Trump Is Coming Back to the Bay Area for a Big-Ticket Fundraiser on Friday

Former President Donald Trump is set to make another fundraising swing through the Bay Area for a high-spending event on Friday, hosted by relatives of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wife.

After holding a news conference from his Rancho Palos Verdes golf course south of Los Angeles on Friday morning, Trump will travel to Woodside for an afternoon reception hosted by billionaire and technology entrepreneur Tom Siebel and his wife, Stacey, according to an invitation obtained by KQED. Siebel, who founded C3.ai, is the second cousin once removed of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the first partner of California.

Tickets for the fundraiser started at $3,300 and are going for as much as $500,000 per couple for a roundtable, photo opportunity and the reception with the former president.

“We’re expecting a wonderful get-together,” said Harmeet Dhillon, one of Trump’s attorneys and a California representative on the Republican National Committee. “President Trump is very funny in person and entertaining. People always come away very excited.”

Trump was set to begin his California fundraising efforts on Thursday evening with another big-ticket reception in Los Angeles. The location and hosts of that event have not been disclosed.

Despite California being a Democratic stronghold, Dhillon said the state has 5 million Republican voters — including some of the party’s wealthy donors.

“California has always been a disproportionately target-rich environment for our party’s fundraising, regardless of the disproportionate registration in favor of the other party,” she told KQED. “A lot of big donors here.”

This is Trump’s second fundraising trip to the Bay Area in recent months. Technology entrepreneur David Sacks reportedly raised $12 million for the former president at a San Francisco event hosted at Sacks’ Pacific Heights home in June.

Siebel has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Trump’s campaign and comes from a family of known conservative donors.

In 2022, Fox News revealed that a trust run by Siebel Newsom’s father, Kenneth Siebel, donated to a political action committee supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ reelection campaign. This came after Newsom shared that he had donated $100,000 to DeSantis’ challenger.

“Time to make Ron DeSantis a one-term governor,” he wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, in August 2022.

Kenneth Siebel has donated to numerous Republican candidates over the years, including Sens. Josh Hawley (R–Missouri) and Ron Johnson (R–Wisconsin), and to Montana’s Republican Central Committee. He also made multiple donations to Newsom’s 2022 reelection campaign in California.

After Trump’s trip to the Golden State, he’ll head to Las Vegas for a rally on Friday night.

“It’s basically all hands on deck for less than 60 days until the election,” Dhillon said.

Sept. 13: A previous version of this story said Trump’s Las Vegas rally is on Saturday. It will be Friday night.