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# Newsom Said He Vetoed the Demonstration State Forest Bill Because of Science. We Asked What the Money Said.
- URL: https://www.mendolocal.news/newsom-said-he-vetoed-the-demonstration-state-forest-bill-because-of-science-we-asked-what-the-money-said/
- Published: 2026-10-06T14:24:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-06T15:59:34.000Z
- Description: We reviewed a decade of campaign finance reports after Gov. Newsom vetoed AB 2494. Timber interests gave about $235,000; tribal & environmental backers gave almost nothing.
- Author: Elise Cox
- Tags: Fort Bragg, News, Mendo Local enterprise

FORT BRAGG, CA — When Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 2494 on Sept. 18, he said he was siding with science. The bill would have rewritten how California manages its 14 demonstration state forests — including the 48,652-acre Jackson Demonstration State Forest on the Mendocino coast — and Newsom wrote that it risked "the flexibility needed to safeguard our forests for future generations" and that limiting the forests' purposes "risks the State's ability to fully demonstrate the best science-based practices." His message said nothing about the provision that had drawn the most attention in Mendocino County: a path for California tribes to co-manage the forests.

AB 2494 was supported by a coalition of conservation groups, forest activists, and north-coast tribes — Buffie Campbell, who leads the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council and is a tribal citizen of the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, testified for it. The bill was opposed by the timber industry and the Rural County Representatives of California. Newsom's veto delivered the industry's position. 

 To see what, if anything, the money says about that decision, *MendoLocal.News* reviewed a decade of campaign-finance records: state contributions, Newsom's federal political committees, and the "behested payments" he has solicited from donors for outside charities and causes.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/65/2b/652bc5ac-05cb-46a1-8194-e7dee6ac7adf/content/images/2026/10/voting-matters-square-navy-400.png)

The records show plenty of money flowing to Newsom, but no evidence of a deal. We didn't find a direct line between money and policies. Instead, we found a tangle of contributors worth watching in the next presidential cycle.

Contributors from timber and forest-products companies, their executives, and the industry's PAC have given Newsom's two campaigns for governor about $235,000\. The largest share came from Sierra Pacific Industries and its executives, $107,000; Sierra Pacific is the Anderson-based company that says it owns and manages more than 2.4 million acres of timberland in California, Oregon, and Washington, with mills and facilities in Shasta, Placer, and Amador counties, three of the counties that host the demonstration forests AB 2494 would have reshaped. 

Green Diamond Resource Company gave $59,200\. Zvi Brenner of SB Lumber gave $29,000\. A.L. "Sandy" Dean, chairman of Humboldt Redwood and its sister firm Mendocino Redwood Company, gave $15,000, and Humboldt Redwood itself gave $10,000\. The California Forestry Association's political action committee gave $10,000, and Collins Pine gave $5,000\. Sierra Pacific, whose contributions make up the largest single share of that total, did not respond to a request for comment.

The industry also gave to Newsom's national political operation. In the spring of 2023, Newsom created a federal political action committee — a hybrid PAC that raised $23 million and fed his Campaign for Democracy operation, which CalMatters and others have described as groundwork for a potential presidential run. Sierra Pacific put $32,400 into it, Green Diamond $30,000, and the California Forestry Association's political action committee $5,000 — $67,400 more.

The tribes that fought for AB 2494 gave Newsom nothing. The Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians, whose ancestral territory includes north-coast forest land, has spent about $36,000 in state politics but not a dollar of it on Newsom; the neighboring Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, about $44,000 and none to Newsom; the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, which led the testimony for the bill, has no political contributions on record at all.

Buffie Campbell, the council's executive director, said the veto landed as "quite the shock," coming from "the only California Governor that has ever offered an apology by executive order … for the genocide of the Original People of these lands." Newsom's apology and the Truth and Healing Council it created "was a platform to provide healing," she wrote in an email to *MendoLocal.News*, "but there can be no healing when the voices of the Original People are not heard and are still not at the table."

The tribes that do fund Newsom are a different set, and their interest is gaming, not forests. Tribes that operate casinos — the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and others — have given roughly $1.07 million to Newsom's two campaigns for governor and $157,000 to his 2023 federal PAC, and Newsom has directed some $4.57 million more from them in behested payments to charities and inaugural funds he favors, including $2.75 million from Graton and about $1 million from San Manuel. It is a large sum — nearly $5.8 million in his orbit — but *MendoLocal.News* found no record that any of these tribes took a position on AB 2494\. Their money reflects the casino industry's long investment in California governors.

Asked about the role of contributions and behested payments, the governor's office, responding on background, offered a general statement rather than one specific to the veto. Behested payments "do not influence policy decisions," the office said, describing them as "a lawful, bipartisan tool" used by officials of both parties "for decades" and publicly reported through the state's Fair Political Practices Commission. The office said it discloses donations "beyond what state law requires," and referred a reporter to the governor's veto message.

Environmental organizations gave Newsom's campaigns next to nothing — though several are heavyweight California donors. The Sierra Club, its foundation, and affiliated committees have put more than $1.7 million into state campaigns and ballot measures since 2001; of that, about $1,500 reached Newsom's campaigns — a $1,000 California Sierra Club PAC contribution to his 2018 run for governor and $500 to his 2010 race for lieutenant governor. (A local Sierra Club chapter gave $5,000 in 2025, but to Newsom's Proposition 50 redistricting committee, not a campaign.) The Natural Resources Defense Council, which has given hundreds of thousands of dollars in California, gave Newsom nothing as an organization; the only NRDC money in his accounts — about $5,000, across 16 years — came from a handful of its staff in personal contributions, most of it from a single California advocacy director. A search of federal records turned up no environmental money at all in his 2023 political action committee.

Melodie Meyer, a conservation attorney at the Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC), which sponsored the bill, tied the veto to Newsom's ambitions. "Governor Newsom values his personal ambitions above the safety and health of Californians and their public lands," she wrote, arguing the veto allowed the timber industry "to suppress the people's demands for statewide forest management reform." She disputed the veto's science rationale — the bill, she wrote, would have "codified the importance of forestry research," listing "a living laboratory for ecological research" and "climate resiliency and adaptation" among its purposes — and noted the message "was silent with regard to the bill's tribal co-management and traditional knowledge provisions." "We are now back to square one," she wrote, "with CAL FIRE's top priority being to manage these forests for commercial timber harvest."

Where the timber industry spends heavily is the Legislature. Companies such as Trinity River Lumber and Roseburg Forest Products route most of their political money — more than $80,000 each — into the California Forestry Association's political action committee, which has given about $900,000 in state contributions since 2001 and spreads it across lawmakers of both parties, tilted toward moderate Democrats. Its recipients include Mike McGuire, the north-coast Democrat whose state Senate district takes in Jackson and who is leaving the Legislature at the end of 2026 to run for Congress, and Brian Dahle, the timber-country Republican Newsom defeated for governor in 2022.

Assemblymember Chris Rogers, who wrote AB 2494 and whose district takes in the Mendocino coast, said he was "very disappointed" and would "continue to work on this issue next year." Mendocino County had asked for the bill through its state legislative platform, he noted, and it would have aligned the demonstration forests with Newsom's own "30x30" conservation goals. "One of the main tenants \[sic\] of the bill was bolstering tribal co-management," he said — the provision the veto message did not mention.

None of this suggests a "contributions for a veto" type deal, and the campaign-finance record neither confirms nor contradicts Newsom's stated reasons for the veto. What it shows is active donors that could provide valuable backing in the future. Newsom leaves the governor's office in early 2027, and has all but positioned himself to run for president. If he does, the clearest test will be a public one: whether the timber money that has followed him this far follows him into a national campaign.

#### **How We Reported This Story**

**About this story.** This story is built entirely on public campaign-finance records and outreach to supporters and opponents of the bill. For state contributions, we searched the California Secretary of State's CAL-ACCESS database through its Power Search tool; for federal contributions, the Federal Election Commission's records; and for "behested payments" — money a public official solicits from donors for a third party — the California Fair Political Practices Commission's Form 803 database.

**How we identified donors.** We identified timber companies, tribes and environmental organizations by their names and, for individual donors, their listed employers, then confirmed each donor's contributions one at a time. Timber operators headquartered in the counties that host California's demonstration state forests were drawn from the Secretary of State's bulk business-entity data and checked individually.

**Who we contacted.** We sought comment from supporters and opponents of AB 2494 and from the governor's office. The governor's office responded on background; EPIC, which sponsored the bill, the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, and the bill's author, Assemblymember Chris Rogers, responded on the record. Sierra Pacific Industries did not respond to a request for comment.

**What the numbers reflect.** Dollar figures are totals across every election cycle in the records unless otherwise noted, and reflect the data as of mid-September 2026.

**A caveat.** Campaign contributions are legal and disclosed, and a contribution followed by a favorable decision is not, by itself, evidence of a connection. This story does not allege one. It reports what the money shows — and what it does not.

Questions or corrections: [editor@mendolocal.news](mailto:editor@mendolocal.news)