Obscure Megadonor Jumps in the Deep End of Democrat Dark Money

California hedge fund manager Mark Stad went all in to prop up the Kamala Harris campaign

In the days after Kamala Harris replaced Biden atop the Democratic ticket, money poured into her main Super PAC, Future Forward. Among the donations was an eyepopping $5 million contribution from largely unknown donor, California hedge fund manager Marc Stad. While Stad is not a newcomer to politics, the 2024 election cycle is the first in which he leveraged his significant net worth to become a Democratic megadonor.

Stad is a San Francisco based hedge fund manager who has spent the majority of his career in finance. After graduating from Harvard University, Stad joined McKinsey as a Business Analyst. McKinsey, the “world’s most prestigious consulting firm,” is a confidant to many of the world’s most recognizable companies. It often finds itself enmeshed near controversy, whether it is helping Purdue Pharma boost OxyContin sales, helping the Saudi government measure the reception of austerity measures, or advising the Chinese military. Stad then moved through positions at Parthenon Capital, TPG, and the Investment Group of Santa Barbara before founding Dragoneer Investment Group. Dragoneer now manages billions of dollars in assets and has held stakes in numerous companies including Uber, Spotify, Airbnb, and DoorDash.

Radical Roots

A long time Democrat, Stad joined College Democrats while at Harvard, serving as campus president, state president, and then president of the College Democrats of America in September 2000. The Harvard Crimson quoted Stad multiple times during the 2000 election, including Stad chastising third party voters, saying “A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.” Stad supported Al Gore until the end, saying Florida’s certification of George W. Bush’s victory in the state “doesn’t mean that Bush wins Florida’s election votes.”

After establishing himself in San Francisco, Stad ventured into public life, serving as President of the City and County of San Francisco Finance Corporation. He became the youngest commissioner in San Francisco history. Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, Stad made some political contributions totaling a few thousand dollars per cycle. Many of these contributions went to candidates who were at Harvard in the same period as Stad, including Andrei Cherny and Ruben Gallego.

Stad did however become an early financial backer of Kamala Harris, contributing to her campaigns for attorney general and even her ultimately unused gubernatorial campaign committee. Stad served as a bundler for Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign. He ramped up his political contributions in that cycle, giving $428,425 to a variety of Democratic groups including $150,000 to the Biden Victory Fund. With Harris as the nominee in 2024, Stad truly opened his wallet, contributing a total of $11,074,300 to Democratic candidates and organizations.

Ties to Foreign Dictatorships

Stad prefers to invest in countries when they are out of favor of investors. In February 2024, The New York Post reported that pro-democracy nonprofit group Future Union has identified Stad as a venture capitalist with direct connections to China. Stad previously managed the Hong Kong office of the Investment Group of Santa Barbara.

Dragoneer Investment Group previously held 600,000 shares in Alibaba and over 147,000 shares in Tencent Music Entertainment Company, a subsidiary of Tencent. Tencent was recently listed as a Chinese military linked company, meaning it supplies both commercial and military technology. Meanwhile, Alibaba was caught marketing the same type of software used by China’s government to persecute the Uighur population.

Stad deliberately keeps a low profile, eschewing press attention. Despite his attempts to fly under the radar, some details have emerged about how he spends his extravagant wealth. In June 2022, Stad and his wife contributed $3 million to the University of California, San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospitals to support the launch of the Stad Center for Pediatric Pain, Palliative & Integrative Medicine. He has become a major real estate holder, purchasing two multimillionaire dollar homes in Montecito, CA in just three weeks. On top of those, Stad also owns a multimillionaire home in San Francisco, a Lake Tahoe mansion, a property in Napa Valley, and in November 2020 was reported as potentially being buyer of the most expensive home ever sold in San Francisco. Stad has also been identified as a part owner of the Seattle Kraken NHL team.

While Stad has grown his political spending alongside Harris’s political ascent, it is far from likely he will end his political activism even as her political career appears to be over. Stad is a longtime Democrat who now appears to have more wealth than he knows what to do with. Undoubtedly, if it has not already started, he will be pumping millions of dollars into the Democratic machine for years to come.

Robert Rose is the Senior Opposition Researcher for Restoration News. A California native, he has over a decade of experience in conservative politics and opposition research. He graduated from Sacramento State University with a degree in Government.

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