Dems terrified as wealthy new players flex financial muscle in California politics: ‘The alarm bells should be on for all of us’

California Democrats are reportedly freaking out as a flood of new political spending by the state’s wealthiest threatens to upend the status quo in the deep-blue state, where Dems have enjoyed a supermajority in the state Legislature for years.

“It scares the s**t out of me,” Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal said at an event promoting kids’ online safety, according to Politico.

“The alarm bells should be on for all of us. I’m trying to raise them as best as I can,” he added, fretting that the infusion of cash could result in a “generational” shift in California politics.

The sources of angst are three groups connected to Silicon Valley: Grow California, backed by billionaire crypto exec Chris Larsen and investor Tim Draper; Building a Better California, with funding from Google co-founder Sergey Brin and former Google chief Eric Schmidt; and California Leads, a super PAC with funding from Google, Meta and others.

“We don’t have enough advocates for having a good business environment,” Larsen told The Post in an interview. “That’s really a problem in the Legislature: It’s too beholden to to some long-term players that are very narrowly focused on their interests.

“It’s a new day in California,” Larsen added.

Larsen’s group, which has about $40 million in commitments, plans to pinpoint the issues that matter most to California voters — like affordability and the cost of housing — through surveys and other research and back candidates that they think take a pragmatic approach to fixing those problems.

Larsen said the widely panned billionaire tax pushed by SEIU-United Healthcare West was a galvanizing force for the new crop of billionaire-backed groups.

“It’s one symptom of a bigger problem,” he said. “These unions that don’t understand business — it would be like us telling them how to build a house or treat a patient. That’s why business needs to be a counterforce, and we’re missing that.”

Building a Better California has raised $46 million, according to a financial disclosure — including a $20 million from Brin — and plans to back moderate candidates and ballot measures that promote housing production, among other issues.

California Leads is led by Nathan Click, longtime advisor to Gov. Gavin Newsom, with initial funding of $10 million from Big Tech and venture capital firms, Politico reported.

At the same time, labor unions are bearing down for a rash of bills to regulate AI, according to Politico.

“It’s time that the governor listened to us,” Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, told reporters at the group’s headquarters this week, per Politico. “If he doesn’t want to talk to us? Well, when he’s on the campaign trail, he can talk to my colleagues around the nation.”

Gonzalez previously told the New York Times that unions “won’t be bullied” by billionaires flexing their political muscles.

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