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Where the Faulconer governor money is coming from
Covid dampens downtown San Diego's Artisan Market, Pet Parade, and Gaslamp Gala
Del Mar property mogul Marc Brutten, who owns the floundering Del Mar Plaza shopping complex, came up with $20,000 for Kevin Faulconer.
Making Kevin great again
Big money Donald Trump donors continue to kick in for ex-San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer’s bid for California governor. The latest contributions include $32,400 on April 9 from “Aluminum Treating Co, Inc.” of South Gate, according to an April 14 filing with the California Secretary of State’s office. Other records show that Astro Aluminum Treating, Co., Inc. is in South Gate, an industrial suburb of Los Angeles. Astro chief Mark Dickson and his wife Janice each gave $250,000 to Trump’s presidential re-election cause last year, according to a September 24, 2020 Los Angeles Times account. Decron Properties, a Los Angeles real estate concern whose employees gave Trump a total of $6638 and $50 to Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg last year, contributed $10,000 to the Faulconer fund on March 31. Howard and Susan Groff of L.A. came up with a total of $64,800. The Times report says she gave $185,000 to Trump last year. Charter school advocate and Central Valley carrot grower Barbara Grimm Marshall of Bakersfield contributed $10,000 to Faulconer on March 25. Last year she gave $350,000 to Trump and donated $740,000 to House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s Take Back the House committee, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Trump got $6638, Buttigieg got $50.
Unrelated to Trump, but closer to home, Del Mar property mogul Marc Brutten, who owns the floundering Del Mar Plaza shopping complex, came up with $20,000 for Faulconer on March 31. “Patty and Marc Brutten spent roughly forty-million dollars buying the plaza in 2017,” KGTV reported last September 30. “The successes have been very few and far between. It’s been a long hard road,” Patty told the station about the pandemic-hit center.
Binge giving
Democrat Shirley Weber, whose daughter Akilah recently overwhelmed the rest of the field in her drive to replace her mother in the state Assembly, continues to raise plenty of political cash for her California Secretary of State bid. Appointed to the seat by Governor Gavin Newsom after a vacancy created by Newsom’s naming of prior occupant Alexa Padilla to the U.S. Senate, Shirley Weber is scouring the state for election contributions. Recent donors include Patty Quillin of Santa Cruz, the wife of Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings, who gave $8100 on April 5 and listed her occupation as unemployed. Last year, the couple contributed a record $120 million to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, per a June 17 ABC news report... Now that the San Diego city council has voted to spend tax dollars on a legal battle to overturn the two-thirds vote rule that doomed last year’s Measure C hotel tax hike, the pro-Measure C campaign is giving $15,000 to the county Democratic Party. So reveals an April 19 filing by the group with the city clerk’s office.
Freeing Spokane’s records
An expose of Kevin Faulconer’s ex-environmental department head has led to good notices for the San Diego Republican ex-mayor’s online public records archive from a Spokane weekly newspaper. “Last week, we published a piece about Johnnie Perkins, the man who will have one of the most important positions in Spokane city government, Mayor Nadine Woodward’s city administrator,” says an April 15 piece in the Inlander. “Perkins, as one of San Diego’s deputy chief operating officers, had played a pivotal role in overseeing the 101 Ash Street project’s troubled renovations in 2019 and 2020. But Perkins himself offered few specifics about his involvement with the project when pressed by the Inlander, repeatedly shrugging off specific questions with vague generalities like ‘we all face and are given challenges and opportunities in our life,’ ‘all major projects present their own unique circumstances,’ and ‘public safety is a top priority first, second, and always.’”
Alex Padilla's appointment to the U.S. Senate launched Shirley Weber's money machine.
Enter San Diego’s NextRequest public records system, implemented during Faulconer’s mayoral reign. “Go ahead, try it out. Search ‘Perkins’ or ‘Ash Street’ or ‘fire alarms’ or, for that matter, ‘San Diego Padres’ and get a bunch of documents instantly available for download. It’s exactly the sort of open public records portal that City Council President Breean Beggs and Councilman Michael Cathcart want to bring to Spokane.”
Shutdowns forced
by the covid-19 pandemic have not been easy for downtown’s Gaslamp Quarter Association. On March 23, 2020, says a newly released financial report, the merchants’ group was forced to “lay off one staff members (sic) to reduce $52,000 in salaries expense. On January 4, 2021, the Association laid off one staff member to reduce $80,000 in salaries expense. Cancellations or postponements of events, including the Artisan Market, Pet Parade, and Gaslamp Gala, caused a total approximate loss of revenues of $77,000 during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2020, according to the group’s annual financial report of April 7, 2021.
— Matt Potter (@sdmattpotter)
The Reader offers $25 for news tips published in this column. Call our voice mail at 619-235-3000, ext. 440, or sandiegoreader.com/staff/matt-potter/contact/.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Where the Faulconer governor money is coming from
Covid dampens downtown San Diego's Artisan Market, Pet Parade, and Gaslamp Gala
Where the Faulconer governor money is coming from
Covid dampens downtown San Diego's Artisan Market, Pet Parade, and Gaslamp Gala
Del Mar property mogul Marc Brutten, who owns the floundering Del Mar Plaza shopping complex, came up with $20,000 for Kevin Faulconer.
Making Kevin great again
Big money Donald Trump donors continue to kick in for ex-San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer’s bid for California governor. The latest contributions include $32,400 on April 9 from “Aluminum Treating Co, Inc.” of South Gate, according to an April 14 filing with the California Secretary of State’s office. Other records show that Astro Aluminum Treating, Co., Inc. is in South Gate, an industrial suburb of Los Angeles. Astro chief Mark Dickson and his wife Janice each gave $250,000 to Trump’s presidential re-election cause last year, according to a September 24, 2020 Los Angeles Times account. Decron Properties, a Los Angeles real estate concern whose employees gave Trump a total of $6638 and $50 to Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg last year, contributed $10,000 to the Faulconer fund on March 31. Howard and Susan Groff of L.A. came up with a total of $64,800. The Times report says she gave $185,000 to Trump last year. Charter school advocate and Central Valley carrot grower Barbara Grimm Marshall of Bakersfield contributed $10,000 to Faulconer on March 25. Last year she gave $350,000 to Trump and donated $740,000 to House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s Take Back the House committee, according to OpenSecrets.org.
Trump got $6638, Buttigieg got $50.
Unrelated to Trump, but closer to home, Del Mar property mogul Marc Brutten, who owns the floundering Del Mar Plaza shopping complex, came up with $20,000 for Faulconer on March 31. “Patty and Marc Brutten spent roughly forty-million dollars buying the plaza in 2017,” KGTV reported last September 30. “The successes have been very few and far between. It’s been a long hard road,” Patty told the station about the pandemic-hit center.
Binge giving
Democrat Shirley Weber, whose daughter Akilah recently overwhelmed the rest of the field in her drive to replace her mother in the state Assembly, continues to raise plenty of political cash for her California Secretary of State bid. Appointed to the seat by Governor Gavin Newsom after a vacancy created by Newsom’s naming of prior occupant Alexa Padilla to the U.S. Senate, Shirley Weber is scouring the state for election contributions. Recent donors include Patty Quillin of Santa Cruz, the wife of Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings, who gave $8100 on April 5 and listed her occupation as unemployed. Last year, the couple contributed a record $120 million to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, per a June 17 ABC news report... Now that the San Diego city council has voted to spend tax dollars on a legal battle to overturn the two-thirds vote rule that doomed last year’s Measure C hotel tax hike, the pro-Measure C campaign is giving $15,000 to the county Democratic Party. So reveals an April 19 filing by the group with the city clerk’s office.
Freeing Spokane’s records
An expose of Kevin Faulconer’s ex-environmental department head has led to good notices for the San Diego Republican ex-mayor’s online public records archive from a Spokane weekly newspaper. “Last week, we published a piece about Johnnie Perkins, the man who will have one of the most important positions in Spokane city government, Mayor Nadine Woodward’s city administrator,” says an April 15 piece in the Inlander. “Perkins, as one of San Diego’s deputy chief operating officers, had played a pivotal role in overseeing the 101 Ash Street project’s troubled renovations in 2019 and 2020. But Perkins himself offered few specifics about his involvement with the project when pressed by the Inlander, repeatedly shrugging off specific questions with vague generalities like ‘we all face and are given challenges and opportunities in our life,’ ‘all major projects present their own unique circumstances,’ and ‘public safety is a top priority first, second, and always.’”
Alex Padilla's appointment to the U.S. Senate launched Shirley Weber's money machine.
Enter San Diego’s NextRequest public records system, implemented during Faulconer’s mayoral reign. “Go ahead, try it out. Search ‘Perkins’ or ‘Ash Street’ or ‘fire alarms’ or, for that matter, ‘San Diego Padres’ and get a bunch of documents instantly available for download. It’s exactly the sort of open public records portal that City Council President Breean Beggs and Councilman Michael Cathcart want to bring to Spokane.”
Shutdowns forced
by the covid-19 pandemic have not been easy for downtown’s Gaslamp Quarter Association. On March 23, 2020, says a newly released financial report, the merchants’ group was forced to “lay off one staff members (sic) to reduce $52,000 in salaries expense. On January 4, 2021, the Association laid off one staff member to reduce $80,000 in salaries expense. Cancellations or postponements of events, including the Artisan Market, Pet Parade, and Gaslamp Gala, caused a total approximate loss of revenues of $77,000 during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2020, according to the group’s annual financial report of April 7, 2021.
— Matt Potter (@sdmattpotter)
The Reader offers $25 for news tips published in this column. Call our voice mail at 619-235-3000, ext. 440, or sandiegoreader.com/staff/matt-potter/contact/.
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