Reed Hastings lost $7 million backing Kamala Harris and learned absolutely nothing.
Now the Netflix co-founder is climbing back into the ring – this time throwing his weight behind Gavin Newsom for president.
The man who ran California into the ground is apparently exactly what a Silicon Valley billionaire wants in the White House.
The Man Behind the Money Trail
Federal campaign finance records show Hastings poured more than $20 million into Democrat-aligned and anti-Trump committees from 2020 onward.
That $7 million Harris donation was the largest single-candidate check he had ever written – and he wrote it weeks after Biden's debate collapse, telling The Information that Democrats were "in the game again."
They weren't.
Now Hastings has resigned from the Netflix board he co-founded with Ted Sarandos – ending a 29-year run with the company – and he's already found his next political project.
"Gavin is the candidate who can motivate both the left and the center," Hastings told the Los Angeles Times.
That's a fascinating take from a man who gave $2 million to Newsom's redistricting campaign last year and called the governor a "gifted political strategist and a futurist."
A futurist who presides over a state that 1.7 million residents have fled since 2020.
What Hastings Is Actually Buying
Here's what Gavin Newsom's California looks like right now.
Los Angeles County alone has lost more than 322,000 residents since 2020 – with over 105,000 fleeing in just the single year from 2024 to 2025.
California holds 12 percent of the U.S. population but carries a third of the nation's homeless.
Newsom promised to build 3.5 million housing units when he took office and will leave with a shelter bed shortage exceeding 111,000 – with each shelter bed in San Francisco running taxpayers $41,248 per year.
He closed five state prisons, shortened parole from five years to two for felonies, and gutted criminal penalties through Propositions 47 and 57.
Then he refused to fund Proposition 36 – the measure California voters overwhelmingly passed in 2024 to restore those exact penalties.
Newsom didn't just fail to fix California.
He built the failure, defended it, and is now asking America to hire him to do the same thing nationally.
The Billionaire Protection Racket
Here's what the media won't tell you about this endorsement.
Hastings and Newsom both opposed the proposed 5 percent tax on California billionaires – not because it was bad policy in the abstract, but because it would have hit Hastings personally.
He moved $7 million to Harris when Harris looked like the solution.
He dropped $2 million into Newsom's redistricting fight when Newsom needed a win.
He's now backing Newsom for the White House.
This isn't idealism.
It's a billionaire buying protection for his portfolio and calling it politics – the same donor class that depends on Democrat power to avoid accountability, maintaining its position one check at a time.
The Real 2028 Picture
A recent Echelon Insights poll shows Kamala Harris at 22 percent in a hypothetical 2028 Democrat primary – with Newsom at 21 percent, one point behind the woman who already lost to Trump.
The Democrats' answer to getting crushed in 2024 is to run the governor of a state 1.7 million people escaped, backed by a billionaire whose last big bet got torched.
Reed Hastings backing Gavin Newsom isn't news about 2028.
It's a receipt – confirmation that the same donors, the same machine, and the same ideas that produced Kamala Harris are already locked and loaded for another run.
They think you won't notice.
They're wrong.
Sources:
- Paul Bois, "Netflix Co-Founder Reed Hastings Backs Gavin Newsom for President," Breitbart, May 12, 2026.
- "After Netflix, What Is Democratic Megadonor Reed Hastings' Next Move?," Washington Free Beacon, April 2026.
- "Netflix Co-Founder Reed Hastings Gives $7 Million to a Pro-Harris PAC," Inc., July 2024.
- "Gavin Newsom Humiliated Again, As New Data Shows Millions Leaving California For Other States," OutKick, March 2026.
- "Kamala Harris Tops Newsom by One Point in 2028 Democrat Primary Poll," Breitbart, April 2026.
