Oily corporate money is flowing into an Orange County Assembly race, as Late Independent Expenditures push the fortunes of DINO “Oily Tom” Daly.
The primary vehicle is JOBSPAC, A BI-PARTISAN COALITION OF CALIFORNIA EMPLOYERS, which spent a whopping $291,578.25 between May 5th and May 19th to support ConservaDem Tom Daly, County Clerk Recorder and former Anaheim Mayor in AD-69, which is the only majority Democratic district in Orange County.
Daly is in the mold of other OC “Democrats” like Lou Correa, squarely in the pocket of developers, insurance companies and the local corporate giants like Disney. Daly got all of three votes in the party’s pre-endorsement caucus, no votes at the DFA endorsement meeting, scant support at the Orange County Young Democrats endorsement meeting, yet was able to block progressive candidate Julio Perez from getting the party endorsement as local electeds Correa and Solorio voted for no endorsement.
The biggest player in JOBS PAC is Chevron, which contributed $375,000 of the $524,000 raised in the second half of 2011. Chevron also contributed the maximum direcly to Daly’s campaign, but Daly’s anemic fund-raising obviously wasn’t going to be enough to buy this election. Chevron has been joined by some of the usual dirty suspects who have pressing issues in front of the legislature. Phillip Morris kicked in $50,000. Farmers Insurance has arrived late to the party with $150,000 contributed last week. The California Charter Schools Association PAC pumped in $25,000 last week.
There’s plenty of late money that we expect to see spent in negative mail against Julio Perez, the progressive candidate in the most Latino district in the state. Julio may be the most dangerous threat to corporate interests on the ballot. He’s a labor organizer who is smart, well-educated, and avowedly progressive, earning support not just from teachers, nurses, and firefighters, but also from groups like the California League of Conservation Voters.
Julio is supported by a small army of grass roots volunteers, an Independent Expenditure campaign by organized labor, and every local progressive, while Daly gets his local support from Disney’s SOAR PAC, the staunchly right-wing OC Tax group, and the Orange County Business Council.
The JobsPAC campaign has been working with Big Lies, including a mailer to Republicans alleging that the sole Republican candidate has dropped out of the race.
Chevron has also supported unemployed Santa Ana Council Member Michele Martinez, a somewhat clueless candidate best known for her inadvertent interview on a train from Sacramento where she boasted of big forthcoming IE’s by Indian casinos. If the top two result comes down to Martinez vs Daly, Chevron and their corporate cronies win big.
It’s the ugly side of the top-two primary, and it’s what the corporate interests hoped for when they campaigned for it. Spend big to take out any progressive, and be happy with a true corporate candidate or someone who can easily be bought.
Update Today’s reports show another $117,000 in Late Independent Expenditures supporting Tom Daly, this time with the bulk of the money coming from the National Realtors Political Action Committee funneled through their California affiliate.
Greg Diamond at the Orange Juice Blog writes
“The National Association of Realtors out of Chicago,” I hear you ask, because you are the kind of reader who wants to know who is jumping into our local races with the force of a herd of elephants, “who are they?” I’m glad you asked! It’s the trade association that has, literally, trademarked the term “Realtor” in this country. (In other countries, it’s a generic term.) What’s their political issue? They want to boost the housing market by – wait for it – opposing regulation of the financial services industry!
That’s right – these are the people who don’t want to solve the problems of the collapse of the poorly regulated financial sector (and its mortgage fraud and foreclosure abuse, about which they might know a little themselves), and they way they want to do it is to dump literally $250,000 so far into making sure (if they can – and they can’t) that Tom Daly beats Julio Perez for a single Assembly seat.