The San Jose Spotlight reports that CEO Jed York and the 49ers' boundless war chest scored a big victory by breaking up Mayor Lisa Gillmor's city council voting majority when they spent about $3 million in 2020 to successfully help three of their four preferred candidates get elected to the governing body--Anthony Becker, Suds Jain and Kevin Park.
Now, York and company have their eyes on the mayor's seat, along with District 2 and District 3 council seats, and the playbook appears the same: Spend big or go home. The team has spent nearly four million dollars supporting or opposing candidates in this year's contests as of Oct. 28, and has kicked in another roughly 700-thousand dollars to spend in the last week leading up to election day. This brings the total to four-and-a-half million dollars.
But they'll have to contend with other special interest groups, including developer The Related Companies -- the most significant backer of Gillmor, who helped architect the firm's mega deal to develop 240 acres of city land. So far, Related's spending of a quarter-million dollars is being dwarfed by the Niners.
While the football team and developers are throwing large sums into outside campaign committees to help their preferred candidates' win with television advertisements and mailers, the candidates themselves are attracting significantly smaller donations to their own campaign committees.
Becker and Gillmor did not respond to requests for comment.
