spearheaded<\/a> by Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, aim to restore voter confidence by making it harder for wealthy interests to buy San Diego elections.<\/p>\n\u201cPeople are cynical about politics for a reason,\u201d Elo-Rivera said. \u201cWe have to give them a reason to trust.\u201d<\/p>\n
The region\u2019s top labor leader endorsed the proposals Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery election cycle we watch wealthy developers, hoteliers and corporate interests hide behind slick mailers and shadowy committees,\u201d said Brigette Browning, president of the San Diego & Imperial Counties Labor Council. \u201cThey pretend to be grassroots community groups, and sometimes they even pretend to be workers\u2019 groups when we know they are diametrically opposed to anything that\u2019s good for workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps the centerpiece of Elo-Rivera\u2019s proposal is a requirement that groups with names like San Diegans for Good Policies disclose their top five financial contributors on mailers and other campaign literature.<\/p>\n
\u201cBehind too many of these innocent-sounding names are some of the most powerful and wealthy interests in the world,\u201d Elo-Rivera said.<\/p>\n
A related concern Elo-Rivera is trying to combat is donations that get funneled from a donor through multiple committees to obscure the original source of the money.<\/p>\n
Another key proposal is forcing candidates and campaigns to disclose the use of artificial intelligence, such as fake images or images that show candidates doing or saying things they never actually did or said.<\/p>\n
For example, a mailer this fall opposing District 8 City Council candidate Gerardo Ramirez shows a computer-generated image of President Donald Trump whispering in Ramirez\u2019s ear. Ramirez is in a Democrat-versus-Democrat runoff with Antonio Martinez.<\/p>\n
The reforms also aim to end what Elo-Rivera calls \u201cperpetual\u201d campaigns by shrinking the window for candidate fundraising to exactly one year before the election they are targeting takes place.<\/p>\n
The proposal also addresses shadow campaigns by requiring a candidate who received support before officially declaring their candidacy to immediately file a \u201clook-back\u201d disclosure and reveal who funded all that preliminary support.<\/p>\n
Elo-Rivera says an example of this practice is District 2 council candidate Richard Bailey. Multiple mailers featuring a picture of Bailey and his signature were sent out weeks before Bailey officially declared himself a candidate last winter.<\/p>\n
Bailey has said those preliminary mailers are protected free speech under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Raul Campillo voted in favor Wednesday of sending the package to the full council for approval, but he expressed concerns that some of the new rules could be unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
He asked City Attorney Heather Ferbert\u2019s staff to weigh in on those concerns when the reforms are presented to the full council.<\/p>\n
Other critics expressed concerns that the new rules would be hard to enforce.<\/p>\n
Council President Joe LaCava said he\u2019s optimistic that the city\u2019s Ethics Commission could enforce them, and stressed that the city can\u2019t let enforcement concerns stop it from trying.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time we close a loophole, they\u2019ll find another loophole,\u201d LaCava said. \u201cWe do the best we can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New campaign transparency rules proposed in San Diego would force more disclosure of which donors paid for mailers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,23,205,100,13,74,76,75,1696],"class_list":["post-497860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497860","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=497860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}