By Steven T. Jones
The San Francisco Chronicle has a solid lead story today about how Mayor Gavin Newsom seems to be violating Prop. H, a campaign finance reform measure that he wrote and promoted last year. Reporter Heather Knight unearthed compelling evidence, but then unfortunately bought the bullshit excuses from Newsom’s notoriously unethical treasurer Jim Sutton and concluded the contributions “don’t appear to violate the letter of Proposition H.”
I suspect it was Knight’s editors who made her pull the punch because some of the donations seem squarely banned by Prop. H – with Newsom essentially giving away public funds to entities that then gave to his gubernatorial campaign (not to mention giving his wife an acting job). What do you think?
Meanwhile, the ironically named “I Love You Gavin Newsom” has an interesting post today on a similar topic, questioning whether Newsom is getting unreported in-kind political contributions from Twitter. The story isn’t well-sourced, but it does raise an interesting question and is worth a read.