Beverly Johnson and Campaign Funds

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Who is “Robert Gammon.”

I’ll take “Arbiters of Which Money Gets Assigned to What” for $2000, Alex.

The East Bay Express is the most recent critic to weigh in on the “look who’s funding Beverly Johnson now” train to piggyback on reporting about the pick for a master developer for the base.  Before I get started, I just want to clear the record by saying that I was disappointed by the eventual vote from the majority of the City Council.  While I liked the idea of the dual developers as proposed by Marie Gilmore, my druthers would have been to select SunCal and Catellus with Lennar running a distant distant third.  Not because there is anything wrong with them, I just felt that they were overextended with other Bay Area projects and with Hunters Point being so complex and Treasure Island being so ambitious, Alameda would get short shrift, but I digress. 

With that said, highlights from the EBX article:

…Johnson and Councilman Frank Matarrese, one of the mayor’s closest political allies, backed Catellus. At the meeting, Johnson noted that the company was already developing the nearby former Navy installation known as Alameda Landing. “If we have one developer on Alameda Landing … and a different developer on Alameda Point, there could be some conflict there,” she told the audience.

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Certain City Hall insiders, however, figured Johnson would choose Catellus, not necessarily based on its merits, but because she and the company had a mutual friend. Catellus had hired as a consultant Barbara Price, who ran Johnson’s political campaign when she first took the mayor’s office in 2002.

Price did not return phone calls seeking comment, but Arthur Hodges, a spokesman for ProLogis, the parent company of Catellus, denied that it hired Price and her firm, PK Consultants Inc., to win Johnson’s vote. “They were hired,” he said, “for their knowledge of the community and their expertise in government relations.”

During the meeting, however, it looked like Councilwoman Marie Gilmore might derail Catellus’ plans. Gilmore, who often sides with the mayor, refused to endorse any single developer. Instead, she proposed a partnership between Catellus and Lennar. She said she favored a mixed-use development and noted that Catellus is a commercial builder while Lennar’s expertise is erecting homes.

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But with Gilmore refusing to back either SunCal or Catellus on its own, neither company had the necessary three votes from the five-member council. Johnson then suddenly changed her mind, and seconded Gilmore’s proposal that Catellus team up with Lennar — which up to that point had not received a single vote. Following a ten-minute break, the two industry giants agreed to become partners.

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But conveniently, Matarrese backed the plan too, giving this “wild idea” three votes without any prior consideration — in public, at least.

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Could it be that she also had a reason to back Lennar, and the “wild idea” wasn’t so wild after all?…

All righty then.  It’s interesting that the narrative as described by Robert Gammon makes it sound so much more insidious than it actually was.  I think that if Robert Gammon wanted to do a really bang up job of reporting what actually happened, although my feeling is that it was really not about “reporting” but rather “reporting to a preconceived theory already crafted” he would have reached out to more people to talk to.   It’s much sexier to have a story about how big bad developers were able to buy their way into a sweet deal thanks to strategic campaigning funding and consultant hiring rather than the boring ordinary truth.   What gets lost in the article are the voices of the three other councilpeople: Frank Matarrese, Lena Tam, and Marie Gilmore.  It’s unfair to paint smart and thoughtful people like Frank Matarrese and Marie Gilmore as simple pawns.   Perhaps Robert Gammon would understand why Marie Gilmore proposed the partnership idea if he had picked up the phone and called Councilmember Gilmore.  And perhaps Robert Gammon would understand why Frank Matarrese would have backed the partnership proposal seemingly without “prior consideration” if he had also contacted Councilmember Matarrese for an explaination.

While the EBX article really tried to make Doug deHaan into the lone maverick on this vote  — he was the only live person other than the Catellus spokesperson that Robert Gammon spoke to for an almost 850 word piece — I think Lena Tam was really the champion pushing for SunCal during the meeting.  But again, it makes for a much sexier story to pit Doug deHaan against Beverly Johnson in a rehash of the election to bring election finances into the mix.

And then we get to the real meat of the story…the final “a ha” moment to wrap it up into a neat little bow.  The campaign finances.  Gammon tells us:

Records show that Johnson owes a debt of gratitude to one of Lennar’s team members, Pacific States Environmental Contractors, an East Bay demolition company owned by megadonor Ed DeSilva. The road-building magnate also was instrumental in getting Johnson elected in both 2002 and 2006.

In late October 2002, DeSilva donated $15,000 to a political action committee, Californians for Neighborhood Preservation, which papered Alameda with glossy mailers endorsing Johnson’s candidacy. Then, during her reelection bid, DeSilva contributed $75,000 to Let’s Rebuild California, a committee ostensibly set up to support last year’s statewide bond measures. But the group also produced three slick mailers that supported Johnson.

These finances are like that proverbial bad penny that keeps showing up again and again and again. And while Gammon is wholly correct that the DeSilva Group gave $15K to Californians for Neighborhood Preservation, so did Clorox.  But Dreyers Ice Cream gave a close $10K as well.  And while I know there is “clean up” to be done at Alameda Point, somehow I don’t think that bleach will be used in the process, thereby eliminating Big Household Products effect on the election.  And Dreyers, well ice cream companies donating to a campaign is never sexy either, unless somehow we hit upon a canyon of dairy on the Point.   And regarding the “Let’s Rebuild California” campaign fund, it was set up to support the statewide bonds, and those three slick mailers while they did ask voters to consider Beverly Johnson for mayor, it also asked us to support the statewide bond measures and — if memory serves me clearly, which it may not — varying other candidates from the state level to local.  And, while it’s not chump change to people like you and me, $75K was a drop in the bucket to the levels of contributions taken in by that particular PAC.   The tenuous connection that Gammon tries to make between the campaign donations that DeSilva made and one of the companies under his company’s larger umbrella that is one of the team members cited in Lennar’s RFQ reponse is hardly a smoking gun.  I guess it would have been more compelling if there was more of a direct connection rather than this six degree of separation thing that we saw during the election. 

For me the oddest part of the whole article came at the very end, after taking Ron Dellums to the mat over task forces he has formed to craft various “blueprints” for his mayoral reign.  I don’t have an opinion on this one way or the other as I don’t know much about it…but I was curious as to the last two pargraphs (or last paragraph and line) which, the first paragraph is, of course, in reference to Oakland’s task forces:

A legitimate goal. Then again, city councils, planning commissions, and countless other public bodies meet openly every week all across this country, and they don’t seem to have a problem attracting and promoting a free flow of ideas.

Except for Alameda, of course.

Whoa there…what the heck happened?  We were talking about Oakland, Ron Dellums, Oakland, Oakland Oakland and then there is a parting shot at Alameda?  Was this supposed to say “Except for Oakland, of course.”?   If it was intended as a shot at Alameda, it is a very disjointed conclusion.