Executive Summary
California’s investor-owned, for-profit utilities are pursuing one of the largest corporate bailouts in California history — one that would shift billions of dollars in wildfire liability away from themselves for causing catastrophic fires on to wildfire survivors, homeowners, insurance policyholders, taxpayers, and local governments. To make that bailout politically possible, utilities have spent years building an extensive political influence network across Sacramento.
As Governor Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders negotiate an end-of-session utility bailout behind closed doors, the proposals under discussion would further reduce utility accountability, limit wildfire survivors’ legal rights, and transfer even more of the financial burden of catastrophic wildfires to the public.
This report documents the utilities’ political influence network — the disinformation echo chamber built over years through campaign contributions, lobbying, charitable giving, nonprofit funding, and political relationships to manufacture support for that bailout.
The campaign has reached unprecedented levels during the current legislative session. California’s three largest investor-owned utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (Edison), and Sempra Energy (Sempra) — have spent years and millions of dollars building political influence in Sacramento, and that effort is now peaking. Through the first six reporting quarters of the 2025–2026 session, these utilities reported spending a record $16.7 million lobbying state lawmakers — the highest lobbying total of the Newsom administration and of all time, with PG&E leading the pack with over $10 million spent and two reporting quarters still remaining.
PG&E, Edison and Sempra spent more than $127.6 million influencing California government during Governor Newsom’s administration, including $66.8 million in campaign contributions and political committees and $60.8 million lobbying the state government. They directed $238.9 million in charitable donations to non-governmental organizations between 2023-2025, many of which now echo utility talking points while presenting themselves as independent voices.
The public face of that campaign is Wildfire Victims First, a coalition that portrays itself as a grassroots movement for wildfire survivors. Our investigation found the opposite. The coalition is 100% financed by utility-connected organizations and functions as a utility-backed front group spreading disinformation and lobbying for legislation that would bailout utilities when they cause wildfires by reducing utility liability while attacking the legal rights of the very wildfire victims it claims to represent. Sixty-six percent of Wildfire Victims First members receive direct utility funding, while dozens maintain governance ties through utility executives and government affairs officials serving in leadership positions. The coalition’s spokesman and director is former Newsom Communications Director Nathan Click, while its television advertising is placed by Polaris Campaign Media, the affiliated media-buying firm of Bearstar Strategies, Governor Newsom’s longtime political consulting firm.
This influence campaign has produced significant policy victories in the 2025-2026 legislative session alone. In 2025, utilities secured SB 254, legislation the Los Angeles Times described as “effectively a bailout.” The same year, Newsom-appointed California Public Utilities Commission commissioners approved more than $2 billion in new revenue and retroactive cost recovery for Southern California Edison. Two months later, Edison increased its shareholder dividend for the twenty-second consecutive year. By year’s end, the company reported $4.5 billion in profits — more than triple the previous year’s earnings — while CEO Pedro Pizarro credited California regulatory decisions as a key driver of the company’s financial performance. In 2026, legislation sponsored by Consumer Watchdog and the Every Fire Survivors Network requiring independent audits of utility wildfire mitigation spending (AB 1774) failed to advance despite a previous audit finding utilities could not account for $2.5 billion of $6 billion collected from ratepayers for wildfire mitigation.
The current bailout proposal also rests heavily on the SB 254 Study, commissioned by the California Earthquake Authority to guide the next generation of wildfire policy. The Authority selected RAND and Aon to prepare the study even though both firms had performed work for Edison arising from the Eaton Fire, calculating how much victims should receive in compensation, raising concerns about the independence of recommendations now being used to justify further limits on utility liability.
This utility disinformation echo-chamber operates as California’s investor-owned utilities report huge profits, pay billions of dollars in shareholder dividends, and award executives compensation packages worth tens of millions of dollars — proving the utilities don’t need a bailout. Meanwhile, homeowners face soaring insurance premiums, repeated utility rate hikes, and the devastating consequences of utility-caused wildfires.
The current legislative proposal did not emerge organically. It is the culmination of years of coordinated political spending, lobbying, charitable giving, nonprofit funding, and relationship-building designed to create the appearance of broad public support for policies that primarily protect utility shareholders from the financial consequences of the disasters their companies cause.
