A political influencer has filed a complaint with California's Fair Political Practices Commission accusing Tom Steyer's gubernatorial campaign of failing to notify her of mandatory disclosure requirements and using a nondisclosure agreement to conceal a paid content arrangement, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Reed, who goes by mermaidmamamaggie online and reaches roughly 500,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok, told the Times that the Steyer campaign's payment of $5,000 to her agency covered a March meeting with Steyer, from which she made a video she later removed from social media. Although the contract required Reed to comply with state, federal, and local laws, it did not explicitly state that she was obligated to label any content she created as sponsored.
"In plain terms: the Committee paid for political content, structured it to look like an ordinary creator's organic opinion, and used a non-disclosure agreement to keep the public from learning the truth," the complaint states, according to the Times.
According to the Times, the Steyer campaign acknowledged compensating Reed for the meeting but maintained that whether to produce any content from it was her choice alone.
The complaint also serves as Reed's rebuttal to allegations the Steyer campaign leveled against her earlier in the week, when it accused her of creating paid posts backing Xavier Becerra — Steyer's top Democratic opponent and a former California congressman who also served as U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services — without disclosing any financial arrangement. Reed told the Times she has not received any payment from the Becerra campaign and that her posts supporting him were an honest expression of her own views.
The dispute is part of a broader back-and-forth over paid influencer activity in the California governor's race. The prior week, a pair of Becerra-backing influencers submitted their own complaint to the FPPC, arguing that creators working for the Steyer campaign had not disclosed to audiences that they were being compensated, the Times reported. Steyer's campaign responded by filing a complaint of its own that named both Reed and Jay Gonzalez, a staffer now on the Becerra campaign, alleging that Gonzalez retroactively added sponsorship labels to pro-Becerra posts he had originally published without them, according to the Times.
A 2023 California statute requires anyone paid to create political content on social media to tell their audience who is behind the sponsorship. While that duty to disclose falls on the creator, campaigns that hire influencers must inform them of it. The law provides no criminal, civil, or administrative penalties for violations, but the FPPC is empowered to pursue a court order requiring the offending party to come into compliance, according to the Times.
Heading into the June 2 primary, Becerra has consistently outpolled Steyer by a slim margin, according to the Times.