Thursday, February 28, 2008

Developers are biggest donors in San Diego elections

Developers are biggest donors in San Diego elections
CPI analysis reveals campaign contributions by industry

The big money in this year's San Diego city elections is coming from the real estate and development industry.

Donors connected to real estate and development interests already have given $228,345 -- far more than any other industry -- to the campaigns for mayor, city attorney and four city council seats. That’s 21 percent of the total $1.08 million the candidates received from donors in 2007. Candidates gave another $280,105 to their own campaigns.

The industry analysis by the Center on Policy Initiatives is based on donations made through December, which candidates had to report to the city clerk on Jan. 31. The next filing of donations received since then will be on March 24.

CPI makes all the reported donations available in an online, searchable database called Follow the Money. The industry categories are assigned based on the occupation and employer information supplied by donors.

Real estate and development was the biggest spending industry in all six contests, topped only by the total for miscellaneous individuals in two races and by the aggregated sector of lawyers, lobbyists and advocacy organizations in the city attorney's race.

The largest chunk of the real estate and development money -- $90,803 -- has gone to the mayoral race, all of it to incumbent Jerry Sanders, since challenger Steve Francis is self-funding his campaign. Development-connected donors also have given $49,970 in the District 5 Council race, 94% of it to candidate Carl DeMaio.

Other sectors contributing sizable amounts, and their totals for the six campaigns, include:
· Lawyers, lobbyists and advocacy organizations: $117,923
· Finance and insurance: $76,560
· High-tech and biotech: $62,932
· Business services: $62, 575
· Tourism: $54,218

For more details, the Follow the Money database can be searched by donor name, employer and other factors. Candidates who did not file statements with at least $1,000 in contributions by Dec. 31 are not included. Loans and independent expenditures by political organizations are not included.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

And did you also know that grass is green and that the sky is blue?

Anonymous said...

and that labor unions spend money too!

the entire campaign finance system is broken and needs to be reformed.

Anonymous said...

you don't say...

Anonymous said...

Union spending is never even close to big business and developers

Anonymous said...

Looking at the listing, I would suspect that union spending is listed in the "lawyers, lobbyists and advocacy organizations" section. Even when you include every dollar from attorneys and lobbyists, you still aren't to half of the amount spent by developers.

I thought local officials were supposed to be "corrupt" because of all these unions. I'm sure it has nothing to do with all the developer money.

Anonymous said...

Developers are good because they turn otherwise wasteful nature lands that just give stuff away, like the air we breathe, and rewarding to the industrious that put a price on life itself.

Anonymous said...

Union spending is listed under a separate category, called Labor. It only shows up in District 3 and 7. But keep in mind this data is on contributions made before Dec. 31, the last filing cut-off. The next filing is March 24.
Check out the searchable Follow the Money database at www.onlineCPI.org --you can search by employer name, zip code, etc.