Complaint questions campaign contributions

The Chula Vista Elementary School teachers union Political Action Committee and three elected board members are the subjects of an investigation by  the Fair Political Practices Commission over alleged campaign finance violations from their 2014 campaigns.

The FPPC opened its investigation April 6, which was  spurred by Chula Vista resident  Larry Breitfelder-Navas and attorney Kenneth Moser alleging there was overt coordination between the Chula Vista Educators PAC and the three candidates who received financial support from the 2014 school board election: board President Eduardo Reyes, and trustees Francisco Tamayo and Leslie Ray Bunker.

In the March 24 complaint, Breitfelder-Navas and Moser wrote “The PAC gave to all three candidates contributions totaling thousands of dollars. This while the PAC appears to have intentionally failed to disclose over $25,000 of independent ex­penditures presumably on behalf of these same candidates.

“The issue is not just whether all the ‘independent’ payments and contributions were properly reported by the Chula Vista Educators PAC, as clearly they were not, but whether these activities indicate a level of coordination that connects the candidates to the PAC in a permanent fashion.”

The compliant claims the candidates paid thousands of dollars for  filing fees, signs, campaign literature and slate materials.

However, the complaint states that “none of the candidates paid for any political mail or phone banking — with one minor exception — and it is hard to imagine how a candidate could be “independent” of an organization that mysteriously provided payment for strictly literature with mail services and phone banking — exactly what the candidates didn’t do. Therefore it is not hard to imagine that this was ‘made at the behest of’ the candidates,” the complaint alleges.

Both Breitfeler-Navas and Moser are Republicans while the three school board members they made the allegations against are Democrats. Moser is known for his 2014 lawsuit against Sen. Ben Hueso that alleged the senator used funds from his 2010 and 2014 State Assembly campaigns to pay for legal expenses in a previous lawsuit.
Reyes called the complaints against him political.

“There was absolutely, absolutely no coordination,” Reyes said. “My first thought is that it is politically motivated and there is absolutely no merit to it. There was no coordination whatsoever.”

However, Breitfelder-Navas contends the complaints are not politically motivated and is troubled that a Chula Vista City Council candidate would do such a thing.

“There was back-channel communications between the campaign and the PAC so they can coordinate their spending,” he said. “That is just not supposed to happen.”

Reyes has served the Chula Vista Elementary School District for the last two years and is one of four candidates running for Chula Vista’s District 4 seat on the City Council.

Tamayo said he is unaware of the complaint filed against him. He also said it is impossible that he coordinated with the Chula Vista Educators PAC because his opponent, Barbara Majchrzak, received the endorsement and support of the union.

It is not known when the FPPC will close its investigation or what the result of the investigation will be.