Taavi Taijala, Eureka’s second-biggest donor

If you’ve read the Outpost for any length of time, looked at local Facebook groups, or merely participated in living in Humboldt at all, you know who Rob and Cherie Arkley are. The millionaire family is, by far, Eureka’s most prolific political donors. In the 2024 election cycle, they donated a sum of $134,370 to federal campaigns and parties, spending almost triple the amount of money second-highest donor in Eureka did. 

But hold up! Who’s this fella who managed to drop enough money to be second to the Arkleys? 

He’s Taavi Taijala, a software engineer for Google. He’s donated 32 times this election cycle alone for the sum of $54,215 to just one organization, the left-leaning Movement Voter PAC. His wife Joann donated another $9,000 for a grand total of over $63,000, all to the Movement Voter PAC. 

The reason Taijala donated that much is pretty simple: He wants Kamala Harris to win the presidential race, even if it costs him more than a year’s median salary in Humboldt County.

“The [PAC] posted a long entry on their website back in December,” Taijala told the Outpost earlier this week. “The part that stuck with me was: ‘Find your no regret number. Donate the amount of money where if the election goes the wrong way, you won’t regret not having donated.’”

Taijala, 35, was born in Humboldt and graduated from Humboldt State University in 2014 with degrees in mathematics and French. He got an M.S. in computer science from the University of Minnesota in 2017 and attempted a Ph.D at UM, but stopped because it was too research-focused. He moved back to Eureka soon after.

Taijala first decided he needed to start donating after Trump won the 2016 election. 

“I guess it became clear in 2016 that political norms were more degraded than I thought they were,” Taijala said. “Over the past 20 years or so, things have been getting more polarized than they used to be. 2016 with Trump was kind of like ‘Whoa.’ Nothing is off the table, and you can’t expect any of the rules to be followed or any of the norms to be upheld. That was probably a wake-up call for lots of people.”

Taijala first heard about the Movement Voter PAC when he was working on his master’s degree in Minnesota. It’s a progressive organization that donates its earnings to local organizations who focus on getting minority groups, such as people of color, LGBTQ people or immigrants, to vote in close elections. It focuses on federal battleground states and raised over $42.3 million total during this election cycle. Taijala chose to donate his money there because they invest in local groups that stick around after elections, instead of politicians that promise a lot during their campaigns and don’t deliver. Taijala also said that they know better than he would where his money will have the largest impact.

He made his first donation to the Movement Voter PAC in May 2022 for $500, then another donation for $2,162 a month later, then another $500 a few days after that. For a while, that was the pattern — $500 monthly, sometimes twice a month. Eventually, Taijala ramped it up. From June 28 to July 30, 2024, Taijala donated $10,000 five different times for an even $50,000. 

“This year, with the election, it just feels very important,” Taijala said. “I kind of think of it like a civic duty … this is something I should do so that hopefully things are better for everyone. What’s the purpose of having more money if you’re living in a world you don’t want to live in?”

Taijala said that if he wasn’t donating the money, he’d probably just be saving it or donating it to charity. 

Despite the pile of money he’s given to the Movement Voter PAC, Taijala is humble about its potential impact.

“It’s such a small amount in the grand scheme of things,” Taijala said. “It’s a lot of money for us and for most people, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not much. I think oftentimes, you have a collective action problem. If you’re an individual, the individual things you do are almost never going to be the one thing that makes a difference. So it’s easy to not do anything, because it’s like ‘My one vote or my one donation is not going to make the difference one way or the other.’ But if everyone thinks that way, then it does make a difference.”