From kevin-[at]-wolfandassociates.com Sun Feb 29 11:02:46 2004
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 10:07:54 -0800
To: Recipient List Suppressed: ;
From: Kevin Wolf <kevin-[at]-wolfandassociates.com>
Subject: Help!. Out of town developer trying to steal Davis election
Dear friends of Davis,
Help! Citizens are needed to help uncover information in the next 48
hours and share the truth about what is happening so that the voters
on March 2 know who is behind the professional phone banks that is
attempting to affect their vote on Davis City Council candidates, and
why.
Right before the 5 pm filing deadline on Thursday for candidate
campaign statements, City Clerk Bette Racki's fax received a filing
announcement that $21,063 had been spent by Steve Guidero in support
of polling help for Stan Forbes (44%), Mike Harrington (44%) and Don
Saylor (12%). (Note: It appears that Don has received no benefits
from any of the calling so it is unknown why he was added to the
filing. Possibly it is an attempt to distort what is really going on
or to cause Don to lose votes.)
Guidero has been lobbying the City to allow him to develop the
230-acre Shriner Hospital site on East Covell into a 900 unit housing
track. He needs to stop Covell Village in order to have his property
be considered. He has also pursued working with Barry Binning (who
turned him down) to develop housing on the Binning Track that is
immediately north of the Sutter Hospital. And he is rumored to be
working with the Tsakapoulos family on the PG&E property near the
causeway and Conaway Ranch north of the landfill.
Over the past month, many of us have received (and judging by
letters to the editor, complained about) the Voter Identification
(identifying supporters of a candidate) and "push" poll that has been
going on in town. The call I received two weeks ago sounded like a
regular poll but ended with a series of questions asking whether I
would change my vote if I knew Souza, Lott and Saylor supported
Covell Village and Harrington, Greenwald and Forbes opposed it. It
was clearly biased in how the questions was asked to make one feel
bad about Covell Village and to support candidates who opposed it.
(Note: A true poll takes about 700 calls. It appears that thousands
of polling calls were made going well beyond the needs of a poll and
into voter identification.)
On Friday night, new calls started with the callers reading a script
extolling the virtues of Forbes or Harrington and ending with a
question - "Will you be supporting him in the election?" This is a
classic Voter Identification question, which usually leads to a Get
Out the Vote call on Election Day to identified supporters. In at
least three cases all recipients have been able to verify that the
calls they received were made on behalf of 5G Consulting, Guidero's
company. Some of the callers have said they were paid by the Mike
Harrington campaign.
Many people aren't motivated to vote in elections and reminder calls
are proven effective at increasing voter turnout for your candidate.
At the pace they're calling they could contact thousands of voters
and call them all on Election Day. Which candidates get out their
votes best on Tuesday will be likely be the winners in this tight
election.
It appears that Guidero believes that an election of Forbes and
Harrington will stop Covell Village and lead to his having a chance
to get his development projects selected instead. In the process, he
has violated the state FPPC requirements that independent expenditure
committees notify all candidates within 24 hours of the action being
taken for or against them. The phone polling began well before the
Feb 26th filing that Guidero made. Guidero also nearly certainly
violated city election law that limits contributions to independent
expenditure campaigns influencing city council elections to $100 per
person. Given the ongoing extent of Guidero's phone calling
operation, the end expenditure could hit $40,000 or more.
Of course this is a small investment compared to what his potential
profit would be if he could convince a future City Council to change
the farmland zoning on the Shriner Property and develop a new
subdivision adjacent to the Wildhorse development.
Did Forbes and Harrington know this phone operation was going on and
benefiting them? Both strongly deny it, and this might be the truth.
Perhaps Guidero did this completely on his own and never mentioned it
to either. He still has broken state reporting and city finance
limitation codes.
Here are some additional facts.
In September 2003 Ted Puntillo and Mike Harrington were on the losing
side of a Council vote to have the Binning Tract north of Sutter
Hospital become 60 houses on 30 acres and 100 acres donated to City
open space. According to Ted, after the council meeting ended, Mike
told him that Steve Guidero was interested in helping develop the
Binning Tract. Barry Binning told me that Guidero did approach him
about working with him on the project. It was a surprise to many of
Mike's supporters that he would support this leap frog development
against his stated principles of supporting the "citizens" General
Plan.
In October or November, I assume Mike was personally lobbied, as were
all the other council members by Guidero when the city council was
considering his proposal to add his Shriner Hospital site into
competition with Covell Village. Mike ended up voting in support of
Guidero's request.
Mike denies that he knew anything about the polling or Guidero's
activities on his behalf. He sent an email message to all council
candidates and me saying "ditto" after Don Saylor sent us all his
email "I have no idea what this is about" response to Steve McMahon
and my late Thursday night email warning everyone of the last minute
filing by Guidero. On Friday night Mike faxed my Bette Racki's
email to he, Forbes and Saylor. In it she says, " All three of you
have indicated that you were not aware of this survey and
expenditures. If asked by the press I am sure that will be your
response."
If any of the candidates had any conversations with Guidero about
this, they would be breaking state law.
Mike got mad at me on Saturday morning at the Farmer's Market as I
tried to learn more about his relationship with Guidero and about the
full page Flatlander ad for Harrington that has not been reported.
(Note: If the Flatlander donated the ad, which the editor Martin
Barnes told be cost $500 - $250 over the reporting limit - it's
owners would be violating city election law.) Mike stood very close
to me and told me to stop pursuing efforts to find out what is going
on. I felt somewhat threatened and walked away to the Measure P
booth, which I was staffing. This event and the fact that a number
of people have told me that Mike includes in his response their
questions about Guidero that other candidates are receiving donations
by developers, and that he is receiving little. (His contributions
from developers include $99 each Cheryl and Paul Petrovich as of the
Feb. 14 filing See http://www2.dcn.org/dcn/vip/mar04/council/. The
Feb. 26 city filing has $100 each contributed by Barry and Anna
Binning.)
(The Feb. 26 report also shows a $100 check from 5G Consulting. Mike
told Steve McMahon and I that he returned the money on Friday when he
learned this company was involved with Guidero's phone campaign.)
By now you probably guessed that I am suspicious of Mike's veracity
on what he knew and when he knew it.
Regarding Stan Forbes, he is clearly benefiting from the massive
phone calling funded by Guidero. I tend to believe him that he knows
nothing about this, and that he has tried to get Guidero to stop the
calling. I do know that Paul Petrovich, who has been a major
developer in Davis (e.g. the South Davis Safeway shopping center) has
been a supporter of Forbes at least since his 2000 re-election
attempt when the Petrovichs gave $100 each to his campaign. See
(http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/government/elections/s00/finance/forbes_con.html
and note all the Forbes signs on the south east corner of the Safeway
property). Petrovich and Guidero have been partners in development
projects in the past. But the Petrovich link is the extent of the
connection that I know of between Forbes and Guidero.
On Friday night Stan emailed me the following about Steve Guidero and
5G Consulting: "I have no connection with these people at all and
have no idea who they are. They certainly didn't do anything for me."
(Note: Stan is also a recipient of developer funds in this election
too. As of the Feb. 14 filing, he has received $100 from Tom
Lumbrazo with Woodland's Spring Lakes and other developments, and
$400 total from David and Mary Taormino including Taormino and
Associates, investors in land around the periphery of Davis. Stan
failed to report in a timely donations under $100. On Feb. 24 he made
amendment to his filing Paul and Cheryl Petrovich for $99 each. The
Dan Dowling family has given Stan $400. Arcadian Properties related
people gave $200.)
There are many problems with such massive independent campaign
expenditures, not the least of which is that Forbes and Harrington
may be as innocent of knowing that this was going on as I believe
Saylor is, but how is the public to know? Many voters in Davis
will get these calls from Guidero's professional phone banks but will
never know of the connection to his efforts to annex farmland to the
city and develop it.
So here is what you can do to help.
1. Send this email on to everyone you know in Davis so they can
learn of this as well.
2. If you get any more professional phone calls, try to record it or
take as accurate of notes as you can. Find out who they say is
paying for this. Some callers say it is the candidates, some say it
is 5G Consulting. We want find out who is paying whom. If the phone
scripts are the same but allegedly paid for by different people, than
some collusion would appear to be likely.
3. We want to find people who received early calls to fully identify
the extent to the report timing violation. If anyone can verify
polling or other calls from a paid service for these candidates,
especially if you found out that it was done by the 5G Consulting
group, this could be very important to the lawsuit we hope the city
will pursue after the election.
4. Send me any more information you can that links all of this
together and better explains what is going on.
5. I am trying to raise $1000 to pay for an automated call to
10,000 household answering machines on Monday telling people what
Guidero is up to and explain to them his efforts to sway the election
and develop the Shriner property. If you can contribute, please let
me know.
6. There is nothing we can do in terms of advertising in the
Enterprise or getting in letters to the editor because the paper has
a policy of not allowing such last minute activities. So we have to
share this information via our own networks and efforts.
7. Tell all the candidates and council members that you want and
expect the city to enforce the sections of the local Election Code
that regulate independent expenditure committees. Tell them you want
to know who's financing local campaigns and that you want them all to
play by the same rules. Our $100 local campaign contribution limits
will be a travesty if a single company with business before the
council can spend tens of thousands of dollars in the final days of
an election.
8. Most important! Vote on Tuesday and get everyone you know to vote.
Thank you for your help. Please send me any information you come up
with as soon as you can. I will send in tomorrow's Yolo Environment
and Political Newsletter
Kevin
--
P.S. Steve McMahon has posted a copy of the fax that came to the
city from 5G Consulting/Guidero reporting the independent campaign
expenditures. You can see this at
http://www2.dcn.org/dcn/vip/mar04/council/ and a text version below.
I hope Steve will post Mike and Don's letters to the FPPC and other
relevant material to the DCN site as well in the coming days. Anyone
want to help him?
Kevin Wolf
724 N Street
Davis, CA 95616
kevin-[at]-wolfandassociates.com
530-758-4211
www.wolfandassociates.com
************
Filer:
S G Consulting Group, LLC and Steve Guidero, Affiliated Entities
2251 Fair Oaks Blvd., Suite 300
Sacramento, CA 95825
Received by fax by the Davis City Clerk immediately before closing 2/26/04.
Three (separate) reports:
Expenditures supporting Mike Harrington:
2/26/2004 Phone Banks - Estimate 3,767.83
2/26/2004 Campaign Consultants - Estimate 3,300.00
2/26/2004 Polling and Survey Research - Estimate 2,200.00
Expenditures supporting Stan Forbes:
2/26/2004 Phone Banks - Estimate 3,767.83
2/26/2004 Campaign Consultants - Estimate 3,300.00
2/26/2004 Polling and Survey Research - Estimate 2,200.00
Expenditures supporting Don Saylor:
2/26/2004 Phone Banks - Estimate 1,027.58
2/26/2004 Campaign Consultants - Estimate 900.00
2/26/2004 Polling and Survey Research - Estimate 600.00-
Estimate 600.00 |