Dark money has become an influential and possibly determinative factor in modern American politics. Increasingly, it flows like a river through a network of ostensibly nonpartisan not-for-profits that, in actuality, are actively engaged in pushing and opposing partisan policies.
Orange County is home to a number of such political NGOs of varying sizes, the bulk of which are progressive left.
One of these is a group called SayVote (Santa Ana Youth Vote), founded by Diego Sarmiento.
A Santa Ana native, Sarmiento is an accomplished and well-spoken young man with a political science degree from UCLA. He is now enrolled at Harvard Law School.
He is also an intensely partisan progressive Democrat and the son of Vince Sarmiento, a former Santa Ana mayor and council member and currently a member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. The elder Sarmiento is the county’s leading left-wing politician and is actively building a political machine in central Orange County.
According to its mission statement, SayVote is “focused on educating, registering, and mobilizing young residents in Santa Ana.”
And that is at least part of what the group does. In 2024 and again in January 2026, the 40,000-student Santa Ana Unified School District signed an MOU with SayVote for “No-Cost Special Services.”
Under the MOU, SayVote “provides peer-to-peer presentations on voter registration and re-registration to all juniors and seniors at every SAUSD high school, two times a year, during California’s official High School Voter Education Weeks.”
Why SayVote — other than that it is headed by the son of a county supervisor who is a political patron of SAUSD Board of Education members?
According to the MOU, SAUSD “has determined that the Services are not available within the District, cannot be performed satisfactorily by District employees, or are of such a highly specialized or technical nature that the necessary expert knowledge, experience, and ability are not available through the District.”
In other words, SAUSD is saying that telling eligible students how to fill out a voter registration form requires such “highly specialized” knowledge that district employees are unable to do it, and so it must be contracted out to a college-age political activist.
While SayVote is providing voter registration and civic engagement services at “no cost,” the MOU requires SayVotes to carry several insurance policies: $1,000,000 in general liability insurance; $1 million in business auto liability insurance; $2 million in abuse-molestation insurance; and $2,000,000 in professional liability insurance.
Insurance policies cost money, and the MOU does not waive the requirement for SayVotes to carry them. This raises the question of where SayVote gets its funding.
We contacted the SAUSD asking for documentation that SayVote has met those insurance requirements. District spokesman Fermin Leal responded that the purchasing department told him “for this year we need to make a change on the contract as the scope of work changed. This means insurance requirements have changed.”
So, on January 27, the staff agendizes the MOU for approval. After California Courier begins asking questions about the contract – including the insurance requirements – the SAUSD suddenly decides it needs to change those requirements.
An interesting coincidence.
As part of its 2026 push, SayVote is recruiting high school students from Santa Ana, as well as Anaheim and Garden Grove, who are interested in “local civic engagement, education, organizing, and political advocacy.”
These fellowships run from March through May. Upon completion of the fellowships, SayVote pays the students $300 and incorporates them into a larger “cohort of other Santa Ana students who are also passionate about civic engagement and advocacy.”
Those $300 fellowship awards don’t grow on trees. Again: who is providing SayVote with the funding?
While registering eligible students to vote isn’t necessarily political, SayVote does not hide the fact that it is intensely political and intensely progressive. While not explicitly partisan, SayVote’s political advocacy places it squarely within the left wing of Democratic Party. Its politics are tightly aligned with those of the current SAUSD Board of Education, which is completely controlled by four left-wing trustees.
No other youth political organization has similar access to the SAUSD student body. Turning Point USA — which has registered millions of voters — does not have an MOU with SAUSD to provide similar “civic engagement” services.
Which raises another question: SayVote’ paid fellows are required to give campus “presentations on the importance of civic advocacy, voter registration, and engagement.” So when a Santa Ana high school student asks the presenter for examples of civic advocacy, does anyone believe these SayVotes fellows will talk about advocating for reducing taxation, protecting the 2nd Amendment, or expanding school choice?
Progressive SayVote will recruit or attract progressive students, who will, in turn, impart their progressive views to SAUSD students and recruit students for progressive causes and candidates — including Santa Ana City Council and SAUSD Board of Education members allied with Diego Sarmiento’s father who are on the ballot this November.
SayVote is currently engaged in a campaign to persuade the Santa Ana City Council to adopt highly restrictive campaign finance regulations in order to fight “special interest influence” and promote transparency — ironic, given that SayVotes is acting as a special political interest while providing zero transparency in its own campaign finances.
Social media posts on SayVote’ and Diego Sarmiento’s accounts lean very heavily to the left and raise questions about the propriety of giving exclusive access to SAUSD students to a political group whose views are well to the left of mainstream voter opinion. Not only is similar access not given to moderate or conservative organizations with more experience in voter registration activity, but there is also the critical question of who is funding SayVotes’ clearly political mission.
Brenda Lebsack, the lone conservative on the SAUSD Board of Education, raised these questions during the January 27 Board meeting where the current MOU was approved, saying she had been contacted by community members concerned about the group’s political partisanship and biases.
“They’re supposed to be non-partisan but some community members have concerns because of the social media platform that it’s not non-partisan, that there’s definitely been a bias and a one-sidedness on their social media platforms,” said Lebsack, not those concerns extended to the fact that Diego Sarmiento is the son of Supervisor Vince Sarmiento.
“Diego’s dad, Vince Sarmiento is personally invested in our local election process because he is a local politician. So that could be a definite conflict of interest,” Lebsack noted.
SayVote does not have a website or a physical address. There is no address on its MOUs with SAUSD. None of its social media accounts disclose whether it is a nonprofit, and they provide no contact information other than a Gmail address.
When Lebsack queried district staff about the actual legal status of SayVotes, they were dismayingly unable to answer.
“Can staff clarify the organization’s legal status under this MOU? Are they a 501(c)3, a 501(c)4, a PPAC, or another entity?,” Lebsack asked.
“I’ll have to get back to you on the status,” an administrator told Lebsack.
As we went to press, Lebsack told us she is still waiting for an answer.
We reached out to Diego Sarmiento via email. We asked where SayVote obtains funding to pay its fellowships; whether it is a 501(c)(3) or a recognized nonprofit organization; whether it has a physical location or office space; and other questions related to its organizational existence.
Several days passed, we contacted SayVote through its Instagram and several hours later, received a response from SayVote co-director, Mia Verdin, who said “SAY Vote is currently a project under Omprakash, a 501(c)3 which partners with the Strauss Foundation to help budding organizations.”
“SAY Vote has no office space or a physical address. Our board is made up of recent college graduates and college students. We usually meet over Zoom,” Verdin said.
Verdin has not responded to our questions about who their board members are.
In describing SayVote as a “project under Omprakash,” Verdin likely means that Omprakash is the “fiscal sponsor” of SayVote. In the progressive non-profit world, fiscal sponsorship is an increasingly popular mechanism for launching activist groups.
Under such an arrangement, the fiscal sponsor – in this case, Omprakash – handles all the back-office functions: administration, payroll, finances, compliance. This allows the sponsored organization – in this case, SayVote – to focus on activism.
Who Are the Donald Strauss Foundation and Omprakash?
Omprakash gave SayVote $12,999 in 2024, while the Strauss Foundation gave $15,000 in 2024-25.
You can tell a lot about the ideological orientation and goals of a grant-giving organization by their donation patterns.For example: judging by its grant recipient, Omprakash favors funding racially-exclusive social justice organizations:
Feed Black Futures: “A Black, queer- led organization committed to food justice, sovereignty, and healing within our communities through a Just Transitions framework.”
And yes, a “Just Transitions framework” is as Marxist as it sounds: to “build economic and political power” in order to tear down “the profit-driven, growth-dependent, industrial economy – rooted in the myth of white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, consumerism, and ableism” that has been the built on “centuries of global plunder.”
Teens of Color Abroad: “a nonprofit dedicated to offering students of color immersive global language learning and cultural exchange opportunities.”
Diaspora Family Healing Network: “a Greater Seattle based non-profit agency dedicated to assisting historically excluded migrant BIPOC families in Washington State who are disproportionately impacted by racism and mental health disorders.”
Funding For Social Change: “founded to support nonprofits and grassroots organizations which are led by and for underserved communities, including people of color, women, trans and queer people, people with disabilities, low-income people, and those without access to food, housing, and education.” Again, excluding disadvantaged people who don’t fit into a victim pigeonhole
The Root Experience Collective: “amplify BIPOC & historically underrepresented voices in the arts, and through all disciplines.”
Among Omprakash’s funders is billionaire hedge fund manager Stephen Mandel Jr., “a prolific donor to Democratic politicians and donates millions to Democratic leadership PACs each election cycle,” according to InfluenceWatch.com.
When contacted this recently, Lebsack reiterated her concerns while noting she was not speaking on behalf of the district or the Board.
“As a SAUSD board member, I feel this SayVote partnership is a conflict of interest because its leader is the son of a Santa Ana politician,” she said.
At the end of the day, it is concerning that the Santa Ana Unified School District (governed by political/ideological allies of Sup. Vince Sarmiento) is extending such unique access and accommodation to a politicized non-profit operated by his son – so much so that the insurance requirements of the MOU are apparently being altered in response to our journalistic inquiries.
