UC employees send millions to campaigns and PACs nationwide
October 30, 2026
This election cycle, UC system employees donated more than $1.7 million to campaigns in 47 different states and Washington, D.C.
The Daily Californian analyzed individual campaign contributions reported to the Federal Election Commission from January 2025 to September 2026 to see where UC employees are spending their political dollars.
Races in California received the most support from UC employees, bringing in $559,523 from 1,800 contributions. New York, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey were the top five out-of-state recipients of campaign donations, receiving amounts ranging from $63,000 to more than $127,000 per state.
Where UC employees’ campaign money goes
Donations from University of California employees to federal candidates, by the state of the race. Hover over a state for details.
Rep. Ro Khanna, who is running for reelection for California’s 17th Congressional District, has raised $52,335 from UC employee donors. Close behind is Rep. Dave Min, who received $50,631 for his reelection campaign for California’s 47th Congressional District.
After California, New York campaigns raised the most money from UC donors, pulling in $127,030 across 1,455 different contributions. A large share of those contributions — $43,756 — went to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s reelection campaign for New York’s 14th Congressional District.
Just behind New York was Michigan, where donors sent $116,226 across 383 different contributions. Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign received the highest amount with $19,403. Running for Michigan’s 10th Congressional District, Eric Chung received $16,775. Additionally, Kristen McDonald Rivet, who is running to represent Michigan’s 8th Congressional District, has received $15,450.
On top of funds donated to campaign committees, UC employees donated more than $2 million to political action committees. A majority of these contributions went to hybrid and super PACs. Certain PACs received donations of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Which PACs UC employees fund
Each circle is a PAC that received money from University of California employees. Bigger circles received more dollars; circles further from the center received more individual contributions. Hover over a circle for details.
Public First, a super PAC backed by Anthropic’s Dario Amodei that promotes AI regulation and transparency, received a single $500,000 donation from a campus postdoctoral researcher, Michael Cohen. According to FEC records, it also appears that an individual named Michael Cohen, employed by UC Berkeley, has also donated several thousand dollars in contributions to Democrat Scott Wiener’s campaign for California’s 11th Congressional District, as well as to Republican Tom Cotton’s Senate reelection campaign in Arkansas.
While some contributors donate thousands of dollars, a vast majority of donations from UC employees were less than $100. Below, every political donation listed in FEC records made by a UC employee can be searched by name of donor, including where that money went.
Search UC employees’ contributions
Type a name to see every contribution that donor made to federal candidates, PACs, party committees and joint fundraising committees.
Donors are counted as UC employees based on the employer they reported to the FEC. Employees with the same name are reported as a single person here. Committees generally only itemize donors who give more than $200, so many smaller contributions are not in the data. Contributions are from the 2025-26 cycle as reported through September 2026.
Source: The Daily Californian; Federal Election Commission individual contributions, 2025-26 cycleAbout this story
This project was developed by the Data Department at The Daily Californian.
Data from this project came from the Federal Election Commission's individual contributions files for the 2025-26 cycle. Contributions were attributed to UC employees by the donor's listed employer and grouped by the state of the candidate's race.
Questions, comments or corrections? Email projects@dailycal.org. Code, data and text are open-source on GitHub.
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