California Attorney General Rob Bonta has confirmed his office received complaints and is now reviewing whether gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer's campaign broke state law by paying social media influencers to promote his candidacy without disclosing the arrangement. The California Fair Political Practices Commission has separately launched its own probe into Steyer's spending on Gen Z content creators, some of whom allegedly posted scripted endorsements, hid the financial relationship, and later deleted the evidence.
The twin investigations land on a 68-year-old billionaire who built his political brand on clean government, corporate accountability, and getting big money out of politics. Now Steyer's campaign stands accused of doing exactly what his platform condemns: using undisclosed cash to manipulate voters through content designed to look organic.
A campaign memo obtained by the Sacramento Bee lays out the strategy in plain language. Creators were told to acknowledge voter skepticism about Steyer's "billionaire status, lack of experience and previous investments", then explain why they still backed him. The instructions went further: creators were told to avoid direct mentions of Steyer or the governor's race altogether, keeping the tone "casual" and "relatable." In other words, the content was engineered to not look like what it was, paid political advertising.
The compensation structure, as described in the campaign memo, was modest per unit but designed for volume. Steyer's team offered content creators $10 per video, with additional bonuses tied to view counts. Creators were instructed to post three to four videos per week.
The assigned topics tracked Steyer's platform: taxing the rich, abolishing ICE, climate change, regulating artificial intelligence, and reducing corporate influence in politics. A third-party firm called SideShift handled outreach to creators on the campaign's behalf.
At least one creator saw through the arrangement. Serabeth Mullaney, a San Francisco-based brand and community lead who goes by @synapticglories, declined SideShift's offer. She told reporters what she was seeing across the platform:
"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 ads."
That observation, near-identical scripts posted by different accounts, none marked as paid content, is precisely the pattern that triggered formal complaints.
In 2023, California adopted a law requiring online creators who are paid to support or oppose political candidates to disclose that relationship in their posts. The statute exists for an obvious reason: voters deserve to know whether the enthusiastic endorsement filling their feed is genuine conviction or a purchased performance.
The FPPC, the independent agency voters created in 1974 through the Political Reform Act, enforces campaign finance, lobbying, and ethics laws statewide. It now has the lead role in determining whether Steyer's influencer operation violated disclosure rules. State election regulators have opened a parallel investigation into whether creators failed to properly label sponsored political content.
The pattern of Democratic officials facing ethics probes over financial conduct is hardly new. But the influencer angle adds a modern wrinkle, campaigns weaponizing the trust audiences place in independent creators.
Bonta addressed the matter in an interview with KCRA 3 News reporter Ashley Zavala. His language was measured but confirmed the investigation is real:
"Unlike any complaint, we'll review it to determine what role we have and what we should be doing and if we should be taking action."
He signaled that the FPPC holds primary jurisdiction. Referring to the commission, Bonta said:
"This is what they do, in campaigns and for political expenditures, they make sure that all the rules are being followed, disclosures are made, reporting is done right and accurately. So I think that they have the lead role here."
Zavala posted Bonta's comments on X, noting that the attorney general described the matter as "squarely within purview" of the FPPC "on first blush." That phrasing leaves room for the AG's office to step in later if the commission's review uncovers something larger.
Bonta, California's Democratic attorney general, has drawn attention before for the gap between his political positioning and the realities he occasionally concedes, including acknowledging that the Trump administration's border crackdown helped stem fentanyl flow into his state.
Kevin Liao, a spokesperson for the Steyer campaign, pushed back on the complaints. He framed the payments as standard practice and insisted the campaign followed the law:
"Consistent with state law, payments for creator content are disclosed in campaign finance reports, and we notify creators we directly work with of their disclosure requirements. As a result, we are confident the complaint is baseless."
Liao added a broader defense of the model itself:
"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."
That argument has a surface logic. Campaigns pay consultants, ad firms, and canvassers. Why not pay creators? The problem is not the payment, it is the concealment. If creators were instructed to avoid mentioning Steyer or the governor's race, and if some of those creators never disclosed the financial relationship, the content was designed to deceive.
Liao's claim that the campaign "notified creators of their disclosure requirements" raises its own question: if creators were notified, why did some allegedly fail to disclose? And why were posts later deleted?
The campaign memo obtained by the Sacramento Bee is the most revealing document in the record so far. It coached creators to lean into voter skepticism about Steyer, his wealth, his thin governing résumé, his investment history, and then pivot to a pitch for his candidacy. The memo told creators to frame their content around policy themes rather than the candidate himself.
That instruction, keep Steyer's name out of it, is the detail that transforms this from a standard digital outreach program into something more troubling. A paid ad that names the candidate and carries a disclosure tag is political speech. A paid ad that hides the candidate, hides the payment, and mimics grassroots enthusiasm is something else entirely.
The scheme also reflects a broader pattern of Democratic campaigns treating transparency rules as obstacles rather than obligations. When officials collect public paychecks while operating outside the rules, voters lose trust in the system, and rightly so.
Several facts remain unclear. The total number of complaints filed with Bonta's office has not been disclosed. The identities of the influencers who allegedly failed to disclose, and how many posts were deleted, are not public. It is also unclear whether any gubernatorial candidates besides Steyer are under scrutiny, though reporting describes Steyer as the primary subject.
The FPPC investigation will determine whether the campaign's filings match reality, whether the payments disclosed in finance reports account for all creator compensation, and whether the campaign's claim of notifying creators holds up against what actually appeared online.
Internal Democratic tensions over leadership and accountability continue to surface across the party. Progressives are openly challenging their own establishment figures, and episodes like the Steyer probe only sharpen the sense that the party's commitment to transparency is selective.
California's 2023 disclosure law exists because voters recognized a simple truth: paid political speech disguised as organic opinion is a form of fraud against the public. The FPPC was created more than fifty years ago for the same reason, to ensure that money in politics is visible, traceable, and accountable.
Tom Steyer built a national profile railing against the corrupting influence of money in politics. His campaign now faces a formal investigation into whether it used money to corrupt the information voters rely on. The irony writes itself.
A man who wants to govern California on a platform of corporate accountability and clean politics should be able to run a campaign that follows a one-year-old disclosure law. If he can't manage that, voters have all the information they need.