When the San Francisco 49ers first sought to move south from Candlestick Park to Santa Clara, the team quickly opened up its pocketbook, shelling out several million dollars to persuade voters to let them erect a $1.3 billion stadium in their backyard.
And the money hasn’t stopped flowing since, as an in-depth look into the NFL team’s campaign finance records details how it has spent millions for more than a decade to influence the local political landscape.
Between 2009 and 2023, the 49ers and the team’s owners spent $15.5 million in political contributions nationwide, with 85.2% — or $13.1 million — of that flowing directly into Santa Clara elections, a Bay Area News Group analysis found, essentially $224 per registered voter in the city.
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In sharp contrast, before the 49ers’ massive stadium campaign, the team’s owners — Denise DeBartolo York and her husband, John York — gave sparingly to political causes over the years. Back then, the couple chipped in from several hundred to a few thousand dollars to candidates from San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, according to campaign finance records.
Then in 2009, and accelerating in 2010, money started to flow as the 49ers spearheaded a successful $4.3 million campaign called Santa Clarans for Economic Progress to pass Measure J and build Levi’s Stadium.
Longtime Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone, an avid 49ers fan, had a front-row seat to the team’s early political forays in Santa Clara. He recalls John York making a visit to his office, seeking help with finding a site for a stadium — Stone had been part of several failed attempts to bring a Major League Baseball team to the South Bay. Stone was involved with the campaign supporting Measure J, and when the 49ers broke ground in 2012, CEO Jed York — Denise DeBartolo York and John York’s son — personally thanked him in his speech.
But Stone — a staple in Santa Clara County politics now for nearly half a century — has seen the team’s political strategy dramatically morph since that first campaign. Despite his close involvement in the team’s first political fight in the city, he said the 49ers’ recent focus on city council and mayoral races is “questionable.”
“During my engagement with the 49ers, the money they spent was for normal business purposes,” Stone said in an interview. “They had a ballot measure that they wanted to get passed. Their message was to the voters, not to the elected officials. And that’s a big difference.”
In the nine years following the passage of the 2010 ballot measure, the 49ers continued to contribute to local campaigns — but on a much larger scale, ranging from tens of thousands to several hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Most of the money went to candidates running for state assembly or senate seats, though the team did donate to local PACs and candidates running for San Jose City Council or other Santa Clara County offices.
But in 2020, the 49ers’ spare millions came back into play in Santa Clara. The team once again cranked up their political spending, shelling out $3.6 million on city elections that year, supporting four Santa Clara City Council candidates, and a local ballot measure, and opposing four other City Council candidates. The team also donated several hundred thousand dollars to campaigns outside of Santa Clara that year.
In 2022, the 49ers spent even more in Santa Clara, dropping $4.6 million on a hotly contested mayoral race and several council seats. It was around that time that a Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury slammed several council members for getting too cozy with the 49ers. The team spent an additional $1.1 million outside of the city that year, with most of it going into PACs supporting Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez’s failed San Jose mayoral bid.
A 49ers spokesperson declined to answer specific questions about who is behind the team’s political strategy and why they have spent so much on Santa Clara elections. Instead, the spokesperson said in a statement that the team is “proud to support a range of candidates at all levels of elected office, including the most diverse group of candidates that have ever sat on the Santa Clara City Council. Under their leadership, the Stadium Authority has seen consecutive years of record profits.”
The 49ers aren’t the only professional football team looking to flex their political influence. Michael Butterworth, the director of the Center for Sports Communications and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, said the NFL provides a “great deal of visibility and influence in each local community,” and team owners often view that as an “opportunity to curry favor with particular officials.”
“You’re talking about two points of power and influence, and there is no more influential sports organization in the United States than the NFL. Obviously, the influence that comes from elected office is significant, so there’s a mutually beneficial relationship to be found there,” he said.
On a federal level, Butterworth said team owners tend to donate heavily to Republicans over Democrats. The York family has contributed much less on a federal level in recent years compared to its counterparts like Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank and Carolina Panthers owner David Tepper who have both contributed nearly $3 million during the current election cycle. As an organization, the NFL is also involved politically and has its own PAC, the Gridiron PAC, that has spent nearly $640,000 on federal races this year from Jan. 1 to May 31.
For Butterworth, alarm bells go off when team owners have so much political leverage.
“That’s the concern with democracy broadly … we are beholden to corporate interests and money interests and power sources that don’t necessarily have the general public’s welfare in mind,” he said.
While in Santa Clara, the 49ers’ value as a franchise has nearly quadrupled — from $1.6 billion in 2014 to $6 billion in 2023 — making them the ninth most valuable franchise in the NFL, according to Forbes.
Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor, one of the 49ers’ fiercest critics, originally served as the spokesperson for the team’s stadium campaign. At the time, she said they seemed “very sincere,” and she thought they “cared about our community and wanted to be good community partners with the city.” The mayor, though, never imagined the team would get so involved in local elections.
“I think as a mayor you want your councilmembers to put the city first and the residents first, naturally,” Gillmor said. “To have one special interest in your community just to take over and dictate what the future is going to be in your city is alarming. I think now our residents are starting to really see what is happening, and what that means in terms of allegiance to the community and the lack of it from the ’49er five’ members of our council.” The 49er five is a term used by some critics of the five council members who they claim favor the team’s interests.
But for Councilmembers Karen Hardy and Suds Jain — who the 49ers have spent heavily on — the team’s involvement in politics doesn’t come as a surprise. During the stadium campaign, Hardy helped run the opposition group, Santa Clara Plays Fair.
“I said, ‘Well, we used to be the Mission City, now I’m worried we’re going to be the Stadium City,’” Hardy recalled. “That is somewhat the case. The 49ers, like any other entity, are going to do whatever is in their best interest.”
While the team didn’t spend money on Hardy’s original run for office in 2018, they did when she ran for re-election in 2022. She said she’s not “certain it helped me, or maybe it hurt me.”
“I’m conflicted because it was their choice, but it didn’t really make sense to me,” Hardy said.
Jain, who was also opposed to the stadium back in 2010, said the 49ers’ spending big in Santa Clara elections is indicative of problems with a broken campaign finance system in the United States.
“The 49ers aren’t in my opinion doing anything different than the oil companies do, but the Supreme Court has given them the right to do that,” he said.
Before the 49ers moved into town, Jain said the Santa Clara Police Officers’ Association “were the only game in town.” During the March primary, he said the POA outspent his campaign to switch from an elected to an appointed police chief 10 to 1.
“I am all in favor of public financing in elections,” Jain said. “Unless the POA stops, why should I ask the 49ers to stop?”