Charting the money trail in $7 million Honda-Khanna House race

For a political race sold to voters as Silicon Valley's referendum on traditional Democratic Party politics, the region's race for Congress looks an awful lot like a prototypical big-money contest to get to Capitol Hill.

Alleged ethics violations and soap opera-style dramatics aside, a clear business-labor divide has typified the $6.9 million that has flowed into the District 17 race between attorney and challenger Ro Khanna and eight-term incumbent Mike Honda. Individual tech executives and investors are throwing their weight behind challenger Khanna, and labor unions have flocked en masse to Honda.

See the graphic at the bottom of this story for a visual breakdown of the money — from both inside and outside Silicon Valley — financing the Khanna-Honda race.

Though Khanna has personally eschewed political action committees that have sent a whopping $750,000 toward his opponent, both candidates have benefited from a multitude of donors outside their district and big-spending Super PACs investing in attack ads.

Now officially the No. 3 most-expensive race for Congress in California this election cycle, Khanna has slightly outraised Honda by $3.2 million to $3 million. In the most recent federal reports dated Oct. 15, Khanna had spent $4.1 million compared to Honda's $2.7 million, raising the issue of how much money the candidates will have at their disposal in the home stretch before Election Day.

Just this week, an outside group called Californians for Innovation — whose biggest individual donors are former Enron executive turned Texas philanthropist John Arnold and his wife, Laura — spent more than $54,000 on mailers opposing Honda. The group, whose other five-figure donors include venture capitalists from firms like Accel Partners and Cambrian Ventures, has spent a total of $487,891 on the race to date, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Lauren Hepler is the economic development reporter at the Silicon Valley Business Journal.