No House Democratic candidate nationwide has self-funded more than Thorburn this cycle.

Four of the eight candidates running haven’t raised any money and aren’t much of a factor. Out of the other four, three of them — Dr. Mai Khanh Tran, Gil Cisneros, and Andy Thorburn — have loaned themselves a total of $3.86 million for their campaigns. Cisneros, an ex-Republican whose main claim to fame is hitting the lottery for $266 million, gave himself $1.3 million. And Thorburn, a former insurance executive, provided a whopping $2.33 million of his own money for the race. No House Democratic candidate nationwide has self-funded more than Thorburn this cycle, and only Thorburn and one other have self-funded more than Cisneros, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Thorburn and Cisneros clearly aren’t going anywhere; a source close to the process said that at a meeting in D.C. last week, “We were told both millionaires are each willing to write themselves another $5-6 million check” if they were pressed to give way. The winnowing, then, shifted elsewhere. In addition to Chen, Phil Janowicz, a professor and education consultant who had loaned his campaign $160,000, dropped out Wednesday, also citing fears of Democrats being locked out of the top-two primary. Janowicz got the second-most votes at the Democratic Party local endorsement conference, meaning the two most popular candidates in that test of grassroots support are gone from the race. All campaigns cost money, of course. But the experience in California’s 39th District suggests that the doors to the Capitol are closed to anyone but the rich, distorting where elected representatives come from and who they listen to. Sam Jammal, a former congressional staffer and the only Democrat left in the race not self-funding his campaign, hasn’t yet given up. “I’m a case study in whether a regular person can run for Congress,” he said. “The amount of money pouring into this race is like I’ve never seen in my life.”

Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The car crash in District 39 actually stemmed from some re-routing. None of the three self-funders in the race — Cisneros, Thorburn, and Tran — lived in the district as of 2017. Cisneros and Tran lived in District 48, which Republican Dana Rohrabacher represents. But the DCCC had their own preferred candidate there, so they were told to run in Royce’s district, thought to be a lesser target for Democrats. But then Royce retired. Orrin Evans, campaign manager for Cisneros, acknowledges that he has a home in Newport Coast, one of the richest ZIP codes in the country. But Evans contends that Cisneros’s wife lives in Yorba Linda, and they moved there so their young children could be closer to their extended family. “What other candidates in the race own a home in the district?” Evans queried. Thorburn and Tran haven’t moved yet; Jammal grew up in and lives there, in Fullerton. But he isn’t a homeowner. Cisneros only became a registered Democrat in 2015, after being a lifelong Republican and then an independent for a few years. “What a Republican was in the ’80s is kind of what a Democrat is today,” he told the Orange County Register last July, referring to Ronald Reagan’s passage of the Brady Bill and the 1986 immigration amnesty bill. Cisneros donated small amounts to John McCain in 1999, and voted for McCain over Obama in 2008.

“It was more like, I got blessed by the lottery, so here I am.”

The spate of endorsements didn’t translate into support at the CDP endorsement conference, where Cisneros got exactly one vote.

Thorburn, a rumpled New Jerseyite, has tacked hard left in the race, endorsing single-payer health care and a $15 an hour minimum wage. He’s the first candidate in California to unionize his campaign staff. “If you say big money and the rigged system, that resonates more than anything else,” he told The Intercept at the state party convention in San Diego. But Thorburn’s $2 million donation to his own campaign rankles some. “I would support a public financing option,” he said, while adding that he would do what he needs to do to win the race. “It wouldn’t take too many cycles for the voting public to insist that all candidates take the public option. Eventually, it would become a mark of distinction.” Perhaps a bigger obstacle concerns where the money came from. He is a director of Global Benefits Group, which did an IPO last year on the London stock exchange. But the company, which provides insurance around the world for expats and third-country nationals, also directs two related entities, GBGI Limited and GBG Insurance Limited, based in the U.K. territory of Guernsey, a known tax haven featured in the Paradise Papers. In December, the European Union put Guernsey on a “gray list,” warning the island that it had to reform its tax structure so that corporations couldn’t use it to hide profits. Thorburn told The Intercept that the leaking of his business background is a signal of how well he’s doing in the race. On the particulars, he said that his company was registered in Guernsey for regulatory reasons, not tax purposes, and that the registration allowed them the flexibility to make and quickly sell individualized insurance products around the world. He added that it was already structured that way when he took it over. GBG Insurance Limited’s CEO is Bob Dubrish, the former CEO of subprime lender Option One Mortgage, a subsidiary of the tax preparer H&R Block. The company had to shut down in 2007 amid a wave of toxic mortgages and foreclosures; it ended up getting sold to current Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. The Securities and Exchange Commission later fined Option One $28.2 million for deceiving investors; it earned its reputation as one of the more spectacular subprime failures. Dubrish, Thorburn said, was not involved himself in any of the firm’s wrongdoing.

The links to offshore tax havens and one of the worst subprime lenders aren’t great resume items for a Democrat.

The candidate, meanwhile, has depicted himself as a “risktaker” who “sometimes … ran off the cliff, not intentionally.” The links to offshore tax havens and one of the worst subprime lenders aren’t great resume items for a Democrat, yet his issue profile has earned him the endorsements of Our Revolution, the California Nurses Association, the United Steelworkers, and more. Jammal, a child of immigrants who is half Latino and half Arab, did civil rights advocacy during the George W. Bush era for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund before moving into congressional staff work. He was an aide to Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and chief of staff to Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., one of the few state Hispanic Caucus members not to endorse Cisneros. Under Cardenas, Jammal helped derail the proposed Comcast/Time Warner merger. In between his congressional gigs, he served in the Obama Commerce Department. Most recently, he worked for Solar City until Tesla took them over. “I was one of a small group of staffers in its student loan program,” Jammal said. “I’m a working-class guy, and Congress is a playground for rich people. Members are not willing to stand up because they don’t want to piss off donors.” Now he’s in a race in which the donors are mostly the candidates. Going by amount raised, Jammal’s $280,000 by the end of 2017 would be a close third place in the primary, behind Tran, who has the support of EMILY’s List, and within $37,000 of Gil Cisneros. Adding the self-funding dollars, he’s way behind, even after “maxing out” with a $5,000 contribution. Congress already is teeming with wealthy candidates. A Los Angeles Times study of California’s 53 congressional districts tallied up the net worth of its members as at least $439 million, with 20 millionaires. And more wealthy candidates are at the gates, in District 39 and across the country, with at least 40 Democratic primary elections featuring millionaire candidates.

“It’s damn important to show that regular folks can be in these positions.”