Campaign 2012 - Part 2 (Did the Candidates Put Lake Forest First?)

Last time we looked at the individual spending by candidates for city council and found out that we are on schedule to spend twice as much as was spent in 2010, and possibly break the $200,000 threshold. Now we want to look at the figures in more detail.

Who Spends Their Money in Lake Forest?

I had an entire series called “Put Lake Forest First” which showed that the City spent less than 5% of its budget in the City. So it makes sense for us to look at how the candidates spent their money and how much ended up in our City.

(In the studies I did on city spending, some people criticized the methodology because it wasn’t 100% clear whether or not the money stayed in the city. A city resident might have a business in another city, so this wouldn’t be caught in the analysis I did with the City’s data. Therefore because the numbers were small in this case, I asked each candidate to let me know if any of the expenses they incurred that appear to be made out of the city, in fact were tied to people who lived in the city. This still isn’t a “perfect” measure, but it improves on the previous method, and it does give us some comparative data on an important issue.)

Two candidates spent 50% or more of their money in our city and 2 candidates spent less than 3% of the money in the city.

I spent 77% of my budget on people and/or businesses in Lake Forest. Most of this went to the printing company owned by one of my neighbors.

Second on the list is Kathy Zechmeister. As far as I can tell, she spent 54% of her money in our City.

Marcia Rudolph comes in a very distant third at 15%.

Terry Anderson also comes in at 15%.

But the real surprises are the big spenders, Nick and Robinson. Robinson comes in at just under 3% and Nick just over 2%. In both cases the only money they spent in Lake Forest was on the City ballot, for which the City demanded $950. Otherwise, not a cent went to any person or business in the City.

Let me repeat that – apart from the money required to file for the election, not a cent of the $80,000+ spent by Nick and Robinson went to people or businesses in our city.

Big spender Nick put his money to work in Sacramento, Tustin, Orange, and Torrance. $40,466.20 went out and only the $950 required by the City stayed in Lake Forest. Nick’s website says he “will make decisions that are first and foremost in the best interest of the City of Lake Forest.” Apparently these decisions don’t include deciding where to spend his campaign funds.

I guess candidate Nick liked my blogs “Put Lake Forest First” so he adopted his own “Lake Forest Comes First” program where he says “…when all other things equal, the business that is located in Lake Forest is awarded the contract…” Well, our first look at his spending patterns shows that his slogan should be “Lake Forest Comes Last”.

Big spending Robinson saw his money go to Santa Ana, Coto de Caza, Aliso Viejo, Alta Dena, Laguna Niguel, Newport Beach, Sherman Oaks, and Torrance. He spread his $31,783.50 just about everywhere except in Lake Forest. Robinson’s campaign literature says “he knows how to create jobs”. Apparently this is true, but what they neglected to say is that he’s busy creating them elsewhere.

Here's the summary in bullet points -

• Gardner - 77%
• Zechmeister - 54%
• Rudolph - 15%
• Anderson - 15%
• Robinson - 3%
• Nick - 2.5%

Where Does The Money Come From?

How much of their own money have candidates poured into their campaigns? Excluding donations from their companies, here are the percentages that each person contributed from their personal accounts to their campaigns -

• Nick - 83% ($35,000 out of $42,650)
• Zeichmeister – 80% ($13,250 out of $16,632)
• Anderson – 75% ($13,019.40 out of $17,468.40)
• Gardner – 70% ($3,000 out of $4,300)
• Robinson – 14% ($5,000 out of $35,898.65)
• Rudolph – 0%

(BTW – Due to a discrepancy in his fling papers it isn’t clear whether or not Anderson’s money comes from himself or his company, so it is being treated here as coming from him, personally. In fairness to others, if I were to factor in the loans/contributions from companies controlled by the candidates, the figures would change for Robinson, increasing his percent from 14% to 26%)

Money From Vested Interests

As far as I can tell, the only candidates to take money from people or businesses that have brought issues before the Council are Robinson and Rudolph. Of course it’s not always possible to trace the source of the funds or to know the connections between people/companies and the candidates, so this finding is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Let me emphasis, as I have in the past, that taking money from vested interests is not illegal.

What does all this mean on the eve of the election? Let’s take a look at that next time.