Politics Report: That $1 Million

A couple weeks ago, we broke the news that a relatively unknown lawyer had gotten the San Diego political world’s attention with a $1 million donation to the Lincoln Club Business League. Sources told us it was intended to support Larry Turner’s campaign for mayor.

Turner is the underdog but his biggest campaign challenge is that few people know who he is. And people knowing who you are is kind of key to winning a mayor’s race. An infusion of $1 million could change that.

Since then people have challenged the assumption that the money would go to support Turner. La Prensa talked to Steven Richter and his wife Carol and got a copy of a letter confirming that he wasn’t intending to support Turner specifically. “A local philanthropic couple’s contribution stirred up controversy this week when several news outlets reported the donation was connected to the race for San Diego Mayor, but the donors say the money was not earmarked for any specific campaign,” La Prensa reported.

The paper said Mayor Todd Gloria had misrepresented the donation to raise money and that we — and the U-T and others who reported on it — were similarly misleading people.

This week, we got some actual developments in the matter.

First, of course it’s not earmarked: If the Richters had given the Lincoln Club the money on the condition that the Club spend it only for Turner, it would have triggered disclosure requirements. In short, Richter’s name would have to be on the advertisements he funded. He could have simply hired political consultants to run a bunch of ads for Turner and against Gloria but it would have said “Paid for by Steven and Carol Richter.” It’s a bit more complicated than that but giving to a political action committee that has already said Turner’s is a priority race for it means he doesn’t have be prominent in the ad disclosures. It’s also true, though, that the Club can legally use the money however its leaders would like.

This week: The Lincoln Club formed an independent committee called “Turn San Diego Around in Support of Larry Turner for Mayor 2024.”

The Lincoln Club put $450,000 into the committee and the committee immediately spent $400,000 of it on ads for Turner. Thursday night, a text message went out to voters from the committee. It said “No matter your politics, you know San Diego needs drastic change. We don’t have to tell you the problems. We’re living them: crime, homeless, affordability.”

It went on (it was quite long). And it had a new video. “San Diego. We can turn it around. Larry Turner, the independent candidate for mayor. He’s not a politician…”

That last part was a quote from La Prensa, which endorsed Turner.

So would the Lincoln Club have made this expenditure even without Richter’s donation? Doesn’t seem like it. The Club only raised $157,000 separate from Richter’s donation since July and it had spent more than $100,000 of that before it started spending in support of Turner.

I’m not sure why it’s become a priority for people to insist the money may not support Turner. Regardless, it seems to be very much helping support Turner now.

Who’s doing the work: A side curiosity has emerged on this. The Lincoln Club has a political director on contract, Brian Pepin, who is also a member of the Poway City Council. Pepin used to be the executive director of the Lincoln Club. But sources told me that veteran consultant Tom Shepard would be getting this work. Shepard ran Barbara Bry’s campaign against Gloria in 2020.

However, my buddy Andrew Keatts at Axios asked Shepard and he said he would not be involved in the campaign. Friday, Shepard told me the same thing.

Lincoln Club Executive Director Victor Lopez told me last week that the Club’s leadership was trying to decide whether to give the work to outside consultants or internal consultants, presumably led by Pepin.

Lopez told me Friday they made the decision. “Final decision was to work an internal team,” he wrote in a text message.

I assumed that meant Pepin but when I called Pepin he said “no comment.”

We Had a Debate

Turner and Gloria met at KPBS studios for their second and final debate Thursday. I was one of three panelists who got to ask them questions.

KPBS, inewsource and Voice of San Diego have begun collaborating on a multi-year partnership called Public Matters and we all participated in the debate.

I’m more of a “three people having a good conversation” debate kind of guy but it was fun to get the makeup and high production values of a major broadcast debate.

Here’s KPBS’ summary of five moments that stood out.

You can watch it all here.

One note: Turner denied that he told me in our August interview he wanted to explore reducing pension benefits for future police officers or firefighters. When I asked him Thursday if it was something he would pursue, he said “I don’t think I said it exactly that way.”

He went on.

“What I said was, when you asked, would we consider everything and I said ‘Yes, we would consider everything.’ That’s the way the question went and that’s how I answered it.”

He said Thursday he would in no way want to change the pension benefits.

It would be fine for him to say he has changed his mind but he’s saying he never said it. That’s just not true. You can listen to it here and here’s the exchange:

Turner said in our interview in August (which was good, I thought) some “grownup decisions have to be made here” about the city’s financial position. And he — not I — brought up pensions.

“These guys have known the train is coming and is going to crash into us with the pensions, you know, with blowing money on their special projects,” he said.

I asked him if he thought pensions should be renegotiated.

“Yeah. Not the people that have already been hired, though. I mean, we’re going to grandfather them in, we’re going to keep the promises we made,” he said.

Me: “So you’d like to restart the discussion about future employees getting a different guaranteed benefit?”

Turner: “Yeah. I’m down for that. Yeah. Something more sensible. It’s something that’s just been, ‘Hey, since everybody else already has it, we’re going to keep doing this.’ Now we got to rethink that.”

Me: “Even police and fire?”

Turner: “Yeah. Everybody. I mean it. The military did that a while ago.”

Why this matters: I think a mayor pursuing a reduction in future pensions for police and fire would be a big news story and I think some conservatives would be happy to see that conversation revived and he clearly was thinking about appealing to them.

Again, if he wants to change his mind and back off this fight, that’s fine. He could easily say “Hey, you know, I heard from some people and thought about it a bit more and I don’t think pensions for police and fire is something I would pursue changing.”

But he shouldn’t claim he didn’t say it.

Politifest Worked

We had a great day at Politifest last week. This week, our team did a great job pulling all the videos and transcripts of the sessions here. I’m stunned at what a great archive this is of the conversations we had. So poke around and you can spend all Saturday bathed in public affairs (until the Padres game starts at 5:38).

Podcast summary: We talked about and played clips of a few key moments in our podcast this week.

Notes

That’s going in a mailer: The Union-Tribune has a feisty endorsement of Terra Lawson-Remer in the county supervisor race against former Mayor Kevin Faulconer. “We wouldn’t trust Faulconer to run a lemonade stand,” the paper wrote.

Former registrar files bombshell claim: A few months ago, I covered the bonkers fight about who was going to be the next chief administrative officer of the county of San Diego. Remember at the end there was only one candidate left standing when community members appointed to a panel to vet the finalists finally convened. Nora Vargas, chair of the Board of Supervisors had eliminated labor’s preferred candidate. Three finalists remained but one of them was thrown out. A second, from outside San Diego, decided they were not interested in the job.

Now we know who the third finalist was: Michael Vu. Vu is well known in San Diego, especially among journalists and political folks, as the former registrar of voters. Former CAO Helen Robbins-Meyer promoted Vu and it seemed clear he would be a candidate for her position.

He now has filed a claim against the county, a precursor required before a lawsuit is filed. “He alleges that Vargas claimed he didn’t have the right racial background for the post and that Lawson-Remer sought to orchestrate the appointment of a Democratic strategist as his No. 2.”

Cindy Chavez, the candidate labor fought for,  also threatened to sue and alleged unfair and discriminatory practices in how it all went down.

If you have any feedback, ideas or questions for the Politics Report, send them to scott.lewis@voiceofsandiego.org.