WASHINGTON — In recent weeks, several social media influencers have popped up in online feeds touting the California gubernatorial campaign of billionaire Democrat Tom Steyer.
Some complain about the price of gasoline. Others mention environmental concerns. One cites her newfound sobriety as evidence that people can change — a nod to Steyer’s self-proclaimed metamorphosis from hedge fund titan to scourge of big corporations.
“I did not expect the most progressive governor candidate to be a billionaire, but look at the policies you guys,” said one content creator on TikTok with the user name Jaz R. “Hear me out. I know Tom Steyer is a billionaire, but he also is for the people.”
Articles include direct-to-the-camera appeals, with personal details interwoven into messages of support for Steyer. An influencer goes for a stroll as onscreen text touts Steyer’s policies. Some seek to convey authenticity, if occasionally ham-fistedly; one influencer mispronounces Steyer’s last name.
What they do not include is a disclosure that their creators were paid by the Steyer campaign to produce the videos, according to a complaint filed this week with California’s Fair Political Practices Commission and a Times review of the posts.
The complaint alleges that the Steyer campaign failed to notify the influencers it hired of their obligation to inform their audience when their posts have been sponsored by the campaign.
California passed a law in 2023 requiring that influencers disclose if they have been paid to create promotional content for or against a candidate or ballot measure, one of the few jurisdictions in the country with such a requirement. There is no such requirement at the federal level.
“Every time there’s a new technology, you have to create legislation that requires them to disclose,” said state Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Orange), who sponsored the bill.
Violating the law doesn’t carry criminal, civil or administrative penalties, but the FPPC can take influencers who break the law to court and ask a judge to force them to comply.
The complaint was filed by two California women — political influencers themselves — who said they noticed a number of new accounts that suddenly started posting similar-sounding videos promoting Steyer earlier this month.
“They had the exact same language, they had the same talking points,” said Beatrice Gomberg, who worked with Kaitlyn Hennessy in their digital sleuthing efforts.
The FPPC did not comment on the complaint.
Steyer’s campaign appears to have relied on paid influencers more than any candidate for governor, according to the most recent campaign finance filings.
That spending represents only a small fraction of the massive campaign war chest Steyer has seeded with nearly $180 million of his own money. But the complaint highlights the growing degree to which political candidates have come to seek out the authenticity that social media influencers seem to offer.
Steyer campaign spokesperson Kevin Liao said the campaign had properly followed the rules in hiring influencers and that the campaign is “confident” that Gomberg and Hennessy’s complaint is “baseless.”
“Creators make their living generating content. The campaign believes in compensating people for their time and work product and has paid creators to generate content,” Liao said in a statement. “Payments for creator content are disclosed in campaign finance reports, and we notify creators we directly work with of their disclosure requirements.”
While many of the new Steyer influencers have few followers, Steyer’s campaign disclosed in its most recent campaign finance report that it had paid thousands of dollars to numerous social media influencers with massive audiences, the Sacramento Bee reported.
Several of the videos produced by these popular social media personalities also failed to disclose that they had been paid by the campaign, according to the complaint and The Times’ review of the content.
But even accounts with few followers can still have a big impact if they are producing a steady stream of content supporting Steyer, said veteran California political strategist Mike Madrid.
“What they’re trying to do is trip the algorithm,” he said. “It looks like it has a bigger audience than it really does. It’s taking the concept of astroturfing into the digital age.”
Gomberg and Hennessy said they became friends after meeting at an April campaign event for Xavier Becerra, Steyer’s chief Democratic rival in the race, who holds a narrow advantage over Steyer in several recent political polls.
The pair have been prolific social media supporters of Becerra’s campaign ever since, though they insist they are not being paid for their efforts.
They said they discovered that many of the new pro-Steyer accounts seemed to be run by influencers — mostly women — who had previously created different social media accounts to hawk other products.
One of the pro-Steyer influencers had an online portfolio listing numerous clients, including the Steyer campaign and a gummy designed to boost arousal, according to the complaint and the Times review of the publicly accessible website.
The pair said they stumbled on an advertisement placed by a vendor for the campaign on a platform used by creators to find work. The advertisement indicated that creators would be paid $10 for each post, with bonuses for posts that amassed large viewership.
The vendor who posted the ad did not respond to a request for comment.
The advertisement has since been updated to say that it pays $1,000 per month and that creators will have to disclose that it is paid content.
As Gomberg and Hennessy dug deeper, they determined that some of the influencers promoting a candidate for governor weren’t even based in California.
A TikTok account using the handle jess.votes, for example, appears to be connected to a woman registered to vote in Florida. Other accounts were connected to women who indicated elsewhere that they were based in Pennsylvania, Missouri and Michigan.
Several influencers who created seemingly paid content promoting Steyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Times.
The brouhaha over paid social media content is just the latest instance of the growing political impact of online creators.
Eric Swalwell’s campaign for governor — and congressional career — came to an end after multiple women accused him of sexual assault. A pair of influencers had publicly raised concerns about Swalwell’s behavior and helped connect victims with journalists who produced highly detailed reports of the allegations.
The California law requires influencers to disclose in a political post’s audio or text that it was sponsored and who paid for it.
The onus is on the creators to make the disclosure, but campaigns are required to tell them that they must do so. Despite passage of the law, the issue has so far remained largely under the radar.
“I have dozens of candidates and campaigns and I have not heard this issue come up one time,” said a campaign finance lawyer who requested anonymity because they represent numerous candidates with active campaigns.
Gomberg and Hennessy said that they were driven to call attention to potential violations of the disclosure requirements because of their concern about the corrosive influence such paid content could have if left unchecked.
“You have people who have trust in these creators,” Hennessy said. “You have a responsibility to your audience.”
