No sooner do I blog about the Loni Hancock versus Wilma Chan race for Don Perata’s 9th State Senate District seat than the fireworks start up in earnest: Chan today asked the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate whether Hancock and her campaign violated rules by paying a Senate campaign staffer out of her 14th Assembly District Officeholder Account.

According to Chan’s news release, public campaign filings show Hancock has paid Terri Waller — listed in FPPC reports as a campaign consultant — $15,000 or more from the Officeholder Account since June 2007. FPPC regulations say officeholders can’t use officeholder funds to pay campaign expenses, Chan notes, and Waller has been introduced as Hancock’s campaign manager at one or more Senate campaign forums and is listed as the campaign contact on at least one candidate questionnaire. Read Chan’s full complaint here. [And scroll down through the updates for an expert’s review.]

“A year ago, Loni Hancock was touting the virtues of campaign finance reform on her blog,” Chan spokesman David Chilenski said in the release. “Today, it looks like she could be misusing campaign funds and may be circumventing the rules for her Senate campaign. It’s ironic to see her champion clean money reform in her speeches and then turn around and act in a way that seems contradict these values.”

Waller is listed on Hancock’s office Web site as Hancock’s district coordinator, and a Web search shows she has served in that capacity for years. Campaign-finance printouts attached to Chan’s complaint show Waller was paid from the officeholder account for various office expenses, but also several times under the notation “campaign consultants.”

I couldn’t immediately reach Hancock’s campaign spokespeople, but I’ll keep trying…

UPDATE @ 9:35 P.M. MONDAY: And the word from Hancock campaign spokesman Cliff Staton is “bogus.”

“Terri Waller has been the Campaign Manager for the Hancock campaign since the beginning of March. The last period for which she was paid from the Officeholder Account ended in February. The East Bay Young Dems meeting was on March 6. The Nate Miley endorsement interview was on March 22,” Staton says. “This is another desperate attempt by the Chan campaign to distract attention from their big loss at the Democratic Convention over the weekend.”

In fairness, Staton got back to me quickly; this update has been delayed because I was out of pocket for a few hours.

UPDATE @ 10:15 A.M. TUESDAY: I just got off the phone with Staton, who explained that several “campaign consultant” payments made to Waller before she became Hancock’s Senate campaign manager were for various political but non-campaign functions she served while in Hancock’s employ.

“It’s simply the way that they list it on the officeholder account,” he said. “It’s not campaigning… It’s not about running for election, it’s simply that as a politician you’re in a political environment and there are things you have to do.”

So if Waller went to a purely political event on Hancock’s behalf – maybe a labor council dinner, for example – Hancock would pay her out of the officeholder account rather than from state funds, Staton said. “Loni has always determined those kinds of things are not part of the state, the taxpayers should not pay that.”

“They were on a fishing expedition,” he said of Chan’s complaint. “There’s absolutely no substance to that.”

Staton is angry that I posted this last night before he could get back to me with his comments; he said I’ve given Chan’s campaign fodder for a direct-mail hit piece. I responded that when a former lawmaker and current candidate files an official complaint with a state agency – a matter of public record, not just a verbal accusation – I think it’s newsworthy.

And if it turns out to be bogus, a cheap campaign tactic as Staton says, that’s newsworthy too.

Just so the process is clear: I received the release and complaint from Chan’s campaign at 5:47 p.m. I left voice-mails for Staton at his office and home, and e-mailed him at his office; I left a voice-mail and an e-mail for one of his associates; and I left a voice-mail for a Hancock campaign worker whose cell number I obtained from the campaign office. I had to be away from my phone and computer for a while, and updated the blog item as soon as I returned.

Staton also asked me to pull this item off the blog at least until I’ve “had a chance to evaluate its validity.” As I told him, it’s up to the FPPC to evaluate the complaint’s validity.

UPDATE @ 1:40 P.M. TUESDAY: One of the state’s top authorities on campaign finance, law and ethics has just told me that if there’s any violation at all here, it’s “trivial.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen a complaint like this — I’ve never seen them complain about officeholder funds versus campaign funds,” said Center for Governmental Studies President Bob Stern, who authored the Political Reform Act of 1974 and was the FPPC’s first general counsel from 1974 to 1983. “It just seems like overkill, even if it were true.”

By state law, candidates who voluntarily choose to limit their spending in state Senate campaigns may spend no more than $724,000 in a primary election and $1,086,000 in a general election. Stern said Chan’s complaint would only have any consequence if Hancock accepted these limits (which she has, while Chan has not) but then used the payments at issue to dodge the limits. Judging from her campaign finance reports, it doesn’t look as if she’s anywhere near those limits.

Even then, Stern said, it would depend on whether Waller clearly represented herself before March 1 — at events for which she was reimbursed from the officeholder account — as representing Hancock as a Senate candidate rather than as an Assemblywoman. And even then, he said, “it’s more of a bookkeeping thing.”

“They have met the standards of saying there might be a violation, but it certainly doesn’t seem like a very earthshaking one even if the facts are true,” Stern said.

UPDATE @ 3:55 P.M. THURSDAY: Chan’s campaign filed an addendum to its complaint today with the FPPC.

As promised last week, conservative activist group Move America Forward delivered a letter to U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello today asking federal authorities to investigate whether Berkeley broke the law with its anti-Marine recruiting stance. Kristin Bender, our Berkeley reporter, has details:

A copy was hand-delivered today to Deputy U.S. Attorney William Frentzen, said Move America Forward spokesman Ryan Gill.

“He said it might be of interest to their civil division and that he’d personally contact someone at the FBI,” Gill said. He did not have further details or a time line for when the group expects to have a response.

Read Kristin’s full report, after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, reportedly has received the California Democratic Party’s endorsement to succeed state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata, D-Oakland, in the 9th State Senate District.

“As a lifelong Democrat, I am proud to have the sole endorsement of my party,” Hancock said in her own news release. “We have worked hard on the issues that face our state — combating global warming, fixing our health care system, and improving our schools. I look forward to continuing that work in the State Senate.”

The release said Hancock got with 90% of the vote from Democrats based in her region, needing only 60 percent to win the endorsement. That’s gotta hurt for Hancock’s opponent, former Assembly Majority Leader Wilma Chan, D-Alameda.

Chan, term-limited out in 2006, just hasn’t had the kind of public face-time that Hancock — finishing her final Assembly term this year — has had by remaining in office. And note Hancock’s quote, regarding the “sole endorsement;” Perata had endorsed them both, which essentially negated any possible benefit.

But don’t count Chan out. As of March 17, the end of the last reporting period, Chan’s campaign had $507,283 in the bank compared to Hancock’s $406,108, although a glance at filings since then shows Hancock may have stepped it up in the last two weeks, collecting $34,200 to Chan’s $9,700. Lotsa money on both sides; watch your mailboxes for what’s sure to be a direct-mail deluge.

Lawyers for the conservative group Move America Forward have written to U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello of San Francisco “asking the federal government to investigate whether the Berkeley City Council’s official anti-Marine position and encouragement of anti-war groups to ‘impede’ the work of Marine recruiters constitutes a breach of law,” according to MAF’s news release. “If the City Council violated the law, the letter asks the U.S. Attorney to prosecute the perpetrators.”

The release says the letter also voices concern that Berkeley Police were unresponsive and negligent to public safety during a protest MAF organized in Berkeley on Feb. 12, 2007. The letter’s original copy has already been mailed, but MAF leaders will hand-deliver another Monday morning at San Francisco’s federal courthouse and then hold a news conference right afterward.

“We have been fighting them all the way and this is simply the next step,” former KSFO conservative talk radio host and MAF cofounder Melanie Morgan said in the release, also reiterating her demand that Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates give a full, official apology to all troops, veterans, and their families, and rescind resolutions giving special treatment — a parking space and sound-permit rights — to CodePink, one of the groups protesting at Berkeley’s U.S. Marine Corps recruiting center in recent months. “Berkeley has got to realize that we’re not going away.”

Pastor John Hagee — the televangelist whose commentary has provided some headaches for the presidential campaign of John McCain, whom he has endorsed — today put out a video urging followers not to believe media accounts of his alleged anti-Catholic sentiments.

Here’s another point of view:

Judge for yourself.

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey will address the Commonwealth Club of California at noon tomorrow in San Francisco’s Intercontinental Hotel on “how he has made public confidence in government a priority, and highlight the Justice Department’s success in investigating and prosecuting public corruption.”

But color U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., underwhelmed with Mukasey’s dedication to rooting out public corruption. She sent him a letter today asking him to explain the decision made earlier this month to disband and eliminate the public-corruption unit in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles; she worries whether pending and future cases of public corruption will be rigorously pursued given the reassignment of 17 lawyers away from this unit.

Of course, y’all could go ask Mukasey yourselves tomorrow. Tickets are available here; they’re $15 for club members or $30 for nonmembers, but premium seats in the first few rows costs $45 for members or $65 for nonmembers. The hotel is at 888 Howard St., and check-in starts at 11:15 a.m.; attendees will be subject to search, no bags or packages allowed.

UPDATE @ 1:35 P.M. THURSDAY: You can read Mukasey’s remarks as prepared for delivery here, on the Justice Department’s Web site. “Let me be clear: Politics has no role in the investigation or prosecution of political corruption or any other criminal offense, and I have seen absolutely no evidence of any such impropriety in my time at the Department, and would not tolerate it.”

Read the complete text of Feinstein’s letter, after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s the Courage Campaign’s new television ad “re-branding California Republicans as the ‘Yacht Party’ for refusing to close a ‘yacht tax’ loophole despite an initial $16 billion state budget deficit.”

United Healthcare Workers-West and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, are joining with more than 550 small donors to air the ads in Sacramento and San Francisco today and Thursday, and in Walnut Creek, Palm Springs, and other areas at times not yet determined.

The “Yacht Party” concept began on Calitics, a state politics blog. Netroots activists there came up with the term and then produced a one-minute YouTube video, created by blogger David Dayen; that video inspired this ad.

UPDATE @ 3:20 P.M. WEDNESDAY: Man, they make it TOO easy. This just in from the California Democratic Party:

Perhaps the fumes from the engines on their power yachts finally got to them. That’s the only logical explanation we can think of as to why the Assembly Republicans, breaking their own record for political tone-deafness, would have chosen the swanky new boutique hotel Le Rivage as the location for their caucus retreat.

Nestled into the banks of the Sacramento River, Le Rivage offers “elegant surroundings, select accommodations, impeccable service, and unique amenities combine to create the finest luxury hotel in California’s capital.” What unique amenities, you ask?

How about – you guessed it — “luxury yacht parking, long term and short term.”

According to the hotel’s website: Le Rivage Hotel proudly hosts Sacramento’s premier yacht parking. Conveniently located adjacent to the luxury hotel and on The Sacramento River. Le Rivage Marina includes

25 permanent slips from 36-100ft vessels

Dual 50 amp service

Pump-out station

Boat catering

Short-term parking

Yacht sales

Use of hotel pool, whirlpool, and fitness center with berth rental

What better way for Assembly Republicans to celebrate their crowning legislative accomplishment of the new session thus far – their killing of the bill to close the “sloophole”?

It seems the Oakland-based, politically active California Nurses Association and its national arm, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, have gotten into a nasty tussle with the Service Employees International Union out in Ohio.

From a Huffington Post blog:

There are 8,000 hospital workers in Ohio who should have joined the union last week but did not — because of the union-busting tactics of the California Nurses Association. I used to work for SEIU District 1199 in Ohio, working for years on this very campaign to unionize nurses, and I don’t even know how to start talking about this. Jane asked me a week ago for my thoughts, but it’s been painfully hard to put into words.

Here’s the bare bones summary of what happened, from the New York Times. But of course it is much, much more complicated than this:

The Service Employees International Union was brimming with confidence about unionizing 8,300 workers at nine Ohio hospitals through elections that were scheduled for this Wednesday and Friday. But then organizers from a rival union, the California Nurses Association, swept into town, buttonholing workers and maneuvering their way into hospital wards, to press the workers to vote not to join the S.E.I.U.

The blog goes on to describe a nine-year organizing battle that led to a “neutrality agreement from CHP (Catholic Healthcare Partners) for free and fair union elections — a vote free of interference, harassment or intimidation from their supervisors.”

Eight thousand workers, about to join the union–and then outsiders from a rival union, the California Nurses Association (CNA), started leafleting and harassing workers in the week before their vote, telling them to vote “no,” creating such mass confusion and hysteria that SEIU was finally forced to cancel the elections altogether.
{snip}
What is particularly unbelievable is the fact that the CNA tried to paint the neutrality agreement between the hospital and the workers — an agreement the workers spent years fighting for — as some sort of “sweetheart deal…”

Now SEIU is gathering signatures on a petition to the CNA that “Silencing Nurses Voices Is Not a Victory.”

I contacted CNA Communications Director Charles Idelson for a rebuttal, and here it is:

SEIU International cut a back room deal with a big hospital chain, Catholic Healthcare Partners, setting up a rigged election.

The first point they have failed to answer is this — It was SEIU and CHP that called off the election, not us. The first question to ask is if there was so much support among the RNs and other employees to join SEIU, why not just go ahead? The reason, once their undemocratic scam was exposed, it was evident there was not majority support for SEIU.

Allowing a company to hand-pick a union for its employees without their consent while stifling dissent and even discussion is not democratic, and it certainly is not the way to build a labor movement that has the trust and confidence of working people.

How did they do it?

1- The employer filed for the election, not the union, without a single signed union card, an unpleasant reminder of the bad old days of company unions when companies imposed hand-picked unions without the consent of their employees.

2- SEIU and CHP manipulated labor law to prevent any other union from being able to participate on the ballot. Similar underhanded behavior did not create a democratic election in Michigan, and it didn’t at CHP either.

3- RNs and other employees were specifically forbidden from talking about the union or the election — not only a violation of their free speech rights, but a cynical repudiation of what it takes to build genuine collective, union power in the workplace.

4- SEIU and CHP also conspired to gag dissent outside the hospitals as well. When NNOC/CNA RNs arrived to hand out flyers to RNs, they were stalked and harassed by SEIU staff, slapped with a court order by CHP, and two people were arrested.

This is the Andy Stern model of organizing, pressure employers or sweet talk employers to hand him workers. In this case, we’ve heard a lot of talk about how SEIU waged a corporate campaign, how SEIU filed a lawsuit, ad nauseam. The workers are not chattel, SEIU is not entitled to them no matter how much money they spent.

And while SEIU is on their high horse, perhaps they would care to explain their behavior in Puerto Rico where Dennis Rivera, head of SEIU Healthcare, is collaborating with the anti-union governor of the island to destroy a militant teachers union. The governor wants to get rid of the teachers have had the temerity of challenging bad working conditions and an undemocratic no strike law. So the governor held secret meetings with Rivera, who has banded together with an association of school principals and managers to create a “new” teachers union affiliated with SEIU to replace the militant one.

UPDATE @ 7:50 A.M. THURSDAY: Here are a few other media accounts of what went down, from the Chicago Tribune, the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and the Associated Press via the Akron Beacon Journal.

First the Bay Area’s Ace Smith ran Hillary Clinton’s operation in California.

Then he took it on the road to Texas.

And now he’s headed to… Pennsylvania? No. North Carolina.

This week, the first of two parts: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s May 1990 appearance on NBC’s “Late Night with David Letterman,” wherein we discuss “Total Recall,” child-birthing classes, physical fitness and more:

Previous SVOTWs: March 18, March 11, March 4, February 26, February 19, February 12, February 5, January 29, January 22, January 15, January 8, January 1, December 25, December 18, December 11, December 4, November 27, November 20, November 13, November 6, October 30, October 23, October 16, October 9, October 2, September 25, September 18, September 11, September 4, August 28, August 21, August 7, July 31, July 24, July 17, July 10, July 3, June 26, June 19, June 12, June 5, May 29, May 22, May 15, May 8, May 1, April 24, April 17, April 10, April 3, March 27, March 20, March 13, March 6, February 27, February 20, February 13, February 6, January 30.