Individuals and businesses who made donations at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) request were rewarded with state contracts.
The requests are known as “behested payments,” donations made to organizations at the request of a politician. In California, Newsom rewarded those who made donations at his request with lucrative state contracts. Reason reported this week that the behested payments “were a record-setting haul eclipsing all prior donations on record by nearly $100 million.”
“While most donations supported COVID-19 relief efforts, a closer look suggests Newsom’s fundraising was supercharged not just by the pandemic, but also by the broad emergency powers the Democratic governor has assumed because of it,” the outlet continued.
For example, Newsom raised $45 million last year from insurance companies Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente toward his housing initiative, Project Homekey. Newsom appointed Paul Markovich, Blue Shield’s CEO, to co-chair the governor’s COVID-19 testing task force. In addition, Blue Shield, with some help from Kaiser Permanente, were
