In summary

Charter school advocates financed Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign for governor with more than $22 million.

Wealthy charter school advocates spent $22.43 million in a failed independent campaign to get former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa into the runoff for governor, and ended with a debt of $620,782, final campaign finance filings show.

Teachers unions and other labor groups teamed with a few wealthy donors, health insurer Blue Shield and Pacific Gas & Electric, to spend $6.6 million to help the top vote-getter, Democrat Gavin Newsom, campaign finance reports filed earlier this week show.

The pro-Villaraigosa campaign spent $16 million to boost the former LA mayor; $4 million to attack Newsom; and $1.89 million to muddy second-place finisher, Republican John Cox. Villaraigosa placed third, 840,000 votes behind Cox.

The biggest winners: television stations. Canal Partners, a company that purchases airtime, grossed $15.9 million but spent most of that on television ad buys.

This story originally appeared in WhatMatters, our daily roundup of the most important policy and politics news in California. Subscribe here.

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Dan Morain joined CalMatters in March 2018. He is the former editorial page editor of The Sacramento Bee. Morain also spent 27 years at The Los Angeles Times, and has covered the Capitol since 1992.