as independent expenditures.

After processing the data, we had more than one million transactions to include in our analysis.

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Are Candidates Raising Less Money?

Looking at aggregate contributions, candidates seem to be raising as much—or even more—money overall:

• 2020: $131,602,081.53

• 2022: $130,508,841.37

• 2024: $147,471,216.88

This increase might look surprising if SB 1439 was supposed to limit large donations. However, San Francisco had an exceptionally expensive mayoral race in 2024, reporting $46,946,099.96 in candidate contributions—much higher than $8,276,721.21 in 2022 and still roughly $20 million more than in 2020.

Removing San Francisco might show more modest numbers, but even then, there’s no obvious sign that candidates are struggling to raise funds.

Click here to view the raw data.

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What About Large Donations Over $250?

SB 1439’s central premise is that restricting donations above $250 would curb donor influence. Here’s how contributions above $250 shifted:

• 2020: 28.1% of contributions

• 2022: 35.7%

• 2024: 33.4%

Yes, there’s a dip from 2022 to 2024, but nothing major. Overall, candidates are still receiving a substantial share of large checks.

Click here to view the raw data.

One theory is that donors might have started giving earlier in the election cycle to avoid the 12-month restriction. Here’s how contributions over $250 broke down by year within each cycle:

2020 Cycle

• First year: 40,199 (41.4%)

• Second year: 56,894 (58.6%)

2022 Cycle

• First year: 27,346 (27.1%)

• Second year: 73,392 (72.9%)

2024 Cycle

• First year: 39,628 (38.7%)

• Second year: 62,798 (61.3%)

Although 2024 shows more early donations than 2022, it’s still below the early-donation level in 2020. There’s simply no clear pattern suggesting donors rushed to give money sooner to avoid SB 1439’s limitations.

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Did Independent Spending Surge?

Another possibility was that donors would shift money to independent expenditure committees instead of contributing directly to candidates. Below is the total spent on independent expenditures across our 95 agencies (though only 68 had independent expenditures in at least one of those three years):

• 2020: $18,615,790.68

• 2022: $27,544,797.72

• 2024: $42,249,570.34

Again, San Francisco’s mayoral race accounted for around $19 million in 2024, so taking San Francisco out gives us:

• 2020: $14,224,327

• 2022: $26,207,393

• 2024: $22,727,574

Moreover, 40 out of the 68 agencies saw an increase in independent expenditures from 2022 to 2024, which is under 60%. That’s not insignificant, but it’s far from definitive proof that SB 1439 caused a surge in outside spending.

Click here to view the raw data.

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Why the Limited Impact?

Overall, the data doesn’t show a major shift in campaign fundraising or a strong move toward outside spending. Here are some possible reasons:

1. Donors With Big Checks Already Went Outside
   Large donors with the capacity to write $10,000 or $20,000 checks might have been donating to independent expenditure groups all along. SB 1439’s $250 limit may have only forced them to reduce their candidate checks from, say, $1,000 to $250—hardly a seismic change if they were already investing far more through outside spending.

2. Large Organizations Dominated Spending Anyway
   Most big political spending often comes from labor unions, trade associations, and other well-funded groups. These entities have historically funneled their money into independent expenditures, so the new law didn’t fundamentally alter their strategies. Also, certain donors (like labor unions) may not be directly affected by SB 1439 because officials aren’t required to recuse themselves from union contract votes.

3. Few Donors Have Immediate Stake in a Vote
   Donors give money for many reasons—friendship with the candidate, alignment on broader policy positions, or plain civic support. The number of donors who specifically anticipate a major vote impacting them within the next year is likely small. Consequently, not many would be dissuaded by the possibility of forcing a recusal.

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Conclusion

Within the data we examined, SB 1439 doesn’t appear to have dramatically reshaped local campaign finance. Some of the numbers changed slightly, but the big-picture takeaway is that donors and candidates seem to be operating much as they did before. Outside spending has fluctuated, but these shifts look more related to individual high-profile races (like San Francisco’s mayoral contest) than to any sweeping legal restriction.

Of course, future election cycles might shed more light on SB 1439’s long-term effects (although the law has already seen some reforms that loosen some of its restrictions). But for now, at least in the 95 agencies we studied, any major transformation is hard to detect.