Reno crypto CEO, vocal election skeptic donated to Stockton mayor candidate, records show

Six weeks before a tight March 5 primary, Stockton mayoral candidate Christina Fugazi received her largest campaign donation yet.

It came from an unexpected source: the Nevada-based Republican cryptocurrency businessman Robert Beadles, known for his prolific claims about alleged election fraud.

On Jan. 22, Beadles gave Fugazi's election committee $5,500, campaign finance records show.

“He just said, well, that some of the things that I said resonated with him,” Fugazi said Monday. “I was super excited, because it came at a really good time.”

A former two-term city council member and state assembly candidate, Fugazi is running against San Joaquin County Supervisor Tom Patti in November for the nonpartisan mayor's seat. Fugazi is a registered Democrat, she said.

Fugazi's is the only 2024 council campaign Beadles has donated to, records show. Fugazi has raised $13,100 in 2024, the latest records show. Patti has raised $18,900 this year.

But Beadles has also donated to at least five other local politicians in recent years, including supervisor candidates Steve Colangelo and Dino Ballin in 2022.

"I was trying to figure out who the heck he was," said Supervisor Steve Ding, who ran against Colangelo. "I was like, why was this guy from Reno (donating so much)?"

Beadles donated to Patti's Congress campaign in 2022, records show. He also supported former Mayor Anthony Silva and former council candidate Sam Fant in 2016, The Record reported.

Beadles did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him about his support for Fugazi's campaign.

Beadles' political goals are arguably clearer across the state border in Washoe County, Nevada, where he moved from Lodi in 2019.

Back in Lodi, he'd started a handful of businesses — in areas from construction road signs to a video greeting card company — and run for Congress, the Reno-Gazette Journal reported. He later founded a cryptocurrency wallet app.

In 2022, Beadles was part of a Washoe County Republican Party leadership committee that passed a declaration claiming President Joe Biden's election was fraudulent, Reuters reported. He's accused Washoe County's top election official of "treason" and of counting fraudulent votes, the outlet reported, and filed multiple election lawsuits.

The Nevada Secretary of State's office said it found "no evidence of widespread voter fraud" in 2022, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.

"We have absolutely no transparency to our elections. It's all fake. It's an illusion," Beadles said in a 2023 video posted on 209 Times, a social media platform owned by a Stockton political consultant. A civil grand jury recently accused the platform of intimidating elected officials and city hall workers.

In an interview Thursday, Fugazi said she does not share Beadles' denial of Biden's win in 2020. "I don't necessarily subscribe to the fact that Biden did not legitimately win that election."

"But are there issues with some voting places? I would say yes."

In fact, Fugazi had been unaware of Beadles' election denial views, she told The Record. "That completely caught me off guard," she said.

The candidate said she first met Beadles in 2021 at a fundraiser for Patti's Congress run.

The crypto businessman's interest in Fugazi's political career may have begun at the fundraiser, she said, when she told him about her experience requesting a recount after running in the state assembly primary in 2020.

That March, county election officials determined that former Supervisor Kathy Miller narrowly beat Fugazi for a spot in the general election runoff.

Fugazi asked for a recount. She sued former Registrar of Voters Melinda Dubroff, claiming the registrar wrongly excluded 35 ballots from the count due to problems verifying their signatures, according to her lawsuit.

Fugazi argued Dubroff could have verified the signatures under the longer election deadlines California allowed due to COVID-19, but that she rushed to certify the results.

County lawyers argued Dubroff handled the 35 ballots correctly, and denied that the certification was rushed, court records show. A judge denied Fugazi's request to include those ballots in the recount.

"I guess it heightened my concern about whether people's votes were being counted," the candidate said. "It was frustrating to me."

Under current Registrar of Voters Olivia Hale, Fugazi believes in the integrity of San Joaquin County's elections, she said. "I trust Olivia Hale. I don’t have any qualms with her."

According to Fugazi, she and Beadles aren't close. The candidate has seen him at four or five events since Patti's fundraiser, she said.

Unlike election officials in Washoe County, San Joaquin County registrar workers haven't heard from Beadles, Hale said. "No. Not yet."

Record reporter Aaron Leathley covers government accountability. She can be reached at aleathley@recordnet.com or on Twitter @LeathleyAaron. Support local news, subscribe to The Stockton Record at https://www.recordnet.com/subscribenow.

This article originally appeared on The Record: Robert Beadles donated to Fugazi's Stockton mayor campaign