disclosure: I have leadership positions or membership in multiple organizations affiliated with the Democratic Party that have endorsed Paul Krekorian for City Council.

Forgive me for continuing to write about Los Angeles City politics on a statewide site, but this is too interesting to pass up.  I’ve written previously about the race for Los Angeles City Council District 2 here because it has statewide implications: if Paul Krekorian wins, we will have a vacancy in AD-43.  So it does matter, and since it is my hometown and I’m somewhat enmeshed here, I’ve been following the race.  And there’s something very interesting afoot.

For any of this to be interesting or relevant, I want you to review two brief snippets of election-related ordinances from the Los Angeles Campaign Finance Ordinance:

No candidate for City Council who files a statement of acceptance of matching

funds, nor any controlled committee of such candidate, shall make qualified

campaign expenditures above the following amounts: $330,000 per primary

election and $275,000 per general election.

And even more importantly:

If a candidate who declines to accept matching funds makes qualified campaign expenditures in excess of the expenditure ceiling, or if an independent expenditure committee or committees in the aggregate spend more than $50,000 in the case of a City

Council race, $100,000 in the case of an election for City Attorney or Controller, or

$200,000 in the case of an election for Mayor, in support of or in opposition to any such candidate, the applicable expenditure ceiling shall no longer be binding on any candidate running for the same office.

That’s the applicable law.  There’s a $330,000 spending cap for City Council races–unless one or more IE’s comes in and busts it by spending a total of at least $50,000 on the race–either for or against any candidate.  So that basically means that if a candidate is up against the spending limit, all that candidate needs to do is quietly arrange for an independent expenditure of a certain amount, and then…voila!  Spend away.

Which is exactly what it seems Chris Essel’s campaign has done.  It seems intentional and coordinated, too.  True, the evidence is entirely circumstantial–but when you add the evidence all up, there’s only one logical conclusion.  Follow me below the fold for more.

Let me begin by stating that Chris Essel’s campaign accepted matching taxpayer funds from the City, subjecting her campaign to the $330,000 spending limit.  There are a couple of other things to know too–first, that the special primary election was September 22nd; and second, the spending limit in the special general election goes down to $275,000 for those with matching funds who make it to the runoff.  Why am I telling you this?  Well, you’ll find out soon enough.

So now that you’re familiar with all this, I’d like you to take a look Chris Essel’s next-to-last campaign spending report of the general election.  The end-of-period for the filing is September 16–six days before the general election–and look at how much the report show her campaign as having spent to-date: $321,464.57.  Now, I can do arithmetic.  That means that legally, the Essel campaign would, under normal circumstances, have only been able to spend a paltry $8,433.43 the entire last week of the campaign–which is basically when you need the money most.

Essel’s only hope at being able to finance the campaign for the last week of the election? Hoping that someone did an independent expenditure campaign that made the total IE expenses for the election total $50,000, which would bust the cap for all candidates.  But what would be the chances of that happening?

Very good, apparently, if you’re Chris Essel.  Now take a look at this: it’s the spending report of independent expenditures for Chris Essel’s campaign.  And miraculously, on the 16th of September, there is an IE of $32,500 from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, based in DC.  Even more miraculously, this IE–spent on a cable buy (and much more on this later)–just so happens to be just enough to push the Essel campaign over the $50,000 threshold required to bust the salary cap and allow it to spend an unlimited amount of money through election day on the 22nd.  (Technically, the $12,000 or so of IE’s spent on behalf of Tamar Galatzan’s campaign also counts toward the $50,000 threshold, but because of the circumstances behind the reporting deadlines, there would have been no way to know how much had been spent.)

Now, one might think that it’s no surprise that a union–even if it’s a DC one and not a Los Angeles local–would go to bat for its endorsed candidate.  Until, of course, you take a look at the FEC data for exactly what the Allied Painters have contributed to.  Follow that link through, and you’ll see that the union’s IE’s have been on behalf of mostly Presidential candidates, as well as Kendrick Meek and Ciro Rodriguez–both federal candidates–and that you can scroll through that entire list without finding a single IE or cash contribution to a municipal candidate.

So, as things stand right now given all the unusual circumstances and convenient coincidences, I’d have to be born yesterday to even get started believing that this expenditure wasn’t knowingly done to bust the cap and allow the Essel campaign to receive taxpayer campaign cash and not be subject to the limits anyway.  But it gets even worse.

I linked to the script of the ad earlier.  Here’s the video on Youtube.  Now, I decided to go a step further here.  I got a contact in the cable industry to tell me where the ad money went.  Here’s something fascinating: the ads were placed, as you’d expect, in the cable regions encompassing Council District 2: the East San Fernando Valley and South San Fernando Valley regions.  Now, as it is, that’s horribly inefficient, especially for the South San Fernando region, which stretches for a couple dozen miles outside CD2 all the way to Calabasas on its Western boundary.  But even worse?  The ad was also placed in two regions entirely outside Los Angeles:  The regions encompassing the cities of Glendale (a Charter cable zone) and Santa Clarita (Time Warner, like the SFV regions).  For those of you that really care, you can see the map of the cable zones.  I want to repeat something here: there is no overlap between those two regions and the Council District in question.  So if they decided to put the ad there, it was because they were intentionally wasting money just to achieve a certain target amount.  And then, of course, there’s the issue of what stations they put them on.  Normally, you put political ads on political/news stations.  You don’t do what these guys did and put them on Court TV and Lifetime, which is where these apparently went.

So…we’ve already got a lot of evidence that the entire reason for this IE was just to bust the cap and allow the Essel campaign to spend unlimited cash.  Now, I don’t know what the City’s ethics division would think about that.  But I do think that they’d look very askance at it if they knew that it was being done with prior knowledge of the campaign.  And there’s plenty of evidence for that too.

First, let’s take into account the fact that Chris Essel was still raising money at maximum contribution fundraisers during this critical time.  All you need to do is look through the full list of communications reports provided by the City Ethics commission to see that there were fundraising events that had to have been in the planning stages before the Painters’ union dropped their IE, even though at that time, there would have been no legal way for the Essel campaign to spend all the money they were raising–unless they knew that the Painters were about to make their play.  After all, if you’re distributing invites for fundraisers where the asking price is $500 (maximum contribution for City Council candidates), and as of the 16th you’ve only got $8,500 you can legally spend…you’re doing something wrong.

So at this point, you’re stuck with two options.  Either the Essel campaign was unknowingly raising gobs money they couldn’t legally spend and got miraculously bailed out at exactly the right time by a union that has absolutely no history playing in Los Angeles politics that put up exactly the right amount of money on a completely ineffective cable buy with an ad produced by a company that has no reputation for political ads…or there’s something fishy going on here.

Something I haven’t mentioned–but it’s particularly ironic in this context–is that the ad in question prominently features City Controller Wendy Greuel, who is responsible for ensuring that the City’s taxpayers are treated fairly, doing a voiceover discussing Chris Essel’s ethics.  It would indeed have a certain ironic twist if Controller Greuel were being used to basically defraud taxpayers out of the $100,000 in matching funds that they contributed to Essel’s campaign.

But now comes a piece of evidence that–at least in my mind–proves the case.  Per the independent expenditure reports, the $32,500 cable buy that busted the cap was made on 9/16.  Disclosure was made about the buy on 9/17.  So that means that the campaign would have been informed only on 9/17 that the cap had been busted and they would be allowed to spend more money.  And now let’s look at the Essel campaign’s spending report for that time period.

Quite coincidentally, a payment was made on 9/17 to Burnside and Associates, Chris Essel’s paid field ops consulting firm, followed the next day by $50,000 to Shallman (Essel’s mail consultant) and another $8,000 to Burnside.  Now, while the $50,000 the very next day to Shallman may stand out, it’s actually the most within the realm of plausible deniability because once the cap had been busted, the Essel campaign may well have put out money in a hurry to fund a last-minute mail piece.  It’s the payments to Burnside, by contrast, that are problematic.

Burnside is a field consultant.  Unlike her chief opponents in the primary, Essel had to rely on paid field for canvassing operations.  Keep in mind how much money the Essel campaign would have been legally allowed to spend from 9/16 to 9/22 without the cap being busted: a shade under $8,500.  Meanwhile, based on the payments made on 9/17 and 9/18 referenced above, the Essel campaign apparently owed Burnside $21,250.  So again, you’re left with two options here: either the Essel campaign knew not only that the cap was going to be busted, but knew exactly when it was going to be busted, OR the Essel campaign had–whoops!–spent so much money that it would have been unable to pay the bills for the paid field operation it was depending on in the last week of the campaign.  Keep in mind, of course, that all of these financial reports are public–which makes you wonder if Burnside was concerned at all that the Essel campaign was spending the type of money that would leave it unable to actually pay their field consultant.

And speaking of Burnside, there’s something else odd going on here that’s tangentially related.  I sorted the Essel campaign’s expenditure list to reflect all the payments to her consulting firm.  Let’s add them up, shall we?

$58,855.90.  For a field operation in a City Council district.  Now, my evidence for this is entirely circumstantial, but I know people who were active in the primary campaigns of both of Essel’s main opponents (Tamar Galatzan and Paul Krekorian).  They all told me that Essel’s field campaign was only active in the last 7-10 days of the campaign.  So either the Essel team paid for what has to be the most paid field week I’ve ever seen, or they’re paying for something else too in that total.  Not sure what.

I’ve contacted the City Ethics Commission–not about this specific case, but about the applicable law in general.  And I’ve been told that if indeed the supposed independent expenditure was coordinated with the campaign–and all the evidence suggests exactly that–then it would no longer be considered independent, and penalties could certainly apply.

I have a call in to the Essel campaign requesting to talk to somebody on the financial end of things about this, but haven’t heard back.  I did, however, get through to the Krekorian campaign to give them a brief overview of my findings.  A short time later, Eric Hacopian with the Krekorian campaign gave me this quote:

“Throughout this campaign, Chris Essel has shown a consistent disregard for the truth and now it is becoming clear that she also has no respect for the law.

“Apparently her lust for campaign funds is so great that she’s even willing to manipulate the system to rip off taxpayers to pay for her attack mailers.”

Now, maybe I’m entirely wrong and I’ve read all of this wrong, and this is standard practice for LA politics.  But the whole thing does seem kind of suspicious, no?  I’ll be doing my best to follow up on this to see what, if any, connections exist between the Allied Painters and Chris Essel’s campaign to see if there are further connections to be fleshed out here.  Be expecting more in the coming days about this issue.

On December 8th, voters in Los Angeles Council District 2, which encompasses a large swath of the San Fernando Valley from Studio City to Sunland, will get to make a choice on who they want to be their next Councilmember.  It’s not a choice they should take lightly, as whoever they choose will get to represent them on the Council for the next 14 years (three four-year terms, plus the ~2 years of the unexpired term for which this is a special election).  The race has statewide implications, of course, because should Krekorian win, it will require a series of special elections to replace him in the Assembly, and that will be darned interesting.

First, a little background.  This election is occurring because former Councilmember Wendy Greuel ran for City Controller and won, leaving the seat vacant.  Out of a myriad of candidates, the top two finishers  in the special primary were current Assemblymember from AD-43 Paul Krekorian, as well as Paramount studio executive turned community activist Chris Essel.  Both candidates are very well funded, though Essel has a distinct cash advantage at the moment.  Krekorian has the support of essentially the entire Democratic Party establishment and its affiliated groups, while Essel brings prominent personal endorsements to the table, as well as the LA Chamber of Commerce.  At this point, the race is expected to be a toss-up, and hinges on whether supporters of other primary candidates, especially Tamar Galatzan and Mary Benson, will show up to vote and for whom they will vote.  Turnout is expected to be primarily by absentee and really low.

So much for background.  I’ll introduce this by stating the obvious, as well as a fact.  Paul Krekorian is of Armenian heritage–the district he currently represents in the Assembly has the highest concentration of Armenians anywhere outside Armenia, and Council District 2 has the highest concentration of Armenians in the City of Los Angeles.  Ethnic politics being what it is–see Chu. vs. Cedillo in Congressional District 32–it goes without saying that Krekorian has basically the default backing of the Armenian community.  Which is why, if you’re the other candidate in an election that will have fantastically low turnout, you should go out of your way not to give your opponent’s base any motivation to vote against you.

Enter Chris Essel, stepping in it by attending a “meet-and-greet” with contributions optional held by a boardmember of a Turkish organization that denies the Armenian genocide:

Essel’s opponent in the Dec. 8 special election is an Armenian-American. And CD 2 has more Armenian-Americans than any other council district in Los Angeles.

On Saturday Oct. 17, Essel attended a Beverly Hills fundraiser hosted by a board member of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, a lobbying group that adamantly denies the Armenian genocide. Recognition of this genocide has been perhaps the single most important moral and political issue for Armenian-Americans, who are just as appalled by deniers as Jews are by those who refuse to acknowledge the horrors of Hitler’s Holocaust.

Also attending Essel’s fundraiser were Azerbaijani leaders, whose controversial campaign to get California lawmakers to condemn Armenia for past military actions was defeated by Krekorian earlier this year.

If you don’t know what the Armenian genocide is, or what the longstanding tension between Turkey and Armenia is about, please look it up, as it’s one of the most shameful episodes in human history that for some reason nobody ever discusses.

Now, I’m going to leave aside the obvious moral implications here and discuss the political aspects for a moment.  What the hell, Chris?  Seriously, I can’t think of a worse political move than giving the Armenian community a reason to turn out in larger numbers than they otherwise would have.  Because if the mere existence of the event itself weren’t bad enough, apparently the communities of Armenia’s political rivals felt like this event should become anti-Armenia open season day:

An article on the fundraiser was published two days ago in an Azerbaijani newspaper and appeared on a Turkish website that, among other things, also features videos about Armenia’s “So-Called Genocide.” The article on the fundraiser praises Essel and labels Krekorian’s views “immoral” and his actions as anti-Turkey.

If you think I’m kidding, here’s the website for the organization that the host is a prominent member of.  And here’s a scan of one of the invites to the event. I don’t know who’s advising Chris Essel politically, but I do know for certain that she has access to the same Political Data reports that I have access to.  And those reports say that the Armenian vote on the September 22nd primary was around 11.7% of the general population.  Now, that number is likely to be even higher during the special general, and if I were Chris Essel, I’d be spending a lot of my time making sure there aren’t any excuses for that number to be driven further up.  What I seriously want to know is who on Essel’s campaign decided that attending this event would be a good idea–because if Essel’s political team is that tone-deaf and inept, it makes me seriously question whether she would be capable of getting the advice and counsel that would be necessary to represent all of her constituents on the City Council.

Voters in the Los Angeles area have seen quite a few elections this year.  We had our regularly scheduled municipal elections this Spring, as well as a municipal general in certain races that had to go to a runoff.  Along the way, we’ve had a special primary and a special general to fill the Senate seat in SD-26 that was vacated by Mark Ridley-Thomas’ ascent to the Board of Supervisors.  That election was won by Assemblyman Curren Price, whose seat in AD-51 was then taken by Steve Bradford in yet another special election (thankfully, he got 51% in the primary ballot, avoiding a runoff and getting a new Assemblyman as quickly as possible).  In between all of that, we had the May 19th special election, as well as the special Congressional election in CA-32 to fill the vacancy created by Hilda Solis’ confirmation as Secretary of Labor.

And now, residents of Los Angeles are on to their final special election of the year–though maybe not the cycle.  Today, voters in certain communities in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles will decide who they want representing them on the City Council, as their former Councilmember Wendy Greuel was elected as City Controller.

And believe it or not, this race has statewide implications.  As you can see from the fundraising numbers, there are three top-tier candidates in the race: Chris(tine) Essel, who is a former Paramount Studios executive turned community activist; Tamar Galatzan, who represents a school board district that overlaps substantially with the Council District; and Assemblymember Paul Krekorian from AD-43, about 20% of the population of which are also residents of Council District 2.  If Krekorian makes it through to the primary and then wins on the 8th, we’ll have a special election next year to fill AD-43, which will be vacant until then (leaving us with one less seat in the Assembly until then).

It is widely expected that there will be a runoff, as the bulk of the votes in this low-turnout election will be split between these three candidates, and there are 7 other candidates in the race that will siphon off a significant number of ballots among them–the runoff will take place September 8th.

Being as objective as I can (I am the political director of an organization that has endorsed Tamar Galatzan), here are the strengths and weaknesses (as I see them) of each candidate:

Chris Essel:  Essel has a lot of money, but not a lot of name recognition.  She has never held elected office, which can be (and has been) a good marketing point, but also means that the 4X4 voters who will decide this election will not be as familiar with her as with the other candidates.  Essel has gotten the endorsement of the Los Angeles Times, and has been able to pay for quite a bit of literature, based on conversations I’ve had with contacts in other campaigns, as well as a TV spot.  Essel also has the endorsement of the former Councilmember, Wendy Greuel.  On the downside, I’ve heard that Essel doesn’t have all that strong a volunteer base and has been having to use paid canvassers.

Paul Krekorian:  Krekorian has a lot of things going for him.  He is well known to a significant section of the district, has good fundraising to pay for mailers and such and has some good endorsements, including the Los Angeles County Democratic Party.  On the downside, the State Assembly isn’t the most popular body in the country right now.  In addition, Krekorian has been attacked by other campaigns for not being a resident of the district until recently–not that that line of attack was successful for those seeking to stop Garamendi from getting the nomination in CD-10, but perhaps a City Council race will feature a different dynamic.

Tamar Galatzan:  Galatzan is weaker in fundraising than the other candidates, but has some advantages.  First, she might have better name recognition than the other candidates because more residents of the district have voted for her than for anyone else, given the extensive overlap between her school board district and Council District 2.  She also has the endorsement of the L.A. Daily News and one of the local community papers.  From what I’ve seen and heard, both Galatzan and Krekorian have had a good ground game so far, and Galatzan has been doing well in recent media appearances–even according to sources I’ve mentioned previously who have no love for her or her campaign.  On the downside, less money means less mail, which is the usual way one wins races like this.

So who wins?  Well, the real question is, which two of the three is going to go to the runoff, given the fact that it will be a major shock if one of the lesser seven somehow manages to pull it off without a substantial campaign.  My prediction?

Krekorian in first, with Galatzan barely beating Essel for slot 2.  I do think that a good field campaign, volunteer operation, and name recognition from previous campaigns matter, especially when the electorate consists of the most politically active and savvy voters.  In my heart, I would also like to believe that elections can’t be won with a rolodex, even at the local level.

I’ll be posting an open thread with the results soon after they close.

Note: I’m the political director of an organization that has endorsed Tamar Galatzan in her race for Council District 2 in Los Angeles.  The election is this upcoming Tuesday.

It’s a damn shame that Mayor Sam is one of the best-read blogs in Los Angeles politics.  First and foremost, many of its posters (unlike our frontpage Caliticians, who have decided to disclose their identities) remain anonymous.  Now, as someone who blogged anonymously for years before feeling comfortable disclosing my real name, occupation and other aspects of my identity, it would be hypocritical of me if that were the sole source of my complaint.  Rather, Mayor Sam’s real problem is that the frontpage posters, whoever they are, peddle conspiracy after conspiracy theory about power politics in Los Angeles.  It was Mayor Sam’s posters, after all, who took Eric Hacopian’s work in CA-32 as evidence that Emanuel Pleitez was doing Mayor Villaraigosa’s bidding just to punish Gil Cedillo).

It’s one thing when such lies and distortions happen to people you don’t know.  But when your real-life friends start popping up in posts like this, it requires some pushback.

As background, the relationship between current School Board Member and CD-2 candidate Tamar Galatzan and Mayor Villaraigosa has been a point of issue in a campaign centered around certain portions of the San Fernando Valley where the Mayor is not very popular.  Tamar Galatzan was first elected to her School Board seat in the 2007 municipals with significant aid from Villaraigosa’s so-called “Partnership for Better Schools”–a campaign account he set up to elect allies to the school board.

Since then, however, Galatzan has apparently had a falling-out of sorts with the Mayor (and who hasn’t?).  But it appears that one of the chief tactics of whoever on Mayor Sam seems to have such a vested interested in attacking Galatzan is to try to do his (her?) best to link Galatzan with the mayor.  And this is where it gets a little personal.

In the first post by this “Higby” individual, it is mentioned that many members of Galatzan’s staff used to supposedly work for the Mayor, including Policy Director Pamela Burga.  Now, Pam has been a good friend of mine for a couple of years, and has devoted her life to educational equity.  Her supposed “work for the mayor”?  Working for the Villaraigosa-funded Partnership for Better Schools” for a few months before joining Galatzan’s staff in 2007, where she has worked ever since.  She didn’t deserve to be brought into this, much less lied about.

But the idiot is not done.  In yet another post on the same issue, this same duplicitous hack goes even further, except this time he can’t even get the names right.

Haley Green is has been paid $2,000 to date for consulting work by the then Galatzan. Previously Green was on the payroll of Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Better Schools, the Mayor’s political committee that helped to elect Galatzan to the School Board with a $2 million boost.

Galatzan’s day to day aide Devin Orisri is a former employee of the Mayor’s Partnership for Better schools. Her Policy Director Pamela Burga is another former employee of the Mayor.

Besides the aforementioned Pamela, Hayley Greene and Devin Osiri are also friends of mine from the local Young Democrat clubs.  Devin, age 26, has worked on numerous campaigns–before joining Galatzan’s team, he was also an aide to Ron Galperin, who was a candidate for Council District 5.  Hardly what I’d call loyalty to the head honcho.  And yes, a couple of years ago in 2007, he also worked for Tamar’s campaign–but the checks came from the Partnership.

But it’s with Hayley that this gets the most ridiculous.  Hayley Greene, the so-called “consultant” and mayoral loyalist, is a 20-year-old who is about to enter her junior year of college.  She is helping with volunteer coordination as a summer job.  And yes, she helped with the 2007 campaign as a high-school student.

When all is said and done, this post isn’t about supporting or defending Tamar Galatzan or trying to prove anything one way or the other about her connections to Mayor Villaraigosa, which, in whatever capacity they exist, would exist at levels far higher than the individuals mentioned here.  I cite this not only to defend my friends, who have no business being used as political footballs by anonymous insiders trying to spread crap about candidates who are running against the one that particular insider is supporting (how else, after all, does one come by such specific information about a high-school coordinator?) but also as a signal that the Los Angeles area needs an honest progressive blogosphere that will do better coverage of our local races, since most of the important ones are Dem against Dem primaries and we deserve to have an honest media that can follow these races and cover them with honest efficiency.