Suspicious pattern found in California campaign gifts

Politicians and their supporters routinely have funneled money through county-level political party committees around the state, avoiding strict limits on campaign giving and hiding the source of millions in donations, a California Watch analysis shows.

By using county parties as middlemen, Democratic and Republican donors can contribute far more money than the law typically allows to highly contested races in California where the extra cash could make the difference between winning and losing.

The strategy has been used for years but drew attention recently when the California Fair Political Practices Commission levied a combined $49,000 in fines against Assemblyman Joel Anderson, R-Alpine, and the Fresno County Republican Central Committee after an unusual pattern of donations that was brought to light in October. Anderson steered a lesser amount to Stanislaus County's Republican Central Committee, which also came under the FPPC's scrutiny.

The California Watch analysis, which examined state Assembly and Senate races during the last major election cycle in 2007-08, found a number of previously unreported examples of committees routing large donations into tight races. Some of those contributions raise ethical questions and may circumvent the law, campaign watchdogs say.

In one case, a single donor gave more than $300,000 in one day to 10 Democratic county committees from Humboldt to San Diego counties. Those committees proceeded to make large contributions to high-profile Democratic Assembly and Senate races at different times in the days leading up to the election.

In another case, Modesto Assemblyman Tom Berryhill made contributions to two Republican committees, which quickly turned around and contributed large amounts to his brother, Bill Berryhill, who was campaigning for a seat in a nearby district.

"I'm all for strong political parties, but it ought not to be an opportunity for an end run around the contribution limits that the people thought that they were enacting," said Ross Johnson, chairman of the FPPC and one-time sponsor of Proposition 34, the 2000 ballot measure that established California's modern framework of campaign finance limits.

Large donations to and from county parties are legal as long as donors do not tell the parties where to steer their contributions. Regulators say that proving collusion is difficult.

But the pattern of money flowing into the party committees before it is quickly dispatched to campaigns makes it appear anything but arbitrary. Critics, including Johnson and others, say the process violates the spirit of the campaign finance reforms established by voters when they passed Proposition 34.

Quick turnaround of funds

"I'd call it money laundering," said Derek Cressman, regional director for Common Cause, a nonpartisan advocacy group that supports campaign finance reform. "In addition to evading contribution limits, you are masking the source of the funds."

During the past two months of the 2007-08 election cycle, when campaign giving reached fever pitch, local parties took in more than $7.1 million and promptly dispensed at least $4.2 million to Assembly and Senate candidates across the state.

More than three-quarters of the money was given by central committees to support candidates outside their local jurisdictions who were fighting contested races, such as Democrat Alyson Huber, now an assemblywoman from El Dorado Hills.

Less than two weeks before Election Day in 2008, Huber was locked in a tight race with former San Joaquin County Supervisor Jack Sieglock. That's when her campaign received help from an unusual source: $63,000 from a Democratic Party committee in tiny Del Norte County, more than 400 miles away, on the Oregon border.