Xavier Becerra’s gubernatorial campaign has returned a $20,000 donation from Alex Xu, the CEO of Lotusland Investment Holdings, the firm developing the sprawling Guenoc Valley resort project straddling Napa and Lake counties. A campaign spokesperson said the contribution, made in September, had been refunded as of Thursday evening, October 29.
The donation drew scrutiny after reporting from the Daily Mail, which identified Alex Xu as the son of Yiming Xu, described as founder and chairman of Lotusland Investment Limited and a founding donor and trustee of Westlake University. The outlet reported that the refund followed its investigation into the contribution and the elder Xu’s affiliations. A Becerra campaign spokesperson also said the campaign had no record of Alex Xu attending any of its fundraising events, according to the same report.
The donation is notable given Becerra’s own history with the Guenoc Valley project. While serving as California attorney general, Becerra’s office filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit challenging development in a wildfire-prone area of Lake County, according to a statement from the California Department of Justice, Office of the Attorney General. The state’s involvement came after the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Native Plant Society sued Lake County over the project in 2020, with the Attorney General’s Office intervening in support of them, as reported by Lake County News.
Years of Litigation Before Final Approval
The legal fight over Guenoc Valley stretched on for years. A Lake County Superior Court judge ruled in January 2022 that the project’s environmental impact report inadequately analyzed community evacuation, Lake County News reported. Then, in October 2024, a California appellate court found that a new environmental review had to be prepared because the earlier document failed to disclose the project’s wildfire ignition risks…