By Steven T. Jones
The 2007 mayoral campaign of outsider arts impresario Chicken John Rinaldi is the target of a random audit by the San Francisco Ethics Commission, which last night voted unanimously to authorize issuing subpoenas against the campaign after the candidate failed to respond to initial inquiries.
But after a long and frustrating battle with the Ethics bureaucracy to win public matching funds for his campaign, a quest that fell just short, Rinaldi said he has no intention of cooperating with the agency, which can levy daily fines for non-compliance.
“I’m not giving them a fucking thing. I’m not cooperating with those fuckers,” Rinaldi told the Guardian this afternoon, blaming the Ethics Commission for arbitrarily denying him matching funds after making him spend valuable time and money jumping through their hoops. “At the very least, they’re going to have to work for it.”
The case is already catching the attention the growing cadre of critics of how Ethics operates (particularly with its tendency to audit campaigns that run against powerful incumbents and institutions), who see Rinaldi as the latest target. Rinaldi echoed many of their concerns. “They made damn sure I didn’t get the matching funding,” he said. “The Ethics Commission’s sole purpose on the planet is to make sure nobody runs for office.”
“Let ’em fine me,” Rinaldi, who is currently living in New York City building junks boats that run on gasification technology, told us. “They’re not going to get a penny out of me because I have nothing.”