‘Casual, relatable, on-theme’: Steyer campaign courts influencers for $10 a video
Isaiah “Zay Dante” Washington normally posts about pop culture and sports to his 1.8 million TikTok followers as @zayydante. His most viral videos include skits about dueling Drake and Kendrick Lamar tracks and parodies amplifying more serious lyrical messages in popular party music.
In March, he briefly pivoted by interviewing governor candidate Tom Steyer, asking the billionaire climate change activist to square his populist platform with his wealth and how he intended to fight his fellow patricians knowing “how capitalism has scorned young people.”
Steyer’s campaign paid Washington $10,000 to post to Instagram, YouTube and TikTok under his former handle @relatableisaiah, which now links to @zayydante, per campaign expenditures. According to a strategy memo obtained by The Sacramento Bee, Steyer’s campaign has approached other content creators to boost him online for $10 per video, with more promised if they reach a certain threshold of views.
With the decline of legacy media, campaigns are increasingly turning to social media personalities like Washington to get their message out and humanize them to voters. These online trend makers have a veneer of authenticity, but this new form of political outreach comes with a catch: it’s almost completely unregulated, meaning viewers have no idea if creators are being paid.
There are few state or federal laws specifically about political influencers. The California Legislature passed a law in 2023 requiring a person to disclose if they’ve been paid by a committee to support or oppose a candidate or ballot initiative online or on an app, which Washington did not.
Washington said in his video, which had 250,000 views as of Tuesday, that it was “not an endorsement” of Steyer. He did not respond to a request for comment.
Steyer’s campaign did not say how many creators it has approached or how many agreed to produce videos.
“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,” campaign spokesperson Kevin 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.”
‘If it looks like a robot made it... don’t use it’
Steyer is one of the leading candidates in the governor’s race ahead of the June 2 primary. Polls put him in contention with rival Democrats Xavier Becerra and Katie Porter and Republican contender Steve Hilton.
It’s unclear if other governor candidates have paid for content creators. None of the seven other major Democrats or the two Republican contenders reported directly paying creators or management companies, according to a search of campaign filings.
Platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook ban or put restrictions on political advertising. The Fair Political Practices Commission has “informally advised” influencers to tag a political candidate’s committee in their post so that voters can determine who paid for it.
“Many voters are critical of Tom Steyer because of his billionaire status, lack of experience and previous investments. Rather than pretending that these things don’t exist, acknowledge and relate to voters’ concerns and explain why you still believe Steyer is the strongest candidate despite them,” the Steyer memo read. It asks creators to post three to four videos weekly without mentioning him or the governor’s race.
“This content should still be related to policies he supports, for instance, videos about abolishing ICE, taxing the rich, AI regulation, climate change, free universal education, ending corporate influence in politics, etc. This will help your content reach more audiences and build audience trust,” the memo said.
The memo instructs creators who sign on to make new social media accounts under usernames that reflect their names or a nickname, avoiding brands, random numbers or anything that looks like spam. They then upload them for approval to the app SideShift, which recruits creators to make content for companies like the Kalshi prediction market, Paramount and the Wasserman Group.
“If it looks like a robot made it… don’t use it,” the memo read. “Keep your bio casual, relatable, and on-theme for the campaign, but do NOT mention Tom Steyer directly —> this helps to avoid the account looking like a bot starting out.”
The memo links back to Steyer’s platform on his website, and lists talking points to emphasize, like his plans to tax wealthy people and jail rogue ICE agents and liabilities to downplay, like his lack of experience in public office, his former hedge fund’s links to private prisons, and his “anemic” support among women and people under 45.
The memo lists areas to target Becerra, like his taking donations from Chevron, his former aide’s arrest in a federal corruption probe, and his vote for the 1994 crime bill while in Congress.
“Becerra is surging with Latinos, which is to be expected but we’d like to make a dent here,” the memo read. “California African Americans: This is a winnable target for Tom, he can make a lot of inroads here so want to double down there.”
The memo said Steyer’s support needed to be stronger in Los Angeles and his San Francisco homebase to “drive primary votes in California. The more liberal the target (liberal, not leftist), the better. Think Pod Save America listeners.”
The guide gives recent examples of pro-Steyer videos from influencers like @sandyvotes, @talkingwithsavannah, and @jessica.moore371 as inspiration for other creators to emulate.
Serabeth Mullaney, a brand and community lead in San Francisco who posts as @synapticglories, said SideShift approached her last week about creating content for the Steyer campaign. She was asked to post about Steyer at least one to three times a day on both Instagram and TikTok for $10 per unique video, with promises of payment by the end of May, according to a screenshot of a message from a SideShift manager.
“If interested, simply respond with ‘California’ and we will send you a contract to join the campaign and submit your social handles,” the text read. “You can begin posting as soon as your account is warmed up!”
Mullaney told The Bee she declined the offer, calling it a “predatory tactic” that targets people who are new to user-generated content and are “desperate” for money but who may not agree with Steyer’s politics.
“As a professional in social media, I am seeing a lot of videos using almost word for word scripts about candidates that are not disclosing they are paid for ads,” she wrote. “We saw it happen in the 2024 presidential campaign. Both sides paid creators to endorse but not disclose they were paid, yet the whole thing got swept under the rug.”
Influencers: ‘Too online for the FEC, too political for the FTC’
Isabel Linzer, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said influencers’ success is due to their appearing “relatable and approachable,” especially if their usual focus is on non-political content like lifestyle or fashion.
“They’re seen as the most persuasive because they don’t post about politics,” she said.
President Donald Trump’s victory over Kamala Harris in 2024 was partly attributed to his support among influencers popular with young men, like podcasters the Nelk Boys and Theo Von and Ultimate Fighting Championship executive Dana White.
Political influencers operate with little oversight because they’re “too online for the Federal Election Commission,” which regulates traditional media like TV, radio and print, and “too political for the FTC,” which focuses more on commercial transactions and is wary of regulating political speech, Linzer said.
A host of X accounts, some of which appeared semi-dormant before this year, started posting in favor of Becerra around April 11, the week that he began surging in polls after stagnating at single digits for months.
The Becerra campaign employs a staffer, Jay Gonzalez, to create content for the campaign. But it does not pay any outside influencers, according to a campaign digital strategist who was not authorized to speak publicly.
The strategist said all the online chatter around Becerra was “organic growth,” meaning the campaign had not paid anyone to post their support.
Influencers have played a role in surfacing candidates’ liabilities. In April, education advocate Arielle Fodor and Democratic political activist Cheyenne Hunt used their platforms to amplify rumors that former Rep. Eric Swalwell had a history of preying upon young female interns and staffers in his office.
For weeks, Fodor and Hunt teased forthcoming reports that they promised would expose Swalwell, who was then consolidating establishment support and emerging as the leading Democrat in the race.
On April 10, four women came forward in the San Francisco Chronicle and CNN, accusing him of sexual misconduct. A fifth woman later accused him of drugging and raping her.
Swalwell denied all allegations, but days later dropped out of the race and resigned from office as his campaign collapsed and supporters yanked their endorsements.
