Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom outside Philippe restaurant in Los Angeles on June 22, 2018.

In summary

Gavin Newsom ended June with $11.1 million in his campaign account, compared with John Cox’s $1.46 million, a total puffed up by $500,000 of Cox’s own wealth delivered on the last day of June.

Democrat Gavin Newsom tapped a rich vein of small-dollar donors as he vastly outraised Republican John Cox in the race for governor, the latest campaign finance reports show.

Newsom collected almost $1.8 million from people who gave $500 or less and nearly half of his 21,396 separate donations through June 30 were for less than $100. CALmatters Laurel Rosenhall detailed the small donor trend in this recent story.

Cox, a wealthy businessman who is helping to fund his campaign, received 1,627 donations of less than $100 and a total of $634,646 from people who gave $500 or less.

Cox is beating Newsom in one category: donors who list their occupation as retired. He received $676,409 from 3,005 retirees compared with Newsom’s $634,540 from 769 self-identified retirees.

Why it matters: A relatively small number give the maximum donation allowed under state law, $29,000. But candidates can return multiple times to people who give small sums. Those small donors help fuel campaigns, particularly on the national level.

P.S. Newsom ended June with $11.1 million in his campaign account, compared with Cox’s $1.46 million, a total puffed up by $500,000 of Cox’s own wealth delivered on the last day of June. Since July 1, Newsom has raised at least $767,700, compared with Cox’s $197,500.

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.