Some get it from big Los Angeles, Orange County, and New York developers. Some get it from professional sports moguls, trash haulers, and union bosses. Still others get it from lawyers, judges, and lobbyists. A lucky few even get it from wealthy spouses or rich uncles in Manhattan, and many make huge personal loans to themselves, brazenly counting on tapping into special interests to pay themselves back later on. But wherever they get it, it's crucial for success in what has become San Diego's biggest high-stakes poker game: the race for campaign cash.

In a city where councilmembers make $54,000 a year and the mayor is paid $71,900, 13 candidates running for four open city council seats in next March's primary election have already collected a total of $534,500. One council candidate boasts of having raised $81,000. The top five mayoral candidates have so far reported raising $851,808, with a single candidate, county supervisor Ron Roberts, having picked up $373,051 from his well-heeled supporters.

The grand total of $1,386,308 collected over the first six months of this year by the mayoral and council candidates smashes all previous records. A $2.5 million political season at San Diego City Hall, unheard of four years ago, is virtually assured. It guarantees that a torrent of cash will pour into the coffers of professional fundraisers, pollsters, and political consultants and handlers who will spend it on an orgy of junk mail, hit pieces, and radio and television spots crafted to sell their candidates to an increasingly blasé local electorate, many of whom are too lazy, alienated, or too out of touch to bother to vote. In 1995, the last time four city council seats were on the ballot, barely 20 percent of city voters made it to the polls.

But if San Diegans don't care who controls the city council, special interests do, and they are willing to pay big money to make sure they get who they want. The city council and the mayor control a budget of $2.2 billion and have lavished tax dollars on everything from baseball and football stadiums to convention centers to experimental programs to turn sewage into drinking water. The council also controls land use in the city and can award a lucrative shopping-mall concession or housing development to a generously contributing friend -- and just as easily deny them to a foe.

Unwatched and unquestioned by local media (since its merger of the Union with the Tribune and the demise of the San Diego edition of the Los Angeles Times, the Union-Tribune has stopped reporting on most of what happens at City Hall, and television stations do little of their own governmental reporting), the mayor and council also dole out millions of dollars in federal funds, state grants, and local taxes to favorite charities and business associations -- such as the Convention and Visitors Bureau -- in the name of civic progress. It is no coincidence that many of the donors to city council campaigns are the recipients of these millions.

District elections -- the method by which city council candidates are elected by the voters in their districts rather than citywide, as was the practice before 1989 -- were supposed to reduce the influence of big money and make it easier for grassroots campaigns to take root. It didn't work out that way. Instead of boasting of their legions of volunteer precinct walkers and loyal envelope stuffers, this year's council candidates are bragging about their bankrolls.

It is a recipe for San Diego's own special brand of institutionalized corruption, and contributors across the country have taken notice, evidenced by the latest campaign-disclosure filings submitted to the city clerk by the candidates earlier this month. More troubling still is the city's history of money-laundering scandals in which wealthy contributors arrange for their employees, associates, and even children to make $250 contributions that are secretly and illegally reimbursed.

A chief example of San Diego's new money political culture is the Fifth District city council campaign of Karen McElliott, former planning commissioner and current chairwoman of the Qualcomm Stadium advisory board. Though her fundraising total of $61,000 was not a record among this year's candidates, the number of donors with special-interest agendas at city hall sets a new high.

Among those giving the legal maximum of $250: Larry Lucchino, co-owner of the Padres; Rebecca Moores, wife of Padres co-owner John Moores; Chargers owner Alex Spanos, his son Dean Spanos, and other Spanos family members, all of whom list their address as Stockton, California. They include Helen Spanos, Faye Spanos, Dea Spanos Berberian, and Michael Spanos. Lucchino and Moores are right in the middle of a nasty battle to build a taxpayer-subsidized stadium downtown. And it is no secret that Alex Spanos harbors hopes to build a new football stadium for his team at taxpayer expense and seeks continued public funding for a major overhaul of the existing Qualcomm Stadium to better accommodate the Super Bowl. Just how badly they want more public money can be gauged by how many contributions they make to city council candidates.

The Spanos family was also busy in the First District city council race, where nurse Linda E. Davis, who reported raising a total of $33,630, collected maximum contributions from Dea Spanos Berberian and her husband Ron, who works for Stockton's Bank of Agriculture and Commerce; Larry Ruhl, also of Stockton, who is executive vice president of A.G. Spanos Co.; Alex Spanos; Dean Spanos; Faye Spanos; Michael Spanos; Susan Spanos; and Helen Spanos.

Rather than pick just one candidate for mayor so early in the race, the Spanos clan have spread their wealth among several mayoral candidates, all of whom also happen to be incumbent city council members who have loyally backed the Chargers' controversial ticket guarantee and stadium deal. Second District councilman Byron Wear's mayoral campaign got $250 from Dean Spanos. Dean and his wife Susan also gave the mayoral campaign of Fourth District councilman George Stevens $500.

The family favorite for mayor, however, seems to be Councilwoman Barbara Warden. Like Wear and Stevens, Warden has been an avid supporter of the Chargers' stadium deal. Dea Spanos Berberian gave $250 to Warden's campaign for mayor, as did her husband Ron Berberian. Raymond Hanes, listed as an executive vice president of the Spanos Co. in Las Vegas, gave Warden $250, as did Jeremiah T. Murphy, Jr., of Stockton, listed as a "corporate officer" of the Spanos Corporation, and Stockon's Barry Ruhl, another Spanos employee, along with wife Alexis Ruhl. Other Spanos family members giving to Warden included maximum contributions from Michael and Helen Spanos of Stockton. The Padres' Larry Lucchino gave Warden $250.

One mayoral candidate who didn't collect a dime from the Spanos family was county supervisor Ron Roberts, but he found plenty of other donors as he raised $373,051, the highest total of the field. A longtime baseball fan and friend of Padres owner John Moores, Roberts did not get any money from the computer-turned-sports-mogul and his business partner Lucchino. Insiders say Moores, with details of his costly and controversial stadium still pending before the city council, doesn't want to antagonize councilmembers Wear, Warden, and Stevens by donating to their powerful rival.

Roberts is expected to get a huge infusion of cash from Moores and his friends as the election draws closer, and especially if he is forced into a November run-off after the March 2000 primary. Even now, money with Padres connections is beginning to show up in Roberts's treasury. Padres announcer Gerry Coleman gave $250. Samuel H. Kennedy, whose job is listed as "sales" for the Padres, also gave $250. Other ties between Roberts's donors and the Padres are more intriguing.

One of Roberts's biggest financial angels was San Diego's Roel Construction, whose employees are listed as contributing heavily to his cause. Roel has become a contracting powerhouse downtown, recently having completed a new Marriott suite hotel on Pacific Highway just across the street from the county building. The Marriott project, built with support of San Diego city government, may only be the beginning for Roel, which is widely expected to angle for construction work connected to the proposed downtown baseball stadium.

According to his disclosure filing, Roberts collected amounts ranging from $25 to $250 worth of "catering" (presumably for a Roberts fundraising event) from Roel project managers Sheila Merrill, David Burks, Gail Kindred, Lynne Manner, Charles Holmes, Jacquie Johnston, Juliana Dupuis Miele, Claudia Jackson, and Dave McCarthy.

It is illegal for city council and mayoral candidates to accept corporate contributions, so only Roel employees and not Roel itself could legally give directly to Roberts. The disclosure shows that the Roberts campaign reimbursed the Roel corporation $400 for "invites, postage, and temp help," and Roel owner Stephen Roel another $400 for "entertainment." Stephen Roel had already made the maximum $250 personal contribution imposed by law and therefore could not make a so-called "in-kind" contribution to the campaign.

Roel and Roberts are both admirers of the Padres. According to an item in the Union-Tribune's Diane Bell column last month, Padre co-owner Larry Lucchino and Roberts "teamed up on a Qualcomm stage before the Padres game Monday to the hammering beat of Steve Roel's rock 'n' Roel (Construction) band."

According to another Bell item on May 15, Roel and his band entertained at a Roberts fundraiser. "That's a band of local business execs led by contractor Steve Roel. 'The construction business is a front,' Roberts kidded. 'The real job is that band.' To which Roel replied: 'It pays more -- with the city [building] fees.' "

Besides the catering expenses picked up by Roel employees, many of them also gave cash to the Roberts campaign. Contributors from Roel included: Stephen Robert Dunn of Vista, $100; Stephen Roel, $250; Steve L. Mead, $250; Craig D. Koehler, $250; Consalacion Valencia Fayad, $25; Donna J. Vargo, $250; John W. Elliott, $250; Andrew Roel, $250; Elizabeth Becerra Main, $50; Diana Martinez, $100; William A. Shaw, Jr., $250; Kevin J. Elliott, $250; Wendy E. Brinker, $25; Geoffrey W. Sherman, $50; Jeanne Roel, $250; Karin L. Fowler, $30; Darlene Garcia, $25; Ramon B. Camacho, $250; Patricia Lynn Gomez, $25; and R. Daniel Dalry, $50.

Suspicions about Roberts's ties to Roel were heightened after a huge banner bearing the name Roel Construction and congratulating Padres slugger Tony Gwynn on his 3000th hit appeared several weeks ago on the front of the County Administration Building on Pacific Highway. "It looks real fishy to me," said one county employee who declined to be identified.

Roberts calls Stephen Roel a "longtime friend." "Steve's been close to me and I think he has been from day one. He's helped me every time. He basically beats the drum." He notes that Roel shares his interest in the Padres. "I'm a Padres fan, I have to tell you that," says Roberts. "And Steve has become pretty strongly interested. He became a [Padres] sponsor this year. You'll see a sign out in the right center field. In fact, I kid him; he just seems like he's got one of the most well-placed signs. He did well. He also sponsored the fireworks for the Fourth of July. I may have introduced him to John Moores, but whatever he's done [with the Padres], he's done on his own. I don't think he's involved in the construction of the ballpark, he may be involved in something in that area."

As for Roel's banner in honor of Tony Gwynn now festooning the county building, Roberts explains: "I wanted to do a thing for Tony Gwynn, and I asked our people to put something together. In the past, we had done things like that and kind of scrounged a few bucks, and they were never done right, so this time I told our guys to design something right and I'd find the money, and Steve was the first guy I called to sponsor the thing.

"I called Steve and said, 'I'd really like to put something up for Tony Gwynn,' and he said, 'Sure, can I have a little advertisement?" The sign cost about $1500, according to Roberts.

Another Roberts backer with intimate ties to the Padres is the controversial diet drug maker Metabolife. The San Diego-based company got a dose of unfavorable publicity in May after the Washington Post reported that company founder Michael J. Ellis and his partner had been busted a decade ago for operating a methamphetamine lab in Rancho Santa Fe. The Post also revealed that Ellis and other Metabolife officials and distributors had funneled $26,000 in campaign contributions to Republican congressman Brian Bilbray. Metabolife was reportedly seeking favorable treatment in Congress regarding the regulation of ephedrine, a methamphetamine precursor that is also a key ingredient in Metabolife's diet pills.

As it happens, Metabolife has a close relationship with Padres owner John Moores. Next to Moores himself, the company was the largest contributor to the campaign in favor of Proposition C, the measure passed by voters in November to allow construction of a new taxpayer-subsidized baseball stadium for the Padres downtown. Moores spent more than $1 million of his own money to secure voter approval of the measure. Metabolife was the second-largest contributor, donating $50,000.

Metabolife has other ties to the team. It is reportedly a Padres "corporate sponsor," pays for radio spots featuring Padres announcer Ted Leitner endorsing its weight-loss product, and sponsors the "Seventh Inning Stretch" during games. In May, the Union-Tribune reported that the company "is also among the corporations angling to put its name on the new ballpark, a source close to the Padres confirmed." And last year company employees reportedly gave $500 to Councilwoman Valerie Stallings, a key Padres backer, in her campaign against stadium critic Bruce Henderson.

Earlier this year, before scandal broke, Metabolife executives and dealers from California and Texas wrote a series of checks to the Roberts campaign, his financial disclosure shows. Susan and Allie Mallad of Riverside gave a total of $750. Glynnis L. Brooks of Mesa, Arizona gave $250, as did Kevin Thomas of Amarillo, Texas; Larry Winslow of Spring, Texas; and Cathy Pack of Lewisville, Texas; as well as San Diegans Robert K. Lueke, Emily Braun, Terrence J. Dapper, and Sandra Agan from Encinitas.

Why would Metabolife dealers in Texas and Arizona care enough about the race for San Diego's mayor to contribute the maximum $250?

Roberts says he thinks the Metabolife contributions were the result of a fundraising letter sent out by Dominick Johnson, a Metabolife employee and son of the late Cincinnati Reds player Deron Johnson, who was a close friend of Roberts and his wife in their student days at the University of California at Berkeley. "When I was a graduate student at Berkeley, whenever the Reds were in town, he'd leave tickets for us to see them play over in Candlestick.

"Deron was one of the finest athletes ever to come out of San Diego," says Roberts. "He died several years ago of cancer. Dominick is an avid baseball fan, he played in pro ball, minor league ball. As far as I know, he took some [fundraising] envelopes and passed them out and had some people send them in. I don't know anything else about that. Your calling it to my attention was actually the first I ever knew about it."

To some, the appearance of out-of-town contributors in San Diego's race for mayor have raised the spectre of the city's past campaign-money-laundering scandals. Three years ago, the state's Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) levied a record fine of $420,000 against San Diego developer Frank Gatlin and Gresham, Varner, Savage Nolan & Tilden, a San Bernardino law firm. Gatlin and the law firm admitted they had laundered thousands of dollars of campaign contributions to six members of the San Diego City Council, including Roberts. Gatlin had arranged $27,000 in contributions to then-Councilman Roberts, Councilman Juan Vargas, and Councilwoman Barbara Warden; Mark Ostoich, a partner in Gresham, Varner, had been the intermediary for 110 separate contributions totalling $29,000 to Roberts, Vargas, Judy McCarty, and George Stevens.

The recipients denied knowing anything about the laundering scheme, in which employees of the law firm and their spouses, including a paralegal and her firefighter husband from Idlewild along with Ostoich's elderly mother, made the maximum $250 contributions to the San Diego office-holders. They were later reimbursed by Ostoich and his associates in the law firm.

After the FPPC sanctions against Gatlin, Roberts told the Union-Tribune he was "bitterly disappointed" that Gatlin and the law firm had laundered 47 contributions totaling $25,000 to his campaign. "Frank was introduced to me and he said, 'I'd like to help you,' " Roberts was quoted by the paper as saying. "He said, 'We have a lot of people, and they all have good jobs and they can help by making contributions.' I specifically told him that you cannot have checks that are reimbursed, and he said that was not the case."

At the time, Roberts and Warden, now both candidates for mayor, said they would seek changes in county and city election laws requiring campaign money solicitations to bear a printed warning against money laundering, but such laws have never been passed, Roberts acknowledges.

The case, which was discovered after a story about Gatlin's suspicious contributions appeared in the Reader in August 1994, revolved around Gatlin's attempts to get approvals and other city concessions for a series of Wal-Mart shopping-center developments he was attempting to build in the city.

Gatlin was the largest of the money-laundering cases to plague the San Diego City Council, but there have been many others.

In February 1996, the H.G. Fenton Material Company of San Diego paid a $90,300 fine to avoid formal charges that it had laundered campaign money to the council. Six Fenton employees and the wife of one employee were found to have made 53 illegal contributions, totaling almost $10,000, between 1989 and 1993. The company reimbursed the employees after they contributed. Recipients included Juan Vargas, Judy McCarty, Christine Kehoe, and Valerie Stallings.

In November 1995, Cox Cable was slapped with a $42,000 fine for reimbursing employees for 24 laundered contributions totaling $4850 to city councilmembers and other politicians. Councilwoman Valerie Stallings got three contributions totaling $500.

In April 1994, the FPPC levied a $93,000 fine against the Yarmouth Group, owner of the Fashion Valley shopping mall, for laundering $11,000 through 44 separate contributors to Mayor Susan Golding and six current and former city councilmembers. Employees of the New York-based Yarmouth made the contributions and then were reimbursed by the company. Golding, who collected $3250 from Yarmouth, told the Union-Tribune she had been hoodwinked by the firm and professed her indignation: "We're trying to restore the public's trust in government, and then a business does something like this and it hurts the whole effort."

The continuing flow of illegal campaign money to the council has generated editorial calls for reform and the creation of a so-called public integrity unit in the city attorney's office. But the city council has resisted all efforts at reform. In September 1996, a week after the Gatlin scandal broke, even the Union-Tribune castigated the council for having voted to reject the creation of an ethics commission to enforce the city's campaign fundraising laws. Voting against a measure to allow voters to decide whether to create the panel were councilmembers Harry Mathis, Christine Kehoe, George Stevens, Judy McCarty, and Barbara Warden, who is now running for mayor.

In opposing the proposal supported by the League of Women Voters, Mathis complained that the commission would have had the power to "damage reputations and heavily influence the outcome of elections." Said Kehoe, now a candidate for state assembly and the recipient of hefty campaign contributions from Padres owner John Moores and his associates, "A well-timed investigation -- or even the suggestion of an investigation -- three, four, five days before an election, could easily unseat...a race that's close."

County Supervisor Roberts is quick to note that he, unlike his opponents on the city council, refuses to take contributions from lobbyists registered with the city or county. "Our guys have double-checked and triple-checked, and to my knowledge we haven't taken a penny from any registered lobbyist either in the county or the city."

He also says that he has fully disclosed the origin of all contributions under $99, which is not required by law, a practice, he notes, that is not being followed by many of his opponents. "You'll see full disclosure of every contribution. These [other campaigns] are going around saying, 'Give me $99 and you don't have to report it.' We aren't doing that. In fact, we are reverse-laundering the money.

"We sent back several thousand from lobbyists and people who we thought it was not appropriate to accept money from." And though local laws to require a warning against money laundering on campaign solicitation letters were never passed, Roberts says his fundraising letters carry the voluntary warning: "State law prohibits reimbursing donors for their contribution."

But observers note that detecting and proving reimbursements can be hard to do, even for the most honest investigators. The Gatlin scandal came to light only after Jane Repath, an intern working for the Reader, noticed an unusual pattern of contributions from individuals living in or near San Bernardino and wrote about the laundering scheme. City hall insiders also point out that the city attorney's public integrity unit, funded by the city council itself, is not an independent body and thus can't be expected to investigate its own.

In fact, City Attorney Casey Gwinn has been raising money for his own campaign war chest in an apparent effort to ward off potential opposition to his March reelection bid. The $36,452 he's collected so far includes maximum $250 contributions from employees of utility giant Sempra and its SDG&E subsidiary, Padres owner John Moores and his wife Rebecca, and many of the city's top lobbyists. Gwinn's public integrity unit has yet to crack a major case.