Seth MacFarlane Has Donated Millions to Democrats Since 2005

While Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane’s primary focus is comedy, he “has quietly become one of the largest political donors of his generation in Hollywood,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

What began as a $2,500 check to the Congressional Campaign Committee for the Democrat Party in 2005 has now ballooned into an estimated total of $4.6 million in donations, primarily to the Democrat Party.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

MacFarlane, 45, has donated mostly to Democratic political action committees, while directly supporting a small number of candidates. He was an early supporter of Barack Obama’s first presidential bid. In 2015, he gave $2,700 to Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. A year later, he gave more than $716,700 to two political action committees supporting Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

According to data from OpenSecrets.org, which was outlined in the Times‘ report, MacFarlane gave $2.5 million to the Democrats in 2018 and his company, Fuzzy Door Productions, “ranked second in Hollywood giving behind DreamWorks SKG and ahead of Disney.”

Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, two Hollywood giants who founded DreamWorks, have been known for their generosity when it comes to political donations. The Los Angeles Times noted, “From January 2005 through June 2019, Katzenberg donated $8.4 million to Democrats” and “Spielberg gave $5.9 million, compared with $4.6 million from MacFarlane.”

Aside from supporting Democrat PACs and candidates, the Los Angeles Times also reported, “MacFarlane also gave $2 million to National Public Radio and $500,000 to NPR station KPCC in June 2018 after Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that viewers ignore all other news outlets but his own.”

In an effort to fund candidates who support gay marriage, MacFarlane also made a donation of $200,000 in 2016 to the Human Rights Campaign’s Equality Votes.

In addition to his creation of Family Guy, MacFarlane is known for his work on television shows like The Orville, American Dad, and The Cleveland Show, along movies including, Ted, and Ted 2.