This post originally appeared in the Feb. 1 Politics Report. Get the Politics Report delivered to your inbox.
One of the best Twitter feeds for deep political wonks is the CATargetBot, which posts federal, state and committee campaign finance filings, contributions and election results.
Recently it tweeted a new disclosure of donations to the Republican Party of San Diego County, which included $5,000 from the San Diego Tourism Authority.
This got some people talking. The Tourism Authority is the former Convention and Visitors Bureau. It gets most of its money now from the Tourism Marketing District, which operates like a business improvement district. The TMD is funded, though, from a 2 percent levy the hotels put on hotel bills of visitors. The city collects it and disburses money to the TMD, which gives about half of its funds to the Tourism Authority.
It seemed a little odd for an agency funded mostly by public dollars to make a contribution to the Republican Party. So we asked Joe Terzi, the retiring CEO of the Tourism Authority, what was up.
He said in a written message that the money came from a separate pool of funds collected from individual hotels and the contribution was made in coordination with the Hotel Motel Association “to get the message out about the importance of supporting the hospitality industry and Measure C.”
One problem, though, is the Republican Party is opposed to Measure C.
Terzi sent along an image of the message the money helped fund in GOP mailers, however. Here it is:
Couple of things there in case it’s too subtle: HE’S TALKING ABOUT MEASURE C. We can’t help but wonder how many times they had to send that text back and forth to get to something the party was OK with. You can’t say Measure C, guys. We are opposed to that!
Also, is this the official announcement that Mayor Kevin Faulconer has endorsed Scott Sherman for mayor? First we’ve seen.
On that: Sherman and Faulconer have had a pretty frosty relationship the last two years. The Union-Tribune asked Sherman recently what grade he would give Faulconer’s mayoral performance.
“I give Kevin a C-plus,” he said. He didn’t feel like Faulconer was aggressive enough.