approved reforms barring the pass-through expense loophole<\/a>, but much of the problems behind dark money remain unresolved.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019ve ever seen public officials move faster,\u201d Fresnoland editor Rob Parsons said of the council\u2019s response. \u201cIn my time of doing this for 20 years \u2014 it was great to see. But it was also a reminder that they actually can move fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why isn\u2019t Fresno doing anything about dark money in politics?<\/p>\n
The panel featured three guests: Thomas Holyoke, a political science professor at Fresno State who has studied money in politics for two decades; Nick Richardson, the city council member representing northeast Fresno; and James Kus, the Fresno County Clerk-Registrar of Voters. The discussion moved from the specifics of the investigation into larger questions about how untraceable money flows through Fresno\u2019s political system.<\/p>\n
Holyoke described dark money as \u201cany ways that money is moved in politics so that the person giving the money or the entity giving the money remains unknown.\u201d He traced the practice from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the rise of super PACs after the Supreme Court\u2019s Citizens United decision in 2010, and said what works at the national level inevitably gets replicated locally with its own flair or flavor.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuccess breeds imitation,\u201d Holyoke said. \u201cSomething that has been found to work at the national level can be scaled down to the state level, can be scaled down to the local level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rashad then pointed to a concrete local example: an LLC called Front Point Partners, based in Orange County, that has been represented by Tavlian and has made campaign donations and funded television airtime for Fresno city council candidates. Because LLCs are not required to file the same political disclosures as PACs, there is no way for the public to trace where the money originated \u2014 a structure Holyoke described as functioning like a mini-super PAC funneling money to multiple local candidates.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public should know who is contributing to a candidate. They should know what the candidate is spending money on,\u201d Holyoke said. \u201cGenerally, people who contribute money are looking for some kind of benefit. Contributing money is an investment, and people expect investments to pay off.\u201d<\/p>\n
The panel also revisited the 2025 attack mailer targeting then-candidate Brandon Vang in the District 5 special election, which alleged that he was a statutory rapist. The PAC responsible spent $4,439 on the mailers and, the public found out later, was organized by Tavlian.<\/p>\n
For months after the election, the public was in the dark on who was behind the vicious smear, because Tavlian initially didn\u2019t file the required campaign finance forms. The city attorney\u2019s office issued a $1,000 fine.<\/p>\n
Asked whether a fine of that size was a meaningful deterrent for dark money, Holyoke said it was a big fat joke. \u201cA thousand dollars \u2014 for a lot of these organizations, that\u2019s going to be the change you find in the sofa,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The panelists discussed how dark money flourishes in an environment where campaigns are divided before even a single vote is cast. Councilman Richardson \u2014 who won in 2024 in an upset against a developer-backed candidate \u2014 said that the taxpayer money that went to Chavez\u2019s Facebook ads in the run up to the election was more than what his entire campaign spent in total.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we were taxed with a thousand-dollar fine during my campaign, that would have been like a baseball bat to my kneecaps,\u201d he joked.<\/p>\n
Kus, who has worked in election administration for decades, explained the limits of his office\u2019s role. He can ensure candidates file the required forms on time and fine them for late filings, but he has no power to audit the contents of those filings or investigate violations of state finance law. That responsibility falls to the state Fair Political Practices Commission, which, Rashad noted, opened an investigation into the Vang attack mailer in April 2025 \u2014 and as of two weeks ago, is still investigating.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of laws,\u201d Kus said. \u201cBut there isn\u2019t a lot of people to actually go out and see if they are being followed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Holyoke said the enforcement gap has effectively pushed the work of monitoring political money onto nonprofits and journalists. He compared the dynamic to the national level, where the nonprofit OpenSecrets.org<\/a> has become the primary source for campaign finance data because the Federal Election Commission lacks the capacity to do the work itself.<\/p>\n\u201cDown here, at the local level, I guess we are outsourcing to Fresnoland,\u201d Holyoke said. \u201cIt\u2019s a matter of funding, and because of lack of funding, if the work\u2019s going to happen at all, it often has to get picked up by the nonprofit sector.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fresno is the fifth-largest city in California, but unlike Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Diego, it has no local ethics commission.<\/p>\n
The event ran a half-hour past its scheduled end as audience questions poured in \u2014 about whether there\u2019s dark money in homeless funding, dedicating taxpayer funds to public records access, and the possibility of creating a city ethics commission. Richardson said he was open to the conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was actually advised not to come to this tonight,\u201d Richardson told the crowd. \u201cI obviously didn\u2019t listen, because I\u2019m always down for a conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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