Donors with ties to President Donald Trump are contributing to the campaigns of vulnerable California House Republicans running in districts where Trump is not considered popular.

Reps. David Valadao, Jeff Denham and Steve Knight in 2016 said they either did not support Trump or refused to answer questions on the matter. They all won their districts – and so did Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Now, pro-Trump loyalists such as Robert Mercer, a billionaire who supported controversial conservative Steve Bannon’s ascent to the White House, are showing up on the congressmen’s latest campaign donor lists. Merceris also the primary funder of Cambridge Analytica. Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the data firm’s ties to the Trump campaign.

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“It’s all about preventing a Democratic takeover, because if Democrats take the House they would control investigations,” said John Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College, of the Trump allies’ effort to help Republicans. “If that happens, you can bet ... there will be more investigations on Trump, and possibly some on Mercer.”

Among former Trump advisers who are on the donor lists of the three Republicans are: Hushang Ansary, a trustee on the Trump Victory Committee and a former Iranian ambassador to the U.S.; Andy Beal, a Dallas billionaire and economic adviser to Trump; and Shawn Krause, a Quicken Loans vice president who served on Trump’s transition team for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Mercer gave $5,400 to each of the three candidates, Ansary gave about $4,400 to each, Beal gave $5,400 to Valadao and Knight and $4,400 to Denham and Krause gave about $300 to each. There is a maximum individual contribution of $2,700 in primary elections and another ceiling of $2,700 for general elections.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Elections Commission said donors who contribute more than $2,700 are either donating more through spouses or are contributing early towards the general election.

Pitney said he wouldn’t expect voters to care much about Mercer contributions, estimating less than 5 percent of voters probably know who Mercer is, but said they’ll start caring if Democrats phrase the donations the right way in campaign ads.

“You can easily see that connection being part of a campaign commercial, tying these guys to Trump and then to Cambridge Analytica, which could get worse as more information comes out,” Pitney said. “Donald Trump is on the ballot in those districts in invisible ink.”

Shawn Steel, Republican National Committeeman from California, said he didn’t think a few contributions from Trump world were going to matter to voters in the three districts where members are vulnerable. Steel pointed to the broad political base Valadao has built over the years.

“It’s not even 1 percent of an issue — it’s a very small part of his overall campaign,” Steel said.

Steel agreed with Pitney that donors such as Mercer were going to make whatever contributions necessary for Republicans to win the House, regardless of whether those contributors lined up exactly with the candidates’ beliefs.

The donations to all three congressmen appear to come from joint fundraising committee Protect the House, which was set up earlier this year largely to protect vulnerable House Republicans, including Reps. Will Hurd, R-Texas, John Culberson, R-Texas and Andy Barr, R-Ky. Protect the House gave an additional $44,000 to both Denham and Knight and about $37,000 to Valadao.

Other California Republicans in Clinton-won districts such as Reps. Mimi Walters and Dana Rohrabacher did not receive contributions from Mercer and the other Trump loyalists.

Denham’s office did not return a request for comment.

Matt Rexroad, a spokesman for Knight’s campaign, said Knight “hasn’t met with Robert Mercer or the others and does not know any of them personally.”

Valadao’s campaign confirmed the donation came from the joint fundraising committee and declined to comment on a follow up question on if Valadao had ever met with Mercer or others personally.

Clinton won the Valadao and Knight districts by particularly wide margins. She carried Denham’s district more narrowly.

Democrats have shown they’re looking for any openings to tie the Republicans to Trump, in a state where the president is enormously unpopular.

Following Trump’s tweet last month that there would be no more deal on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA, the term for immigrants seeking citizenship who came to the U.S. as children, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee called on the three Republicans by name to respond to “Trump’s latest attacks.”