After losing the 2024 Mayor’s race in Oakland, the Astroturf Network has set its sights on electing conservatives to that city’s school board where it perceives a greater chance for success.

Empower Oakland, seeded by crypto billionaire Chris Larsen and Coinbase executive Jesse Pollak, as well as a coterie of other tech executives, recently doled out $45,423 to five school board candidates in the city’s November 2026 election. It’s a relatively small amount, when compared to their enormous wealth and the sizable donations they’ve made in other races. That said, it is large when compared to previous expenditures in Oakland School Board races.

Oakland’s Astroturf Network is spending big money on campaign literature. In early October, Empower Oakland filed disclosures with the city revealing that it paid just under $18,000 for mailers supporting Waymo executive and member of their leadership team Arielle Fleischer. Other disclosures indicate a similar strategy in districts 4 and six. 

These are relatively small sums. For a modest investment, the Oakland Astroturf Network is creating a farm team for future races like those for City Council and Mayor.

Empower Oakland

Empower Oakland filed as a recipient committee in Alameda County in October 2024. It’s no coincidence that Oakland voters were facing a mayoral recall as well as an election in three city council races. Some of the committee’s earliest available filings highlight the flurry of big contributions it initially received. A $50,000 contribution from Coinbase executive Jesse Pollak and $25,000 contribution from Maven Learning’s Gagan Biyani. Additionally, Intuit’s Chief Technology Officer Ryan Garciano chipped in $50,000 while former Y Combinator partner Ilya Sukhar put up $25,000.

In those first months, Empower Oakland received eight different contributions from Govern for California (GFC), the dark money group established  by Stanford professor David Crane and his wife Carla. In the three months between August to October of that year, Empower Oakland received $10,500 from different GFC chapters. Critically, GFC was later investigated for using a strategy of creating regional groups, each making separate donations, allowing them to evade spending limits.

While the 2024 general election was hardly the success Empower Oakland’s supporters had hoped for, it was more successful in the District 2 special election. Oakland City Councilwoman Charlene Wang was the first candidate Empower Oakland bankrolled into public office. It did so with lavish contributions: An eye-popping $100,000 from Ripple’s billionaire Chairman Chris Larsen as well as a $25,000 contribution from Revitalize East Bay Committee, a group funded almost entirely by Piedmont hedge fund billionaire Phillip Dreyfuss. Regardless, many of the candidates that they supported – including Warren Logan for District 2 City Council, John Bauters for the Alameda Board of Supervisors, and their co-founder Loren Taylor for Mayor, decisively lost their elections.  

District 2

District 2, currently represented by Wang, stretches from the Brooklyn Basin area in the south to the Piedmont border in the north. Its current School Board Director Jennifer Brouhard is running for re-election facing Empower Oakland candidate, Arielle Fleischer. Fleischer has been a member of Empower Oakland’s leadership team and holds the title of policy development and research manager for self-driving car service Waymo, meaning that she likely worked on the recent Waymo expansion into Oakland. 

Fleischer is the beneficiary of Empower Oakland’s largest political expenditure this election cycle, with the Astroturf group spending $17,942 in support of the candidate. Of the nearly $60,000 in Empower’s warchest, $25,000 come from a PAC called Together for Oakland’s Families, a committee set up to support Warren Logan’s 2024 City Council run, and primarily funded by Revitalize East Bay and Families for a Vibrant Oakland. For its part, Revitalize is largely funded by Philip Dreyfuss ($160,000) and Jesse Pollak ($100,000), while Families for a Vibrant Oakland is a PAC run by the Abundance Network, and funded by the Northern California Carpenters Union ($150,000), Jesse Pollak ($145,000) and Revitalize East Bay itself ($150,000). It should be noted that after losing most of their races in 2024/2025, Revitalize East Bay merged with the Oakland chapter of the Abundance Network. If this sounds like a confusing series of Russian dolls, that’s because it is. The complicated interconnection of this Oakland Astroturf money web is detailed in our Oakland Astroturf map that we created last year. 

Beyond the $1,800 campaign contribution from the Empower Oakland, Fleischer received two $900 contributions, the maximum allowed under city law, directly from Gagan Biyani and his wife in mid-May. The aforementioned Govern for California contributed the $900 maximum through its San Rafael chapter. Empower Oakland founder Loren Taylor personally contributed $250 in mid-May, as did a manager for Another Planet Entertainment. Last summer, she received a maximum contribution from the political action committee, Oakland Parents for Quality Education, a group backed primarily by San Francisco billionaire Michelle Boyers, former wife of venture capitalist Brad Gerstner. Boyers herself is a well-connected philanthropy executive, having served as a board member of Daniel Lurie’s Tipping Point foundation. Other backers include Kimi Kean and Hae-Sin Thomas, who have a long history of supporting charter schools.

District 4

District 4, which stretches from Allendale in the south to Claremont in the north, is represented by Councilmember Janani Ramachandran, herself endorsed by Empower Oakland for this November’s election. While both current D4 School Board Director Mike Hutchinson and challenger Kathryn Camp have both been endorsed by Empower Oakland, only Camp has received independent PAC support from Empower, totaling $4,359.

In April, former San Francisco supervisorial candidate Marjan Philhour, an Astroturf Network-backed candidate who lost to progressive Supervisor — and Congressional candidate — Connie Chan in the November 2024 election, contributed $900 in multiple transactions to Camp’s campaign. Matthew Baiza, campaign director Connect Bay Area is a PAC with connections to crypto billionaire Larsen and Salesforce, gave $100. She has received a total of $34,070 while Hutchison has a fraction of that amount with $5,563 total in contributions for the year. 

District 6

District 6, geographically the smallest of the districts, encompasses large swathes of Deep East Oakland’s flatlands from High Street in the north to 98th Avenue in the south, as well as wealthier neighborhoods in the hills north of Interstate 580. It is represented by Empower Oakland-endorsed Councilmember Kevin Jenkins. 

District 6 School Board candidates Alexandra Williams and LeAna Powell have both received Empower Oakland contributions, with Williams garnering $1,300 to Powell’s $1,800. Both have additionally received an equal amount of Empower Oakland PAC support with $7,561 to-date. Powell saw her campaign contributions triple in recent months when Gagan Biyani and his wife each put up $900 in early July. 

Conversely, Williams’ campaign received the bulk of its contributions between January and June of this year, with the money tapering off in the subsequent disclosure. Empower Oakland donor Jinal Jhaveri was also a significant contributor to Williams, giving $500.

The Upshot

After losing the November 2024 Oakland mayor’s race, the Astroturf Network has adjusted its strategy, focusing on a so-called down ballot race, the Oakland School Board. The change will give it a greater chance for success. It also strategically allows the Network to position candidates backed by pro-charter school organizations into positions of power to potentially close public schools and redirect resources to charter schools, a long-used strategy among pro-charter school groups across the state.