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Wealthy donors help fund Newsom s anti-recall campaign. Here are the top 5 givers
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San Francisco Mayor London Breed, left, and California Governor Gavin Newsom are seen after a press conference at the COVID-19 mass vaccination site at City College of San Francisco in San Francisco, California Tuesday, April 6, 2021.Stephen Lam / The Chronicle
SACRAMENTO A few weeks after Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a campaign to keep himself in office, his recall defense team says it has raised $3.1 million nearly half of it from a dozen wealthy individuals and groups that have written the governor checks for $5,000 or more.
Unlike in a traditional campaign, the governor can raise unlimited funds to fight a recall. Donors are not limited to the normal $32,400 maximum.
Bill Gates isn t just one of the wealthiest men in the world, the co-founder of Microsoft, and a major philanthropist – he s also the largest private owner of farmland in the United States. Gates and his wife Melinda own 242,000 acres of farmland in the U.S. The Gates portfolio of farmland covers 18 states. Their largest holdings are 69,071 acres in Louisiana, 47,927 acres in Arkansas, and 20,588 acres in Nebraska. Gates also owns about 25,000 acres near Phoenix that are slated to be developed into a suburb with 80,000 homes, 4,000 acres for schools, stores, and offices, and 3,400 acres of open space.
It isn t too surprising that Gates is invested so heavily in farmland. Back in 2017, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $300 million to help low-income farmers in Africa and Asia adapt to climate change. In 2018, the Gates Foundation invested $40 million to help breed chickens that lay higher quality eggs and cows that produce more milk for farms in Africa and South Asia.
Business mogul and philanthropist Bill Gates has acquired a monumental farmland portfolio spread across 18 states in the United States, becoming the biggest farmland owner in the country, as per media