Crypto Mogul's Massive Spending Shakes Up Oakland Politics

As Election Day nears, a familiar roster of groups is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to influence the decisions Oakland voters make about who to elect to City Council or other important offices. But alongside the labor unions and real estate agents, a new power player has emerged - a cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Jesse Pollak.

Disrupting the Status Quo in Oakland

Abundant Oakland's Ambitious Agenda

Jesse Pollak, an executive at Coinbase, launched a group in July called Abundant Oakland, announcing on X that its goal is to "structurally fix the city's biggest challenges." A branch of the larger Abundance Network, Pollak's new Oakland group also set up an independent expenditure committee called Families for a Vibrant Oakland. Independent expenditure committees can raise and spend unlimited sums of money to influence voters so long as they don't coordinate with candidates.So far, Families for a Vibrant Oakland has spent heavily in two local races. The committee is supporting Warren Logan in the City Council District 3 race and Brenda Harbin-Forte for city attorney. Pollak has contributed 5,000 to Families for a Vibrant Oakland, and he's given over 0,000 to other committees and several candidates running for city office.Pollak describes himself as a fifth-generation East Bay resident who spent his early childhood in Berkeley but grew up in Washington D.C. and moved back to Oakland as an adult. He lived there for about a decade and helped start the popular restaurant Daytrip. Throughout his years in the city, he told The Oaklandside, it became increasingly clear that "our current approach as a city isn't working."Pollak and his wife recently moved out of West Oakland because "city outcomes have gotten worse from a violence perspective." They decamped to Berkeley, but Pollak emphasized that his wife's family still lives in Oakland and they have an abiding love for the city.

Bringing an 'Urbanist' Agenda to Oakland

Pollak's goal for Abundant Oakland is not about cryptocurrency, he said. Instead, the group wants to increase affordable housing, support "vibrant" public spaces and small businesses, and improve public safety. Broadly, Pollak wants to make Oakland's government more efficient.The umbrella Abundance Network has three local chapters across the state, but its branch in San Francisco has been its most active. In recent years the group has scored several big wins in the city, such as helping pass a ballot measure that kept a thoroughfare in Golden Gate Park car-free and supporting a slate of candidates who were elected to the San Francisco Democratic Central Committee.Abundance has much grander ambitions: on its website, the group says it aspires to "re-architect" how 35% of the country's GDP is planned for and spent. That's roughly .5 trillion in economic activity.Abundant San Francisco is one of many groups in the city with similar-sounding names that draw significant financial support from wealthy tech industry leaders. The eastward expansion of the Abundance Network into Oakland is a new thing, and political observers say it's significant because of the seemingly unlimited amounts of money they can spend on elections.

Partnering with Empower Oakland

The Abundance Network has also linked up with Empower Oakland, a group founded last year by former District 6 Councilmember Loren Taylor. Empower Oakland assembled a committee that interviewed candidates in local races and published questionnaires and endorsements. The group's stated goal is to focus on crime and homelessness and evaluate the performance of elected officials.Empower Oakland's biggest funders include Pollak, who gave the committee ,000. The group's other backers include executives from companies like Credit Karma, Matrix, and Udemy. Gagan Biyani, who took a leadership position with Empower in July, said the group shares the same goals as Abundant Oakland, such as improving government efficiency.According to their website, Empower Oakland's 12-person endorsement committee is composed of former elected and appointed city officials, a PG&E lobbyist, the founder of an investment firm, an attorney for a charter school, a representative for a Chinatown chamber group, and Isaac Abid, a real estate investor who helped finance the recall campaign against District Attorney Pamela Price.

Candidates Respond to Abundant Oakland's Influence

The Abundance Network's role supporting Warren Logan for the City Council District 3 race reflects a shift for Pollak. In 2021, when he still lived in West Oakland, Pollak gave Fife's political committee 0. Now, he's concerned that Fife, along with the rest of Oakland's existing government, hasn't been effective at handling the city's structural deficit or building enough housing.Fife said the idea that Oakland's problems are the product of the current City Council's actions is misguided, noting that some of the candidates under fire from critics have only been in office one or two terms. "We should be really concerned about these wealthy tech individuals trying to design a working-class city in a way that they see fit, without real community engagement or input," said Fife about the Abundance Network spending.Harbin-Forte, who is running for city attorney, said she's had no contact with the Abundance Network but is "honored" to have their support. Her opponent, Ryan Richardson, said Oaklanders will have to decide if the union's investment in the city attorney race is about housing and transit, "or whether it's also about my work in police accountability and transparency."Bas, who is running for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, said the Pollak and Abundance Network contributions should raise red flags for voters. "It's important for Oaklanders to look at where the money is coming from in this race, and ask why a network that has been based in San Francisco is investing so much here in Oakland," Bas said.

Crypto's Growing Influence in Politics

The cryptocurrency industry and its executives have rapidly become a major force in national politics. Coinbase, Pollak's place of work, was among the crypto companies and investors who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a PAC called Fairshake that began spending in the March primary election.Some crypto industry executives, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, are involved in a movement to not only elect pro-crypto politicians but also devise a parallel system of government altogether. The "Network State" is a concept created by Balaji Srinivasan, a former Coinbase executive, who describes the idea as a "startup government" that begins online but eventually acquires real estate to create a new society powered by crypto.Pollak, however, said his efforts locally are rooted in helping "make the city and community and systems I'm part of better" - not "exiting" to create something different. He does see a future where the use of cryptocurrency is more robust locally, and is part of a group developing a new cryptocurrency coin called "Oak," designed to invest proceeds back into the community.