Fresno council candidate benefits from $1.5M PAC he cofounded. Why fellow Dems are upset
A candidate running for Fresno City Council has benefitted from the financial backing of a political action committee he cofounded — a PAC some political experts say stands out for its high overhead expenses and relatively sparse political spending.
Youth Save Democracy, a PAC that aims to mobilize young Democratic voters across the nation’s college campuses, donated the maximum allowable limit of $5,500 to its cofounder, Nav Gurm, a 26-year-old attorney running in the competitive District 7 council race.
One of the PAC’s cofounders, Johnathon Burrows, is a former Fresno City Hall staffer who enlisted Gurm as a campaign consultant in an unsuccessful bid to unseat former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield). Burrows, a Democrat, suspended his campaign before the congressional primary and, in January 2024, repurposed the funds he raised to start Youth Save Democracy.
Burrows and Gurm previously worked in the office of District 7’s current seatholder, Councilmember Nelson Esparza, and each has received five-figure consulting contracts with Youth Save Democracy.
According to its website, The PAC’s mission is to mobilize young voters to strengthen democracy, protect voting rights and fight against authoritarianism in America. Gurm said the youth-led PAC has helped activate dozens of college campus Young Democrats chapters across the country, as well as register Gen Z voters and support young candidates running for public office.
But experts say Youth Save Democracy’s spending on political strategy consultants and operating costs is “unusually high” compared to its political contributions toward candidates for elected office.
Political peers in Fresno County on both sides of the political aisle also have noted that much of the funds raised nationwide by the PAC for political spending has been funneled toward local Fresno elections and candidates. The PAC’s cofounders have also personally benefited financially from the funds raised, as political candidates and consultants.
Gurm said in an interview with The Bee that Youth Save Democracy does not shy away from the fact that it supports young candidates in the region because creating a bluer, more Democratic, Central Valley is in part why the PAC was created. He downplayed some of the criticism, saying it came from a few voices within the local Democratic Party, and said the necessary firewalls are in place to ensure his personal campaign and his political consulting work don’t intermingle.
“I think the extra scrutiny on Youth Save Democracy and whatnot has been a product of me running for council,” Gurm said.
The Bee analyzed Youth Save Democracy’s public financial records filed with the Federal Elections Commission and fundraising emails, as well as conducted more than a dozen interviews with PAC founders, affiliates, nonpartisan campaign finance watchdogs and members of Fresno’s political community.
‘Local Democrats are concerned’
A lion’s share of the PAC’s spending — 83% — is used for operational costs.
Between Jan. 1, 2025 and March 31, Youth Save Democracy spent $1.45 million of its $1.74 million total expenditure to pay for political consultants, texting software, legal compliance, fundraising software, website software and more, according to the Federal Elections Commission.
During that same period, the PAC only spent about $297,159 on political races, according to county, state and federal data. About 40% of the spending that went toward local and state races, or $58,800, went toward Fresno political entities, nonprofits and candidates, including Gurm, according to the latest FEC data.
Spending on political consultants has been a noticeable line item of their expenses. Esparza, earned $41,000 as a consultant in 2024, as well as a maximum campaign contribution to his state assembly race. Since 2025, Youth Save Democracy has paid six Fresno area consultants nearly half a million dollars for political and digital consulting work.
Some, like Esparza, said it’s important to provide political engagement opportunities to young people and that the organization’s impact has been a positive one.
“I’m incredibly proud of the work YSD has done throughout the years to build a bench,” he said.
Others are worried about the impact the organization could have on local politics.
“Many local Democrats are concerned about the ethics of using so much money from a national PAC to financially benefit so many local individuals, their friends, their consulting firms, and their friends planning to run for office,” Dee Barnes, an alternate for the Fresno County Democratic Central Committee, said in a statement to The Bee.
How did Youth Save Democracy get started?
The race for the 20th Congressional District seat, then held by House Speaker McCarthy, an ally of President Donald Trump, was an uphill battle from the start for Burrows in the solidly Republican district that encompasses parts of Fresno, Kern, Kings and Tulare counties.
Still, Burrows, a first-time political candidate and former public relations director for Esparza’s office, aggressively raised money from a base of donors nationwide after he announced his candidacy in February 2023.
Ten months later, after McCarthy announced his retirement, Burrows announced on Dec. 13, 2023 that he was suspending his campaign in order for a fellow Democrat in the race to make it onto the ballot. His campaign raised a total of $672,855 by the end of 2023, according to campaign records.
Gurm, who worked on Burrows’ campaign, said the goal was to “hold McCarthy’s feet to the fire and not allow him to get distracted by the national stuff, and still remember that he has a district to serve.”
“John (Burrows) ran for Congress to also work on flipping local seats in the hopes of creating a bluer Central Valley to one day flip the Congressional seats that don’t seem very flippable right now,” Gurm said.
Less than a month after dropping out of the race, on Jan. 11, 2024, Burrows’ campaign committee fund was renamed Youth For Democracy, according to FEC filings.
Burrows currently serves as the top communications official for the Central Unified School District.
Youth Save Democracy awarded one Central Unified trustee a $3,000 political strategy consulting contract in 2023; they also made four campaign contributions in 2024 totalling $7,000 to another.
Michael Beckel, director of money in politics reform at Issue One, a nonprofit seeking to reduce the influence of money in politics, said it’s not uncommon for an unsuccessful losing candidate to convert their war chest into a PAC.
“PACs give politicians a perch from which they can continue to influence elections and support like-minded candidates,” Beckel said in an email.
Experts say it’s not uncommon for PACs to be administered by consultants. Because PACs are loosely regulated at the federal level, there are few limitations on how its funds can be spent, Beckel and Holman said.
But what is uncommon is that Youth Save Democracy spends about 80% of its budget on operational costs.
“That’s unusually high,” Beckel, of Issue One said. “Donors and potential donors might have serious questions and legitimate concerns if a PAC spends an unusually high portion of its funds on administrative costs.”
Burrows and Gurm said they don’t think this is a fair assessment. Their operations expenses may be higher than traditional PACs because they directly employ young people and support direct advocacy work such as voter registration campaigns on college campuses nationwide. Youth Save Democracy isn’t the type of PAC that is strictly focused on political contributions, they said. The group does “messaging and all kinds of other stuff,” Gurm said.
“A lot of the work we’ve done is direct engagement, which doesn’t fit neatly since it’s not directly for a candidate,” Gurm said. “So there’s work that gets grouped in the quote, unquote consulting.”
National money, local politics
Since 2024, Youth Save Democracy has contributed to several Fresno-area politicians, from newcomers in rural communities to young Fresno City Council candidates to familiar Fresno politicians seeking higher state office.
Gurm said cultivating and supporting young talent to run for office is part of their mission.
“We’re from the Central Valley, and doing good work in our backyard is a priority. Bench-building is a priority,” Gurm said. “We’ve supported young candidates running for local office across California and here in the Central Valley, too.”
One political candidate that benefited from the PAC’s money was Gurm himself.
According to city records, on Dec. 12, 2024, Gurm received the first donation to his City Council campaign from Youth Save Democracy for $5,500.
In order to comply with state law as a political candidate, Gurm said he is not involved in any political spending decisions at the state or local level – including the decision to contribute to his own campaign.
Gurm said he stepped down as the PAC’s treasurer as soon as he launched his city council campaign. He remains involved with the PAC’s federal organizing work as a consultant through his Five River Strategies consulting business.
The group’s treasurer Gobinder Pandher, a medical student, said in an email to The Bee that Youth Save Democracy contributed to Gurm’s race “based on an assessment of his viability as a candidate, the youth and energy he brings to the race, and his alignment with our organization’s value.”
Six months after receiving his contribution, Gurm emailed a Youth Save Democracy email list on June 27, 2025, asking for a donation to his Fresno City Council race with links to his campaign fundraiser, according to an email reviewed by The Bee.
“After Donald Trump’s re-election, I knew I needed to do something more to defend the communities most vulnerable,” he said in his email.
Craig Holman, a lobbyist on ethics, lobbying and campaign finance rules for nonprofit progressive consumer watchdog Public Citizen, said it’s uncommon, but not illegal, to see a candidate set up an outside PAC that provides a financial contribution to their campaigns down the line.
PACs are loosely regulated at the federal level and there are few limitations on how they spend their money, according to experts. But some are concerned with how much is spent on local elections instead of federal races, and whether the message sold to donors matches the group’s work and political spending.
“It just doesn’t smell right,” said retired assemblymember Juan Arambula, who’s supporting Gurm’s opponent, Ariana Martinez Lott, in the upcoming primary election. “Donors, I assume, are giving to impact congressional races. That’s the pitch.”
Gurm said the organization is transparent with its donors, who understand there’s a level of discretion that comes with supporting their work. The PAC includes a disclaimer on all fundraisers that they support candidates at all levels of government nationwide.
Plus he said, the group is preparing to get much more involved with competitive congressional races after the June 2 primary elections, especially the push to overturn David Valadao (R-Hanford)’s 22nd district tossup seat and defend Adam Gray (D-Merced)’s 13th district seat.
“The work is being done,” Gurm said. “The amounts are really small, but we did a direct mail voter registration program in 10 swing congressional races across the country last year.”
How do other PACs operate locally?
Holman, of Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, said PACs are usually set up for a specific political purpose and length of time.
Other political action committees donating to local races in the region, such as the recently-formed Central Valley Council, are formed locally and funded by a few primarily local businesses.
Gurm estimates the PAC has supported 40-70 Young College Democrat clubs across the nation with canvassing materials and other resources to help with tabling and recruitment events. The group hired a campus organizing director, who was paid $22,000 for political strategy consulting between 2023 and 2024.
Supporters say Youth Save Democracy’s model and expenditures are similar to that of moveon.org, a progressive nation organization that engages in grassroots advocacy through its 501(c)(4) organization. The group also supports progressive candidates through its political action committee which is funded by hundreds of thousands of small donations instead of operating like traditional PACs that “funnel industry contributions to candidates in exchange for access.”
Gurm said that raising questions about the PAC’s operations are fair and that he’s confident the organization’s operations are transparent. He says he’s proud of the work they do across the country, and thinks the model might be new for a city like Fresno.
He thinks the scrutiny following his political work is tied to his campaign.
“At the end of the day, I don’t have DUIs. I don’t have sex scandals,” Gurm said. “They don’t have other s— to attack me on.”
This story was originally published May 18, 2026 at 4:21 PM.
CORRECTION: The story was updated to correct the year Youth Save Democracy awarded a consulting contract to a Central Unified trustee.
