Four takeaways from The Bee’s investigation into Sutter County GOP’s cash haul
This year, Californians in every Assembly district and the even-numbered Senate districts — including in Sacramento, Placer and El Dorado counties — will vote on who they want to represent them in the Legislature.
However, remote county political parties, hundreds of miles from where races are taking place, might be the ones bankrolling the ads and phone calls that get candidates in front of constituents.
Because of their flexible contribution limits, these central committees have been utilized by corporations, unions and political leaders to send money to competitive races. Critics say the practice, which is done by both Democrats and Republicans, makes a mockery of campaign contribution limits and obscures a candidate’s real donors.
That’s one finding from The Sacramento Bee’s investigation “A $743,000 mystery: How a rural GOP group got flush with California campaign cash.”
Here are four takeaways from the story:
1. The Sutter County Republican Central Committee saw a monumental fundraising increase in 2025.
Between 2006 and 2020, the Sutter County Republican Central Committee raised an average of $1,070 per year. Between 2021 and 2024, when Sutter County Republican Assemblymember James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, became Republican leader, it raised an average of $92,000 per year. In 2025, that number shot up to $743,177.
The money came from a range of major Republican donors, including the oil company Valero, Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., and unions representing firefighters and prison guards in the state.
2. County and state parties can raise and contribute much more money than a typical campaign account can.
In 2000, voters approved Proposition 34, which limited how much a person or group could donate to a campaign to under $3,000 — since raised to $5,900 — but allowed state political parties and their county satellites to raise and give virtually unlimited amounts.
In the aftermath of Prop. 34’s passage, special interests could max out their donations to a candidate, and then give tens of thousands more to the party or a central committee to give to the candidate.
What followed has been an open secret in the Capitol community, where special interest groups can give large sums to both state and county parties, which then give directly to candidates, effectively bypassing campaign finance limits on individual contributions.
3. Sutter’s particular increase appears to be tied to a rift between the California Republican Party and Republican legislative leadership.
The Sutter County Central Committee’s money began rolling in after Republican legislative leaders emailed a letter to lobbyists in Sacramento in July 2025, announcing the group would be breaking away from fundraising with the state party. The arrangement had been known as the “one-ask” policy.
Gallagher, state Sen. Brian Jones, R-Santee, and Assemblymember Heath Flora, R-Modesto, told recipients they’d be asking them instead to contribute directly to several new initiatives “that will help ensure our Senate and Assembly candidates have the resources needed to compete and win.”
Several Republican insiders, including political strategist Matt Rexroad, say that break seems to be related to Sutter’s sudden influx of funds.
“There’s no doubt that the Sutter County Central Committee’s finances have increased dramatically as a result of the breakdown of the one-ask process,” Rexroad said. “That’s just not debatable.”
Republicans have also raised money through the San Bernardino Republican Central Committee and a new political action committee called the Legislative Action PAC.
4. We won’t know until the end of April how the central committee spends the money.
Sutter County won’t next need to disclose to the Secretary of State how it has spent the nearly $700,000 it has in the bank until late April. Meanwhile, races for seats in 2026 are beginning to heat up.
Sutter Republican Central Committee Chairwoman Ashley Carr has said their focus will be on legislative races throughout the state — including supporting Dom Belza in his fight to represent Assembly District 3 north of Sacramento, and Greg Wallis in his fight for Assembly District 47 in the Coachella Valley.
