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A DSA-backed California<\/span> prosecutor who helped force Meta to pay a historic $17 billion settlement this year is on a glide path to become the top lawyer for Los Angeles \u2014 unless a tech investor cozy with Elon Musk can spend enough to stop her.<\/p>\n San Francisco resident John Hering has sunk more than $1.25 million into an effort to defeat Marissa Roy, a deputy attorney general at the California Department of Justice endorsed by the LA chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and to support John McKinney, a county prosecutor running an uphill general election campaign. It\u2019s a heavy injection of cash from a single individual in a local race for a little-known office, but it pales in comparison to Hering\u2019s private-sector spending: In 2022, his investment firm<\/a> Vy Capital pumped<\/a> $700 million into Musk\u2019s takeover of the company then known as Twitter and $300 million into his tunnel-construction Boring Company.<\/p>\n A co-founder of the cybersecurity company Lookout, Hering is spending in line with the tech industry in which he\u2019s long been invested. While the city attorney\u2019s office is commonly used as the city\u2019s defense against litigious residents, the office also carries the power to mold legislation, enforce state law, such as labor protections, and take on corporations and the federal government in court. Roy has vowed to wield the office\u2019s regulatory muscle against corporations \u2014 including Big Tech.<\/p>\n \u201cMonopolies and Big Tech are things that [Roy] sees as an opportunity to wage battle against,\u201d said former LA City Councilmember Mike Bonin, who has not endorsed either candidate. \u201cIf I were Big Tech, I would certainly think, \u2018OK, well, this is someone who is a potential threat.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Hering, who did not respond to The Intercept\u2019s request for comment, is part of a group of tech titans backing McKinney. Others include the founders of Ring, Tinder, and Boingo, and investors in Anthropic<\/a>, Anduril<\/a>, and SpaceX<\/a>, who have collectively put more than $1.9 million into pro-McKinney committees. A group called \u201cCommittee to Expand the Middle Class Candidate\u201d \u2014 backed by the property rental tech giant Airbnb \u2014 donated an additional $4.2 million to a committee supporting McKinney.<\/p>\n To help get McKinney through the June primary election, Hering and fellow tech investor Diego Berdakin poured more than $1 million into another committee. Over the past month, Hering\u2019s general-election spending group, Neighbors for John McKinney, has been paying for TV and online ads and mailers that play up McKinney as \u201ca lifelong Democrat\u201d and \u201c100% anti-MAGA.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The same can hardly be said for the group\u2019s top funder.<\/p>\n After giving to Hillary Clinton\u2019s failed 2016 presidential bid and Democratic candidates like Beto O\u2019Rourke, Hering donated $41,300 to the Republican National Committee and $500,000 to Musk\u2019s America PAC in 2024 to support Donald Trump\u2019s run for president. He has publicly praised Musk\u2019s chaotic purge of the federal government through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency program and called the world\u2019s richest man an \u201cAmerican hero<\/a>\u201d for offering to pay TSA salaries during the spring government shutdown. In 2025, Hering and Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who has also donated to Neighbors for John McKinney, attended a White House dinner where Trump hosted<\/a> dozens of high-profile Silicon Valley figures. The pro-McKinney group is also funded by billionaires Rick Caruso, a failed LA mayoral candidate, and Ron Burkle, a Democratic megadonor.<\/p>\n Earlier this cycle, Hering, who listed San Francisco as his residence in campaign finance documents, also waded into the LA mayoral election<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 boosting right-wing reality star Spencer Pratt<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tech industry spending<\/span> in LA\u2019s elections arrives amid a midterm cycle where Big Tech and artificial intelligence have doled out millions<\/a> of dollars<\/a> to exert influence in congressional and state races across the U.S. as lawmakers grapple with how to regulate the industries. Musk, for example, has dropped more than $442 million into the midterms, including more than $70 million in his political action committee, America PAC, in October alone. And in state Assembly and Senate races across California, tech and AI executives have spent more than $29 million, according to Tech Equity Action, a political nonprofit that lobbies to craft tech-related legislation while advocating for workers\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave big AI companies a scare last month, when he signed a slate of bills protecting workers from AI overreach, like limiting its use to terminate or discipline workers, banning employers from using AI to surveil employees in bathrooms, and assuring that human healthcare workers will have the final say on patient care decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n The tech industry had fought hard<\/a> to kill the bills, and while Newsom did offer the industry some concessions, labor organizers say the new laws offer them an opportunity to expand local worker protections, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n In LA, Roy has said she would use the city attorney\u2019s office to fight for workers against losses in potential wages, promising that she would go after \u201clarge corporations and big tech companies\u201d that \u201cmisclassify workers as independent contractors to avoid paying them minimum wage and providing benefits,\u201d according to her campaign website. She also spoke against companies who are increasingly using automation \u201cto evade regulations and eliminate jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n Tech leaders may view a city attorney with an appetite for regulation as \u201cexistential to their business model,\u201d said Brian Justie, a researcher<\/a> at the UCLA Labor Center who was part of the coalition that pushed for the bills.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happens in California sets a precedent and serves as a blueprint for the rest of the country,\u201d Justie said. \u201cAnd so if you\u2019re a Big Tech, you really need to have a certain outcome come to pass here to avoid ripple effects elsewhere.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n