Shawn Wilson

Developers Skirt Contribution Limits and Funnel Tens of Thousands of Dollars into Fremont Mayor Race

Developers Skirt Contribution Limits and Funnel Tens of Thousands of Dollars into Fremont Mayor Race ACDCC, Politics 1 Response »

Nov 062016

Incumbent Mayor Bill Harrison

Incumbent Fremont Mayor Bill Harrison is a darling of housing developers. He has never seen a development worth questioning, much less voting against. And developers are repaying his generosity with their own, not only directing tens of thousands of dollars directly into his campaign but contributing tens of thousands more to a local Democratic Party organ, money used to produce and send mailers asking Democratic voters to vote for Harrison.

According to campaign finance disclosure forms filed with the California Department of State, the Ohlone Area United Democratic Campaign (OAUDC) has received $60,000 from housing developers in the last two months. It received $5,000 from Summerhill Construction, $10,000 from Sanjeev Acharya, $20,000 from Robson Homes and $25,000 from Ron Zeff, CEO of Carmel Properties. Records show that the OAUDC has spent around $58,000 (including a partly unpaid bill to a printer) on mailers supporting Bill Harrison. Though the Democratic Party has endorsed fifteen candidates in the Ohlone Area, the mailers only feature Bill Harrison.

By going through the Democratic Party, developers supporting Harrison are able to skirt Fremont’s campaign contribution regulations, which cap all contributions to $600 per donor. There are no limits on how much money any single contributor can donate to a political party, however, or on how much said political party can spend on supporting a candidate. The law does prohibit earmarking of contributions to political parties, but as long as winks and nudges substitute subpoenable e-mails, it’s too difficult to prove to deter political money launderers.

In addition to developers, the OAUDC received a $10,000 contribution from the Fremont Police Association and another $10,000 contribution from the Scott Haggerty for Supervisor campaign. Bill Harrison is the Haggerty campaign’s treasurer. As Haggerty is not currently running for office, his campaign does not need to file its own campaign finance reports until the end of the year. Therefore it’s impossible to know if Haggerty’s donation to the OAUDC followed a similar donation to his own campaign from developer interests.

The OAUDC contracted with Shawn Wilson, of Trident Consulting, to do the mailers for Harrison. Wilson happens to be Scott Haggerty’s chief of staff; last year the Grand Jury found that Wilson was pressuring county staff to do “favors” for large contributors to Haggerty’s campaign. On October 28th, Wilson contributed $7500 to the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee (ACDCC). As the ACDCC has yet to disclose any expenditures on behalf of candidates, we don’t yet know what that many is being used for.

If you receive a mailer for Harrison claiming to come from the Democratic Party, beware of who really paid for it.

Conflicted About Conflict of Interest

Conflicted About Conflict of Interest ACDCC No Responses »

Jan 032013

Note: This ar Democrat Donkey ticle was originally published here.

Update on January ACDCC meeting: Members Sworn In and Party officers elected. I cast sole vote against having a paid campaign manager as local party Vice-Chair.

Last night was the first meeting of the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee of the year, as well as the swearing-in of the elected and re-elected members of the Committee. We were sworn in by Senate Majority Leader and San Leandro native Ellen Corbett, in a very uneventful ceremony.

Every member of the Committee, including “ad-hoc” members (Democrats elected to state and national offices who live in Alameda county), picks an alternate who can represent them when they can’t make it to the meetings. The alternates then have to be approved by the whole committee. My alternate this term is Tim Holmes. He is the owner of Zocalo Coffeehouse in San Leandro (where many a Democratic event has taken place), and a co-founder of the San Leandro Community Action Network. He is one of the most influential political voices in San Leandro, but he is also very liberal, perhaps even as liberal as I am. He is a better communicator, however.

We also voted to approve the Committee’s delegates to the state convention (basically, all the Committee members plus some of the alternates) and for Committee officers (Chair, Vice Chair, Recording Secretary, Corresponding Secretary and Treasurer). All of the latter ran unopposed and all but one were unanimously approved.

The one exception was Royce Kelley, who was running to be re-appointed Vice-Chair of the Committee. He is currently one of the state party’s regional directors. There was one vote against him: mine. I could not in good conscience vote for him, given the conflict of interest that holding his position signifies.

Royce Kelley is one of the principals at Alliance Campaigns Strategies. He and Angela Ramirez-Holmes, another member of the Committee, specialize in managing the political campaigns of Democrats running for office in Alameda county.

Candidates for local office usually seek the endorsement of the Democratic Party as a “seal of approval” to use in their literature; in the case of local candidates for non-partisan office, this means endorsement by the county Central Committee. Candidates are first interviewed by the Committee’s Executive Board, which is composed of the Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer, Secretaries and the District Vice-Chairs (each AD delegation gets to appoint its own vice-chair). The Executive Board then votes on which candidates should be put on the consent calendar to get the party’s endorsement. While it’s possible for regular Committee members to pull candidates from the consent calendar, it’s pretty rare. Usually, if you make it to the consent calendar, the endorsement is yours.

Both Kelley and Ramírez-Holmes are members of the Executive Board, as was their former partner, Shawn Wilson. Robin Torello, the Committee Chair, is very close to Kelley and they often speak with one voice. What this means is that Alliance Campaigns has an inordinate amount of influence on who gets the Democratic endorsement in Alameda county.

Now, I will not presume to say that Kelley and Ramirez-Holmes vote or lobby for the candidates that have hired them. However, they do seem to have represented quite a few candidates that have gotten the Democratic endorsement, even when running against more progressive candidates. And many candidates believe that they must hire Alliance Campaign if they want to get the Democratic endorsement, or at least prevent their opponents from getting it. I find this very problematic from an ethical point of view. A democratic system that is not or has the appearance of not being clean, an endorsement system that is based on something other than an objective evaluation of who is the best candidate for that often, is a corrupt and undemocratic system. And that’s what I ran to stand up against.

I understand why even fellow committee members who agree with me, are reluctant to speak out loud about this matter. If you hope to have a political career, it’s not a good idea to make powerful enemies. But I also believe that we need to vocally stand for what we believe, and I believe in a fair and open process

Marga Lacabe was is an elected member of the ACDCC representing AD 18. These articles are meant to update her constituents on what’s going on at the party.