Palantir for Governor?

In December, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale called for public hangings in the United States. The Texas-based billionaire, a longtime associate of Peter Thiel, is a major Trump supporter who believes the 2020 election was stolen and the “deep state” is responsible for the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol.

So, why is Lonsdale—who says public executions will bring back “masculine leadership”—funding a Democratic candidate in the California governor's race? New public filings reveal that Lonsdale has given the maximum donation of $78,400 to a little-known California politician named Matt Mahan. (That’s more than he donated to Steve Hilton, a right-wing former Fox host also running for governor.)

Mahan, currently serving his first term as mayor of San José, made a late entry into the crowded governor’s race in January. He’s polling in the single digits and, historically, it’s pretty hard for anyone to go directly from a mayor’s office to the governor's office. The last mayor to pull it off was James “Sunny Jim” Rolph, who went from San Francisco City Hall to the governor's office in 1931—and later became infamous for endorsing the public lynching of two men by a mob in San José. Nearly a century later, a San José mayor wants to make the same leap, bankrolled by a billionaire who wants to bring back public hangings. History does weirdly rhyme sometimes...but, I digress.

Mahan’s chances appear slim, but he has a secret weapon: he worked in tech and has the backing of many of the same tech oligarchs, like Lonsdale and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who now stand behind Donald Trump. Also backing Mahan: Y Combinator president Garry Tan, a Palantir alumnus (he claims to have created the company’s logo) and a member of the Network State cult, which hopes to replace democratic nations with tech-run dystopias. In January 2024, Tan got drunk and tweeted “die slow motherfuckers” at seven members of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in a tirade that triggered actual death threats against them.

As I wrote in the New Republic at the time, Tan is spearheading a tech-funded campaign to seize control of San Francisco’s government, using what he calls a “parallel political machine” that he bragged about at the 2023 Network State Conference. Like Mahan, Tan is a “Democrat” with nothing much to say about how Trump and his tech billionaire backers—Tan’s friends—are ripping apart American democracy.

Normally, a small-fry mayor with such a thin résumé wouldn’t get much attention in a gubernatorial race. But rumor has it the billionaire oligarchs are willing to put up massive amounts of money to get Mahan elected. The money is already flowing. A Silicon Valley-backed committee just dropped $1.4 million on a Super Bowl ad introducing Mahan to voters, funded by Y Combinator's Michael Seibel and Riot Games co-founder Marc Merrill—and Mahan’s campaign says it raised $7 million in its first week alone. Other Mahan funders include Brian Singerman of Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and David Marcus, a crypto executive “who announced in 2024 that he was ‘crossing the Rubicon’ to back Trump,” according to Politico.

Also chipping in: an executive from Anduril, the Peter Thiel-backed defense tech company that, like Palantir, profits from military and surveillance contracts.

Why are tech oligarchs flooding Mahan with cash? The answer is simple. Mahan, though nominally a member of the Democratic Party, is a puppet of right-wing Silicon Valley interests. He brands himself a “back to basics” candidate, but the basics are familiar: harsh policies to punish the addicted, homeless, and poor, and very little to say about Trump’s fascist regime.

In fact, Mahan has gone out of his way to criticize Governor Gavin Newsom for trolling Trump on social media, suggesting that the governor should only focus on California matters. Most importantly, Mahan opposes a proposed wealth tax for billionaires that a California labor union is working to put on the ballot this year.

In short, Mahan is a perfect “Democrat” for billionaire oligarchs—a candidate cooked up in a venture capital lab. Billionaires love him because he’ll serve them while fighting against any pesky liberal or progressive policies, and the credulous political press will label him a “centrist.” This is a pattern I’ve been exposing: tech billionaires trying to seize political power by funding candidates who answer to them, not voters. In 2026, the Nerd Reich is literally trying to buy the California governor’s office.

Since no California Republican has been elected statewide since Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006, right-wingers have to get creative here. This means funding Democratic candidates who embrace Republican policies and feast on oligarch money.

The strategy carries risks. Public opinion of Silicon Valley billionaires and tech companies—especially Palantir, which is aiding ICE terror raids—is at all-time lows. By gorging on oligarch money, Mahan makes it clear that he’s their agent. This will likely spark a strong reaction from the Democratic voter base and powerful labor unions, which will spring to action to keep the tech billionaires behind Trump from also capturing Sacramento.

“His challenge: He will be tagged as the tech bro candidate at a time when tech bros are increasingly associated as being Trump’s buddies,” wrote Joe Garofoli of the San Francisco Chronicle.

And Mahan will have to answer a simple question on the campaign trail: Why is your campaign being bankrolled by a Trump-supporting Palantir billionaire who wants to bring back public hangings?