Here's something you might be interested in.
Campaign filings for San Diego city council candidates were due yesterday and most of them were posted on on the city clerk's campaign filing web page by evening.
The site isn't perfect, but it's a big improvement over the old hard copies that you had to go down to city hall to look up. The biggest problem is that a lot of the candidates aren't filing electronically, but instead sending in paper campaign filings in PDF format, which you have to download and look through manually.
A few campaigns are actually filing electronically, allowing you to search by terms like "developer" or "real estate", and come up with some interesting patterns. For example, we found 57 cites for "real estate" when we search everything that that is online.
Unfortunately, since none of the new candidates are reporting electronically, most of those were made last year. Two of interest this year however are Tony Young, who gave back some cash to an employee of the infamous Corky McMillin companies.
Tony Young for City Council 2006 03/29/2007 250.00 Expense: Returned ContributionsRiser, Kathleen Real Estate Development/Project Mgr. The Corky McMillin Companies
And San Diegans for City Hall Reform, the group backing the strong mayor era of Jerry Sanders:
San Diegans for City Hall Reform 03/14/2007 2,500.00 Monetary Contributions Received Kiffmann, Helmut Real Estate Investor Self; Kiffman Properties, Inc. San Diegans for City Hall Reform 03/27/2007 500.00 Monetary Contributions Received Quinn, J. Stephen Real Estate Developer American Property Enterprises
Campaign filings for San Diego city council candidates were due yesterday and most of them were posted on on the city clerk's campaign filing web page by evening.
The site isn't perfect, but it's a big improvement over the old hard copies that you had to go down to city hall to look up. The biggest problem is that a lot of the candidates aren't filing electronically, but instead sending in paper campaign filings in PDF format, which you have to download and look through manually.
A few campaigns are actually filing electronically, allowing you to search by terms like "developer" or "real estate", and come up with some interesting patterns. For example, we found 57 cites for "real estate" when we search everything that that is online.
Unfortunately, since none of the new candidates are reporting electronically, most of those were made last year. Two of interest this year however are Tony Young, who gave back some cash to an employee of the infamous Corky McMillin companies.
Tony Young for City Council 2006 03/29/2007 250.00 Expense: Returned ContributionsRiser, Kathleen Real Estate Development/Project Mgr. The Corky McMillin Companies
And San Diegans for City Hall Reform, the group backing the strong mayor era of Jerry Sanders:
San Diegans for City Hall Reform 03/14/2007 2,500.00 Monetary Contributions Received Kiffmann, Helmut Real Estate Investor Self; Kiffman Properties, Inc. San Diegans for City Hall Reform 03/27/2007 500.00 Monetary Contributions Received Quinn, J. Stephen Real Estate Developer American Property Enterprises