U.S. REPRESENTATIVE Ro Khanna has raised more money this election cycle than all but one House candidate from California, Federal Election Commission (FEC) campaign finance filings show.
Almost all of Khanna’s campaign funds come from individual donors. The 48-year-old representative, who founded the No PAC Caucus, has vowed not to accept campaign contributions from lobbyists or Political Action Committees.
Khanna represents California’s 17th Congressional District, covering parts of the South and East Bay that form the heart of Silicon Valley. He has raised more than $9 million in contributions this election cycle as of Oct. 16 — more than 130 times the amount raised by his challenger, Republican Anita Chen. His campaign funds come just shy of that of Will Rollins, the Democratic challenger running against Republican incumbent Ken Calvert in District 41.
“Ro Khanna sits in one of the nation’s most important districts when it comes to the future of the economy,” said Carla Marinucci, a former senior political writer for Politico and the San Francisco Chronicle, who reported extensively on Khanna during previous elections, citing the tech industry’s large presence in the district.
Playing the long game
Khanna has spent less than half of the donations he has received this election cycle ahead of the Tuesday general election. He currently has more than $10 million on hand, accumulated over the past few election cycles, according to OpenSecrets.
“He’s playing the long game for sure,” said Jerry Roberts, former San Francisco Chronicle political editor and managing editor. “He obviously has national or statewide ambitions.”
This election cycle, Khanna has far outraised his previous campaigns — pulling in roughly 50% more funds than in 2022 and more than doubling his fundraising totals since his failed first run in 2014 against then-incumbent Mike Honda.
Khanna has previously attributed his higher fundraising to his visibility on notable political issues. Last year, Khanna told the San Jose Spotlight that he sees himself as an up-and-coming Democratic fundraising leader in the Bay Area.
Khanna raised more than $3 million for each of his 2014 and 2016 campaigns, with tech executive Steve Spinner as his campaign chair. In violation of federal law, Spinner used software to target donors based on their donation history from the FEC database; Khanna’s campaign paid $16,000 in fines.
Bay Area donors form the backbone of Khanna’s fundraising, Bay City News confirmed in an analysis of his FEC filings. While around 5% of Khanna’s funds come from District 17, nearly half come from the nine Bay Area counties, according to Bay City News’ estimate based on processed FEC data up to June 30. Khanna is also the California House candidate who raised the most in-state donations this cycle.
“Rep. Khanna is very proud to represent CA-17 and be a progressive voice in Congress working to secure funding for our bridges and roads, schools, and community hubs,” Khanna spokesperson Marie Baldassarre wrote in a statement to Bay City News.
Most of Khanna’s donations appear to come from large-sum individual contributions. According to currently processed FEC data, more than half of his individual donors contributed more than $1,000, and nearly 60% of the total contributions he received are funded by individual sums between $3,300 and $6,600.
Donors who contributed large sums include Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, Francisco Partners co-founder and CEO Dipanjan Deb and Prime Healthcare CEO Sunny Bhatia. Campaigns are not required to disclose contribution information for donors who gave less than $200 total, but filing records for Ro for Congress show many individual donations under $200.
Marinucci said that donors are seeking access to Khanna’s policy-making power in the artificial intelligence and finance sectors.
“By amassing all those donations, Ro Khanna is able to identify people that he can help, but can (also) help him in his future political aspirations,” Marinucci said.
Khanna sits on the House Armed Services’ Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies and Information Systems, which has jurisdiction over Department of Defense policies related to artificial intelligence, making access to him particularly attractive to tech sector donors. The congressman is also a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, which oversees federal government agencies, and the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans.
“Ro has always been somebody with his eye on the future when it comes to both politics and American industry,” Marinucci said. “He was writing about American manufacturing and was talking about artificial intelligence years before many other members of Congress even knew what a Zoom meeting was.”
Over his last four congressional terms, Khanna has taken strong stances on issues that captured national attention. When the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March 2023, Khanna pressured the Federal Reserve Board to protect depositors. When the Supreme Court’s conservative majority invalidated President Biden’s student debt forgiveness program in June 2023 and ruled against affirmative action in college admissions soon after, Khanna pushed for a bill he co-drafted with Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va, that would establish term limits for Supreme Court justices.
“Ro has always been somebody with his eye on the future when it comes to both politics and American industry. He was writing about American manufacturing and was talking about artificial intelligence years before many other members of Congress even knew what a Zoom meeting was.” Carla Marinucci, political analyst
But political consultant Jim Ross attributes Khanna’s fundraising success, including among out-of-state donors, to his ability to pull in donations from people who align with his Southeast Asian identity.
“With the Democrats out of power in Congress, it’s very unlikely that people are really giving much to him in order to have access or ability to sway Congress,” Ross said.
A fundraising juggernaut
Khanna has outraised former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by more than a million dollars. Ross said while Khanna may be donating to other Democrats, his own fundraising is likely intended to support his own political ambitions, while Pelosi is likely fundraising into Democratic campaign accounts that support other candidates.
So far, Ro for Congress — the committee focused on reelecting Khanna — has donated less than $200,000 combined to other candidates and committees, including the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Pennsylvania House candidate Shamaine Daniels’ candidate committee, Daniels for Congress. By contrast, Pelosi’s committee, which was outraised by Khanna’s committee, has contributed more than $1.5 million to other committees.
Khanna co-chaired Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign and was one of the most vocal supporters of President Biden’s re-election bid before Biden dropped out of the race. In 2022, a former manager and a former advisor of Sanders’ campaign privately encouraged Khanna to run for president if Biden didn’t seek a second term. As for himself, the California representative has not ruled out the idea of running for president in the future.
“Who knows?” Khanna responded when he was asked if he intends to run for president in the future, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Marinucci said Khanna, who has a voter base in the technology and finance sectors and support from fellow Indian Americans, is definitely “eyeing a future run up the political ladder.”
“He understands what it takes,” Marinucci said. “He’s a young guy. He’s from a constituency in Silicon Valley that does represent the future.”
Linda Liu, Anne Li and Taylor Torres reported this story as part of a Big Local News journalism class at Stanford University.
Methodology
Data cited in this story came from the Federal Election Commission’s individual contributions filings (including processed data that records filings up to June 30 and raw data that records filings up to Oct. 16) and OpenSecrets. We used name, ZIP code and occupation to group contributions by contributor. We used DataSF’s list of Bay Area zip codes for the geographical analysis. In our analysis of processed data, we filtered out entries that were duplicates of donors who contributed to Khanna’s campaign through conduits such as ActBlue and JStreetPAC.
Campaigns are not required to disclose contribution information for donors who gave less than $200 total, but filing records for Ro for Congress show many individual donations under $200.