Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, at the Waukesha County Expo Center in Waukesha, Wis. on Thursday where he’s expected to pull in millions more, another Bay Area city quietly topped his list of donations from Northern California.
In the Bay Area’s deep blue bubble, which overwhelmingly voted for Biden in 2020, it can be easy to overlook Trump’s support here. Trump earned 1 in 4 California votes in 2016 when he won the presidency, and 1 in 3 in 2020 when he lost. In San Jose, Trump earned a quarter of the votes in 2020 — 116,00 votes to Biden’s 307,000 — while raising a third of the total money donated to either Biden or him.
“Trump has a lot of supporters in Silicon Valley. Many are just afraid to admit it,” Sacks wrote. “But with each act of courage, like this one, the dam begins to break.” “If I was Trump’s campaign, I would be reaching out to those folks and saying, ‘Hey, you were with me? Are you still with me? How about you push this donate button?’ ” said Michelson. “As with religion, converts are often more enthusiastic. And if you’ve recently become a Trump supporter, you voted for him in 2020, you’re probably still pretty enthusiastic about Trump.”
Although some estimate that Trump could raise more than $12 million during his swing through San Francisco, Beverly Hills and Newport Beach this week, California donations to Trump before his conviction were relatively small. In San Francisco, where Biden raised $2.9 million through April, Trump raised $146,000.