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BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto City Council candidate Yudy Deng has raised $166,128 – smashing city records and nearly doubling the total of her closest opponent.
Deng is relying more on out-of-town donations than the rest of the field. She’s had 41 of 135 donations come from Palo Alto, according to her latest fundraising report. (Read her report here).
Planning Commissioner Bryna Chang is in second with $85,118 raised through Sept. 19. She’s collected 107 of 139 donations from Palo Alto resi-dents, her report shows.
Councilman Ed Lauing is in third with $36,122. He’s collected 64 of 67 donations from Palo Alto.
Democratic Socialist candidate Raymond Goins has raised $1,200.
Gary Gechlik reported no fund-raising, and the city did not publish reports from Mayor Vicki Veenker or software engineer Brian Hamachek yesterday.
Three seats are up for grabs, with ballots going out on Oct. 5.
Deng has far surpassed past fundraising leaders. Councilman George Lu raised $49,958 at this point in the last election, and Lythcott-Haims raised $69,561 in 2022.
Deng is endorsed by Lu and Lythcott-Haims.
Deng said she asked for donations from friends from college, the nonprofit sector and her old home in Bellevue, Wash. She said most of her friends are tech engineers, attorneys or people she knows from nonprofit work.
“Nothing suspicious,” she said in an interview on Sept. 9.
Deng is on the Parks and Recreation Commission and chief development officer for the Society for Heart’s De-light, a nonprofit focused on engaging Chinese immigrants in the South Bay.
This is an obscene amount of money. And the majority of vast majority of it is from out of town businesses and people seemingly wanting to buy influence via Deng who don’t live here and can’t vote.
This needless amount of money is literally unprecedented in any Palo Alto council election in our history.
Deng even has PAC money.
The other candidates are all within the typical fun range for our city elections.
This sets a terrible precedent, with feeling pressured to raise more and more money to keep up with someone like this candidate.
That is bad for democracy and bad for Palo Alto. Her behavior and bad judgment does not merit our votes.
Money is ruining politics! This is an unseemly amount of money to spend on a council race. And so many donations from out of town! I want to see local support and a person with the depth to win on their ideas – not the pocketbooks of companies, state politicians, special interests or developers. Please follow the money before casting your vote.
By the way – when a political candidate tells you there is “nothing suspicious”, there is something suspicious.
I would prefer if she had a longer track record in Palo Alto. A few months on Parks and Rec isn’t enough. And then all this money from people who are a complete unknown in this community. Something is going on here that we haven’t been told about.