LOS GATOS, CA: $26.5M on 76,090 FEC receipts

Reading $26,534,469 as a city-string roll-up

The headline pair is $26,534,469 and 76,090 lines. The implied average is about $349. Cite both numbers. Quoting only the dollars drops the line-count shape of the Los Gatos book.

Santa Clara County’s Los Gatos string is separate from San Jose, Saratoga, and Campbell on the FEC city key. Filers typed LOS GATOS in the city field. LobbyVault summed rows with that string and state CA. The city total can include a PAC or joint-fundraising committee address when that is the city filers typed. LobbyVault does not recode those rows out of the city string.

If a newsroom map paints Los Gatos together with Saratoga and Campbell, the FEC file still splits them. San Jose too. This extract’s only city total is $26,534,469 on 76,090 LOS GATOS, CA rows, mean near $349.

Why LOS GATOS on the receipt is not a census of Los Gatos

Searchers often want “how much did people in Los Gatos give.” The honest citation is narrower: itemized federal receipts with contributor city LOS GATOS, CA total $26,534,469 across 76,090 contributions. Dropping “itemized” and “contributor city” inflates the claim.

Party is not in this packet. Do not attach a partisan reading to $26,534,469. Occupation and employer may appear on named receipts on the city hub; they are not rolled up here.

Outside the Los Gatos itemized book

$26,534,469 is not spending by Los Gatos candidates. A candidate who lives in Los Gatos can raise money from other cities. A donor row tagged LOS GATOS, CA can go to a committee anywhere.

A mean near $349 does not describe a median resident of Los Gatos. Means move with a few large lines.

Postal confusion with San Jose, Saratoga, or Campbell is why the city field is a poor residency proxy. $26,534,469 counts rows that stored LOS GATOS, CA. 76,090 lines. About $349 each. Neighbor names need their own hubs.

Los Gatos versus other South Bay strings

Los Gatos is a mid-mean book on this extract: 76,090 lines produce $26,534,469, a mean near $349. Mid-mean is not the same as unique people.

Comparing Los Gatos’s mean to another city is only valid on the same series: contributor city, itemized federal receipts. Mixing in California state data breaks the comparison.

A Los Gatos total of $26,534,469 does not absorb Saratoga, Campbell, or San Jose. Those names are other city strings when filers typed them. State CA stays on the citation so LOS GATOS, CA is not merged with a same-named place elsewhere.

City total versus postal codes in CA

76,090 city-field lines can spread across many ZIPs or cluster in a few. This packet does not list those ZIPs. Open the ZIP directory and the live Los Gatos hub rather than guessing the split.

After an amendment wave, recheck both the city hub and any ZIP you compared. Snapshots drift independently.

Because this packet carries only city, state, dollar total, and contribution count, every other story about Los Gatos politics sits outside the extract. That includes candidate quality, issue fights, and local election results. This guide stays on the two numbers FEC.gov supplied for the city field.

Source tables for $26,534,469

A mean of about $349 is division of $26,534,469 by 76,090. It is fair to report as arithmetic. It is not fair to report as a typical resident of Los Gatos.

Internal links on this page go only to the Los Gatos city hub, the all-cities directory, and the ZIP directory. Those are the three paths that match this packet.

Los Gatos’s $26,534,469 across 76,090 contributions is a South Bay city field, mean near $349. San Jose, Saratoga, and Campbell are neighboring strings, not subsets. Santa Clara County is not summed here. Repeat gifts add rows. California state-office receipts are omitted. Cite $26,534,469 with 76,090 from FEC.gov aggregates indexed on LobbyVault.

Researchers citing Los Gatos should keep Santa Clara County off the sentence unless they add San Jose, Saratoga, and Campbell on purpose. The live Los Gatos table can show named committees that this snapshot does not list. A later FEC extract can move $26,534,469 or 76,090 without this guide rewriting itself. Treat the mean near $349 as division only. California state-office receipts sit outside both packet facts. If a ZIP page for a Los Gatos code disagrees with the city hub, quote both keys rather than forcing a match. The 76,090-line count still is not a headcount of Los Gatos people.

Questions

How much is itemized from contributor city Los Gatos?

FEC.gov itemized receipts listing contributor city LOS GATOS, CA total $26,534,469 across 76,090 contributions in the LobbyVault aggregate. That figure is a city-string roll-up of federal Schedule A rows, not a unique-donor count and not a census of people who live in Los Gatos. Unitemized gifts sit outside it.

What does the Los Gatos contribution count mean?

LobbyVault counts 76,090 itemized contributions for LOS GATOS, CA. That is a line count, not a headcount of unique people. Repeat gifts, redesignations, and memo entries can add rows without adding new donors. This packet does not publish a unique-donor figure, so 76,090 should not be quoted as a population. The matching dollar total on the same extract is $26,534,469.

Does the Los Gatos total include only residents?

No. The city is the contributor-city value on the FEC itemization. Filers typed LOS GATOS with state CA. Office addresses and mail that list Los Gatos can be part of $26,534,469 when that is the city string on the receipt. LobbyVault does not recode the field into a residential-only book. The 76,090-line count follows the same rule.

Are Los Gatos numbers from FEC.gov?

The numbers come from FEC.gov itemized contribution aggregates indexed on LobbyVault: $26,534,469 and 76,090 lines for LOS GATOS, CA. Original reports remain on FEC.gov. Unitemized federal gifts and non-federal filings from CA are outside both figures. If a later extract disagrees with this snapshot, the Commission’s filing controls. The mean of about $349 is arithmetic from those two packet facts.