{"id":313169,"date":"2026-05-13T05:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T05:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/313169\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T05:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T05:22:10","slug":"fresno-city-council-candidate-violated-campaign-law-illegally-coordinated-with-big-money-progressive-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/313169\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresno City Council candidate violated campaign law, illegally coordinated with big money progressive group"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fresno City Council candidate Ariana Martinez Lott has allegedly improperly coordinated with a progressive minor political party in violation of state campaign finance laws.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A person by the name of Marni Jacobs filed a complaint with Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz over campaign mailers sent out by the California Working Families Party that feature Martinez Lott.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Driving the news: Mailers appeared in Fresno mailboxes on Monday advocating for Fresno Building Healthy Communities CEO Sandra Celedon, who is running for the Assembly in District 31.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The other side of the mailer promotes Jane Kim for Insurance Commissioner, Michael Tubbs for Lt. Governor, Naindeep Singh for Fresno City Council District 1 and Martinez Lott for District 7.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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California Working Family Parties is also one of several groups hosting a phone bank in support of Celedon and Martinez Lott.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why it matters: California campaign finance law requires all independent expenditures supporting candidates exceeding the $1,000 aggregate threshold to be filed with Form 496 with the City Clerk\u2019s Office.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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What they filed: While California Working Families Party did file a Form 496 with the city on Tuesday, it did not disclose its spending on the mailers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

California Working Families Party disclosed $10,000 of digital advertisement spending on May 8. It did not include any other spending.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Go deeper: The complaint alleges that the California Working Families Party and the Martinez Lott campaign are also violating state law with the phone bank event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The complaint states that any related expenditures, such as mailers and text messages supporting Martinez Lott, must be treated as in-kind contributions to the campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re watching: Jacobs is requesting City Attorney Andrew Janz to investigate the alleged state law violations and to impose any appropriate fines and penalties for late and non-filings and for the coordination violations.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresno City Council candidate Ariana Martinez Lott has allegedly improperly coordinated with a progressive minor political party in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":["post-313169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}