My mailbox (I mean my physical Post Office mailbox, not my email inbox) has been flooded lately with flyers opposed to Gov. Newsom’s special election on redistricting, Proposition 50. They all have similar messages—“Let’s protect California’s redistricting process” and “Gerrymandering is wrong—no matter who does it.” But they’re from different senders. One says “Paid for by Right Path California.” Another says “Paid for by Protect Voters First, Sponsored by Hold Politicians Accountable.” So I decided to learn what I could about these supposedly grass-roots organizations.
Right Path California. I Googled it and the first 1-1/2 pages of hits directed me to drug and alcohol recovery centers, so I don’t think that’s the Right Path that crafted the anti-redistricting flyer. Way down on the list of hits I found a “Right Path California” Facebook page. The About tab was empty; there were no Posts; the Followers list was private, and there were only a handful of Reviews, all of them negative, including “Right Path is a bunch of GOP nut jobs pretending to speak for the people of California. Their president is the former chairman of the Republican Party of California.”
I looked more closely at the flyer and the return address read “ProtectFairElections.org, Right Path California,” with an Irvine address. So I went to ProtectFairElections.org. The website has a lot of scary blah-blah about “stripping constitutional protections” and “a blow to our democracy.” But not a word about the organizers or sponsors; in fact, the website is conspicuous for its secrecy. Furthering my search, I learned that “Protect Fair Elections is operated by Right Path California,” which told me that both entities appear to be the same thing. So who’s the money behind this? We don’t know, and may never, because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that dark money is legal in political campaigns, thus sweeping away a century of campaign finance safeguards.
The other flyer, entitled “Weakening our Democratic Process,” is from Protect Voters First, with a San Rafael address. They do have a website, and they at least identify their “top funder” (their term), Charles Munger, Jr. Now, you may not have heard of Mr. Munger, but he’s well known in conservative MAGA and Christian circles. According to Politico, “Munger, a Palo Alto physicist, has contributed more than $158,000 to socially conservative causes over the last 25 years, according to federal tax filings — including to organizations that oppose abortion rights and promote so-called crisis pregnancy centers, and to Christian groups whose leaders have opposed LGBTQ+ rights.” He’s “the megadonor backing Republicans’ effort to block Democrats from” redistricting; it appears that Munger is also the money behind ProtectFairElections and Right Path California. His attorneys back in 2011 had the same address that Protect Voters First has today (2350 Kerner Blvd., San Rafael); that year, Munger filed an amicus brief with the California Supreme Court case that dealt with redistricting. Munger also is listed as the “Principal Officer” of Hold Politicians Accountable, which “sponsored” Protect Voters First.
We voters and news consumers have, of course, learned to expect secrecy and obfuscation from political donors in the aftermath of Citizens United. What Munger is not anxious for people to know, according to investigative journalists, is that he’s given piles of money to some of the most untethered religious extremists in America, such as $83,000 to Campus Crusade for Christ, “which teaches that same-sex attraction is contrary to God’s design for human sexuality and has promoted conversion therapy.” According to Nonprofit Quarterly, a nonpartisan magazine that covers nonprofit groups in the U.S., Munger has given at least $78 million to “a variety of conservative political causes” that seek, in the words of former California Republican Chairman Mike Schroeder, “to purge one the wings” of the Republican Party—namely, the wing (if it still exists) that wishes to uphold the separation of church and state. Munger, Jr.’s donations to such groups as University Christian Fellows and Journey With Jesus prove that the unholy alliance of radical rightwing Christians and the Republican Party is a threat to our independence, as well as to our Constitution. Gov. Newsom, for his part, expresses particular ire—as well he should—over Munger’s support of so-called “conversion therapy” for gays, echoing the American Psychiatric Association’s 2024 policy statement citing “a growing body of evidence of the potential harms and lack of efficacy of conversion therapies that [such] therapies lack efficacy and may carry significant risks of harm.”
I don’t really care if you’re for or against Prop 50, Newsom’s redistricting initiative, although I personally support it. There are valid positions on both sides. But what everybody should be against is the intrusion of a radical, ill-informed and dangerous rightwing cult, masquerading as Christians and funded by fundamentalist billionaires, attempting to take over the government of the United States and establish their brand of Christianity as the official state religion. The fact is, if you overturn any stone underneath any MAGA policy, you’ll find (mostly Caucasian), sinister theocrats asserting that “God” wants America to be Christian. This is precisely what the Founders pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to resist.
Steve Heimoff