McMillin Paid for the Plane

We finally found out who paid for the massive Jan Goldsmith for City Attorney banner that was flown over Qualcomm Stadium during Sunday’s Chargers game.

The answer: Mark McMillin, president and CEO of The Corky McMillin Cos.

The question of who had paid for the plane, which passed over the stadium several times and flew over the beach communities, had become a great mystery this week. On Monday morning, my colleague Will Carless called Goldsmith’s campaign to talk about the banner; the campaign said it had no idea who was behind the effort. The Chargers management, long a political nemesis of incumbent City Attorney Mike Aguirre, also said they didn’t pay for it.

This morning, in response to speculation and Carless’ posts, McMillin announced that he’d funded the effort. He said the company is making up to $16,000 in independent expenditures to support Goldsmith and the expenditures will be disclosed in accordance with all city and state election laws.

Here’s McMillin’s direct quote from the announcement:

We proudly support Jan Goldsmith for City Attorney and believe he will responsibly serve our San Diego citizens. We believe in order to attract new business to San Diego and for business to flourish in our city as well as getting the San Diego Chargers to stay here; we need a new city attorney. We believe Jan Goldsmith is the best person to work with the Mayor and City Council on issues facing our city. We are Pro Business and GO Chargers!

Aguirre and McMillin had a high-profile dust-up last year over the company’s Liberty Station development.