McDonalds Delivers for Kevin Faulconer

Lots of news about political contests in San Diego to share today.

Voting by mail is in its third week, and election campaigns for County Supervisors, City of San Diego Mayor, and congressional seats all are getting greater scrutiny in light of recent developments.

Sometimes ‘better’ is really Big Bucks for Bad Guys. Politico California Playbook examined the donations of four California PACs/IEs under the umbrella California Alliance of Family Owned Businesses, funded primarily by McDonald’s franchise owners in California.

They’re still feeling the effects of their parent company’s disappointing compromise with state Democrats over wages and working conditions last year. In June, California fast food restaurants (-5.9%) led the national decline (-3.6%) in quick service sales, as operators increased prices (7.5% CA vs 3.1% US) adjusting to wage increases that only partially cover government costs of supporting employees of those operations.

• One of the new PACs, “A Better California,” pitched in $350,000 last month in support of Nathan Hochman’s campaign to oust progressive Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, citing the safety of their restaurants’ customers and employees. Another committee, “A Better Orange County,” has spent nearly $170,000 supporting a candidate for Anaheim City Council and a candidate for Orange County supervisor. Further south, “A Better San Diego” has given $170,000 to boost former Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s bid for county supervisor, and opposing his incumbent opponent, Democrat Terra Lawson-Remer. 

• A campaign consultant for Lawson-Remer characterized the contributions as “big money Trump donors” who are spending heavily to put Faulconer on the board.

Although the McD’s corporation says it is remaining neutral in the 2024 presidential race, the company received plenty of publicity following Donald Trump’s take over of a closed-to-the-public Bucks County, PA location for a photo op. 

This scenario got played by the GOP candidate’s campaign as a big middle finger aimed at VP Kamala Harris, who’s been accused of lying about college employment (three decades ago) because she can’t produce pay stubs to verify her days working a fry station.

Maybe it’s karma, but McDonald’s is also in the news for an E. coli outbreak linked to Quarter Pounder burgers. Fresh slivered onions are the prime suspect in an outbreak that has thus far killed one person and hospitalized 49 others.

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Sprawl guys like Kevin, too. inewsource has posted a report on a PAC funded by developers to the tune of $800,000 supporting former San Diego Mayor Keven Faulconer’s campaign for County Supervisor.

• Its name: the Homelessness Crisis Response Committee Supporting Kevin Faulconer for Supervisor 2024 — funded not by homeless service providers, but by developers using the money on campaign mailers that tout Faulconer’s record as San Diego mayor.

• The group’s mailers claim the city’s number of unhoused residents went down during Faulconer’s tenure. And they blame the recent rise in homelessness on Faulconer’s opponent, incumbent Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer.

• But Faulconer is far from getting the same widespread support that he enjoys among developers from homeless advocates, who dispute claims that credit him for any drop in homelessness while he led the city. 

The mega-contribution in support of Faulconer is the third turd to drop in the not-affiliated-with-the-campaign local politics punchbowl.

Supporters of San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria rounded up a collection of big bucks donors recently to counter a million dollar donation to the Lincoln Club, which promptly funded an Independent Expenditure group backing challenger Larry Turner.

What appeared to be a close race for Mayor a month ago has substantially moved toward a big victory for the incumbent, according to a new poll showing Todd Gloria with a sizable lead over challenger Turner.

I should note here that local canvassers connected with organized labor doubted the veracity of the original poll showing a tight race based on their internal polling and on-the-ground experiences.

Turner’s campaign has drawn energy and support from the city’s we’re-not-NIMBYs critics. 

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Huffing and puffing from former lead anti-COVID measures critic Amy Reichert made its way into Voice of San Diego today. You might remember her as the refined apologist for the screamers who disrupted county supervisors meetings during the pandemic. 

Reichert, now cosplaying as an influential Republican, is upset because Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer openly admits (via a campaign finance report) to having spent campaign funds for approximately one-third of her child care expenses. 

• An Oct. 1 memo from Santa Monica-based law firm Strumwasser & Woocher that Lawson-Remer sought after inquiries from Voice about Lawson-Remer’s use of campaign funds for past expenses states that the supervisor relied on campaign cash to pay her daughter’s preschool bills when she was performing “campaign-related activities as an officeholder that have both a political and governmental purpose.” 

• The unsigned memo notes that 2022 was a “particularly active and busy time” for Lawson-Remer. The firm wrote that she was preparing for the potential recall, meeting new constituents and community groups following a 2021 redistricting process and ramping up fundraising for her 2024 re-election campaign. It also notes that she prepared for and attended Board of Supervisors meetings to pursue “officeholder and political objectives.” 

• “We have no difficulty in concluding that the child care expenses you incurred and paid for while engaging in campaign-related activities during certain months in 2022 constituted lawful expenditures of campaign funds under both the general and specific standards set forth in the Political Reform Act,” the firm wrote. “Each of the activities you engaged in during that time period had both political and governmental purposes, and the childcare expenses would not have been incurred if you had not been engaged in those political activities.”

The real scandal here should be about how outrageous child care costs are, especially for single mothers, but the complainant’s affiliation with a group working towards restoration of stripped away elements of the patriarchy means it probably never entered her mind.

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Michael Smolens at the Union-Tribune reports the 49th Congressional district contest pitting incumbent Democrat Mike Levin against Republican car dealer Matt Gunderson is closer than expected.

• Levin has shown resilience in the district, formerly a Republican stronghold and regular GOP target that has shifted politically over the years, giving Democrats a slight edge in voter registration. Gunderson performed well in an overlapping state Senate district in 2022, when he was narrowly defeated by Democrat Catherine Blakespear, former mayor of Encinitas.

• Levin regularly points out that Gunderson’s 2022 effort received considerable financial backing from the oil industry and that the Republican is an Exxon shareholder. Gunderson says that while Levin says his campaign does not accept corporate donations, he receives money from party leadership funds that do.

• The two candidates are spending a lot of money this time around. According to the Orange County Register, Levin reported raising $4.8 million through Sept. 30 and had $1.4 million left to spend. Gunderson reported raising $3.4 million through Sept. 30, including personal loans of $2.1 million. He had $325,984 left.

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Once again, provocateur Carl DeMaio is in the news. His race against a fellow Republican for the 75th district assembly seat has drawn the ire of California Firefighters along with a group of elected Democrats and organized labor.

DeMaio is hoping that his name recognition will sway enough voters to win in November. His opponents, including the local Republican Party, want voters to know that Andrew Hayes, a Lakeside Union School District board member and former district director for state Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones would be a better choice for the seat.

The reasons opposing groups strongly dislike DeMaio include a bungled City of San Diego pension deal screwing firefighters, and the widely accepted perception that he’s an opportunist/grifter whose work has not been helpful for conservative causes.

But wait! There’s more!

Voice of San Diego reports DeMaio signed off on an email in a legal dispute with his neighbors over landscaping with an address in Rancho Bernardo, which is outside the 75th district.

• Jen Jacobs, a spokesperson for DeMaio, said DeMaio has two properties, the one in Rancho Bernardo and the one in Fallbrook and he’s at the Rancho Bernardo property frequently but only to record his podcast.

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Finally, I’m sad to announce I’ve decided to not renew my subscription to the Los Angeles Times in the wake of publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong’s decision to override the paper’s editors endorsement of VP Kamala Harris for President. He’s belatedly decided that the L.A. Times won’t endorse in the presidential race. 

It’s not the implied endorsement of Trump that bothers me. It’s the overriding. If Soon-Shiong likes Trump so much, maybe he should hire editors devoted to the MAGA cult. Maybe he thinks that being rich will protect his holdings against the assaults on freedom of the press inevitable should Trump win.

I’ve never canceled a subscription before because I disagreed with a publication, but my gut-level reaction to this act of cowardice overrides my desire to use the limited funds of this enterprise to support useful publications. 

You’ll not see links to LA Times stories in the future. I regularly read publications from across the political and national spectrums. And I know the owner of the Times won’t care. But I do care and I’m voting with my wallet.

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Wednesday News to Peruse

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Why Republicans Love to Offer You Tax Cuts by Hamilton Nolan at How Things Work

• Republicans love to campaign on promises of tax cuts in lieu of everything else. What is presented to voters as “keeping the greedy government out of your pocket and letting you take home more in your paycheck” is in fact primarily an act of dismantling the funding for the parts of government that do not protect the interests of capital. They are the political equivalent of someone chopping your house to pieces with an axe and then offering the remains back to you under a sign that says, “Free Firewood!” This is the facet of the tax cut scam that it is necessary to make the public appreciate. History shows that plenty of regular people are happy to vote to take their own little tax cut even if they know that rich people will get back more than them. That willingness, though, depends on regular people remaining unclear on the fact that tax cuts are not the cherry on top of a sundae at the end of a hearty meal; they are the offer of a cherry instead of a hearty meal.

• Yes, all of this is rooted in greed. Or, more neutrally stated, it is rooted in the natural incentive that capitalism creates for wealth to protect itself and serve its own interests. But recognizing the sleight of hand inherent in the way that tax cuts are wielded as a political weapon is an important part of pushing back on the bullshit.

• Capital, by the way, is agnostic on party labels. All it wants is the results. The Democratic Party is not immune from sliding into this trap, if capital finds it to be a more hospitable home for its program. Beware Democrats who fall in love with “market solutions” and “public-private partnerships” and other code words that may indicate the onset of an infection of Right Wing Economics. Next thing you know they’ll be offering you tax cuts and not a damn thing else. Stay vigilant out there.

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Border911: The Misinformation Network Profiting Off the False ‘Invasion’ Narrative via The Border Chronicle; an investigative collaboration between Lighthouse Reports, the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, the Texas Observer, palabra, and Puente News Collaborative. 

• But before it became its own foundation, Border911 was part of The America Project, an organization founded by serial election deniers: former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne and Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump’s disgraced former national security advisor.

• At a raucous White House meeting on December 18, 2020, Byrne and Flynn were part of a group of advisers that counseled Trump to use National Guard soldiers to seize voting machines to overturn the election. When martial law was not imposed, the two formed The America Project. And Byrne poured $27 million of his own money into that project, according to a post on X, including funding a sham election audit in Arizona, and recruiting radicalized individuals as poll workers with an emphasis on those with military and law enforcement backgrounds.

h/t to Brooke Binkowski for noting: This is literally the Tanton network.

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Republican Attorneys General to Court: We Demand More Pregnant Teens by Madiba K Dennie at Balls and Strikes

• The ick factor only intensifies in some of the other arguments the attorneys general make. The complaint also says that each of the states is “the legal parent or guardian of many minor girls of reproductive age”—a reference to girls in state custody, like foster care or juvenile detention. For those girls, they argue, the state is a stand-in for parents. And as parents, they claim, they have a right to consent to their children’s medical care, which is apparently nullified if teen girls in foster care can “obtain abortion drugs online by mail all on their own.” Under the state’s theory, it can separate children from their actual parents, declare itself their father now, and deem a daughter’s pregnancy her daddy’s prerogative. 

• Bailey, Kobach, and Labrador’s argument treats teenagers as breeding stock. The complaint is shocking in its brazenness. But it is a natural outgrowth of the conservative legal movement’s efforts to subordinate women: Girls choosing not to give birth is wrong, and men can go to court to set it right.