Category Archives: Campaign Tactics & Analysis

To nobody’s surprise, it seems Temporary Mayor Ed Lee, backed by powerful financial interests and a shadow campaign that has yet to see sunlight, is running for mayor. And again, as the unofficial press spokesperson, the Chronicle once again provides cover for their candidate.
Today we read about how St. Ed is not taking public money for his campaign, instead relying on the aforementioned shadow campaign, and whatever private money he chooses to take. This contrasts with others who participated in the public matching funds/spending limit program provided by the City of SF. The Chronicle, naturally, uses this to somehow distinguish St. Ed from his opponents. It’s a nice hit for Ed, but it’s just the latest in a line of articles that the Chronicle has written that basically promote Ed. That’s fine, but if I wanted to read a dying medium’s political endorsements sold as news, I’d read the Guardian (which I don’t).
However, putting that aside, the article also starts to rattle off how much consultants have made off the other candidates, again implying that they were all “subsidized” with tax dollars. There are several problems with the reporting on this piece of news.
First, the matching funds are only awarded if a candidate has raised money from a lot of private donors, who can ONLY live in San Francisco, and they have to have significant disclosure as to who donated. There is also a cap on how much campaigns can get from the city, and the majority of their funding is private, despite the Chronicle’s insinuations. Moreover, there is more disclosure than there ever was for the shady “Run Ed Run” campaign which denies helping the Mayor even though it was helping the mayor.
Second, the amounts. I’ve yet to meet a reporter that understands how the political consulting business works, especially when it comes to the actual business of running such an operation. So when I read about “fees” for consultants in the Chronicle, my first question is how this amount is computed.
Naturally, the Chronicle wants to provide an image of these “consultants” raking in the big bucks on the poor taxpayer’s dime, and so on. What the Chronicle doesn’t seem to understand is that just because a campaign handed over a big bundle of cash, the consultant doesn’t necessarily keep all the money, depending on the arrangement.
For example, I used to work for A Big National Consulting Firm That Shall Not Be Named a few years ago. Our company was working on a Big Campaign, and if you looked at the disclosure forms, you’d think we were raking in the big bucks. However, what the disclosure statements didn’t point out was how much of that was going right out the door to pay for printing, letterhead, campaign staffers we administered payroll for and other products the campaign elected to purchase. Out of about $180,000 or so in “moneys” we got, we kept maybe $5000-$7500 that could be considered a fee.
Another example: some campaign consultants don’t take more than a modest retainer at the start, and then charge no consulting fees at all, and mark up things like TV ads, direct mail (printing/production, not postage!) and other items at the standard industry rate of 15% to cover their overhead costs (taxes and staff and a modest profit). So looking at the gross amount isn’t very realistic.
There’s also another thing about San Francisco campaigns that no one in the press corps seems to understand – working in SF politics is no way to make a living in the consulting business. Even with a well funded campaign, with campaign donation limits, as well as the “consultant tax”** and other unique requirements for campaigns in San Francisco, you won’t be netting a large landslide of cash. Supervisor races make very little for anyone involved as well.
That’s not to say they pay so little no one will work on them, but with all the limitations, being a consultant for city candidates isn’t a great way to make a living. Consultants are better off working for either a labor union(s) or other organizations, or working in jurisdictions Not In San Francisco. When I was working in the business, most of my work was out of state. Not only did it pay me as a freelancer fairly well, it was also a lot easier.
I’d expect the gaggle of New Yorkers working for the various chain-owned online entities to get this wrong, but I’d expect more from the supposedly Old School Journalistic Entity located here for over 100 years. I guess when you keep on firing the people who make the product you’re supposedly selling, mistakes happen.
**The “consultant tax” I refer to is a profoundly bone-headed attempt by the Board of Supervisors, ages ago, who hated a certain consultant, and decided to clobber him a little with this law. The intent was to make consultants pay a special “consultant tax” and disclose for whom they were working for. This is stupid for several reasons. First, the “tax” they impose also applies to campaign day to day workers. Ironically the big companies and out of town companies can pay this no problem, but the poorly paid, day to day overworked staffer ends up paying proportionally more than the Big Companies.
Second, the disclosure as to whom people are working for is already done in the campaign finance reporting that is required for every candidate. So once again a typical SF Progressive FAIL: More rules that hurt the lowest paid people, and duplicate efforts elsewhere.

This week, the first campaign finance disclosure reports for Mayoral hopefuls were released. Via SFist and the Examiner, we learned how much each campaign had raised as of December 31, 2010. (If you were on any of these candidates’ mailing lists, you probably got a million emails asking for money up until 11:59pm December 31.)
While these do report how much they raised and spent, they do not necessarily indicate how much money each candidate has on hand as of today. That’s because virtually every campaign engages in a little trick whereby they will defer certain payments (salaries, etc.) from friendly vendors or employees, until after the reporting period. This then allows them to show more money on hand, even though the very next day (January 1) they’ll pay out the money owed to whomever hasn’t been paid yet.
Making this link is almost impossible, since the next reporting period won’t be for several months, and by then, no one will remember this. It’s a neat trick, for sure, but it can also bite a campaign in the backside later on. If in fact a campaign really doesn’t have the money after paying out their debtors, moving forward in 2011 can be tough.
So in the end, these reports don’t mean much if you don’t know if the campaigns are playing the deferred payment game or not. A better way to do reporting would be to have campaigns report daily, their donations and expenditures, and have that information online and printed out and distributed to the public to designated locations daily, or weekly. That ends the deferment game, and the public would be better informed on who is paying for whom in an election season.
Of course, the next step would be to regulate taxpayer funded campaign mail, which we’ll have in 2011 in the Mayor’s race this year, with several candidates likely to take advantage of the program. After all, we’re paying for their propaganda – shouldn’t we at least regulate it in the best interests of the citizens that fund it?

San Francisco loves to pride itself on being the “leader” on all sorts of issues. Problem is, its “leaders” come up short. We say we ban plastic bags – but we don’t because every liquor store in town is using plastic bags. We claim to be for all sorts of Big Important Non Binding Resolution on Big Issues, but of course, no one’s listening because no one cares.
Today I propose some tough new laws that would make San Francisco in the vanguard of something we can all agree on – the end of that massive flood of dead tree mail full of hysterical BS that infects our mailbox every election year.
One of the main reasons you get so much of this junk is because….you’re paying for it. Yes, that’s right, you the San Francisco taxpayer were funding that flood of crap in your mailbox. That’s because some do-gooders decided it’s better if you pay for it, instead of those mean ol’ “special interests.”
Instead, the mean ol’ special interests go ahead and fund their own campaigns, free of any interference from said candidates. This is better, how?
It’s time for the citizens of San Francisco to ask our leaders to do better, and to set a high standard for taxpayer funded campaigns. That’s why it’s time San Francisco institute strict conditions on the use of tax cash for political communications.
Let’s call it the San Francisco “Truth or Consequences in Taxpayer Financed Political Advertising ” Law. And unlike some non-binding resolution, this will be something that has some consequences. Break the law? You pay the taxpayers back the cash – with interest.
Key Provisions would include:

-Telling the Truth: Any campaign mailer, online ad, TV ad, must file within 24 hours all the research detailing the claims in any ad. Said filing would be posted online within 24 hours for voters to review. If it’s not filed or the campaign is found to be lying, they must refund the taxpayers the cost of said mailer. With interest. (For those that can’t get online, print copies would be made available at all public libraries).
-Carbon Neutral footprint: this means ONLY using post consumer recycled paper, ONLY using organic inks, and all other means including eliminating gas-driven delivery, and so on. If that means direct drops to carriers, well that’s life in the world of climate change, kids. This also means using local printers to do said work, since it’s just San Francisco and it’s not like anyone’s sending mail to Vallejo or Los Angeles, so there’s no reason they can’t print locally at locally owned businesses.
-Tax-financed campaigns would also be required to file daily reports of campaign contributions from private sources. Instead of quarterly reports that are manipulated by campaigns, and making them hard to find online, campaigns would send in a list with copies of all checks (minus information that could lead to fraud) and said information would be posted online, within 24 hours for voter review.
And no one say it can’t be done, this is where Google, eBay, Yahoo, Intel and a whole host of companies come from, so outsource it to someone from the second decade of the 21st century to do it, not some fools at the City who would just boondoggle it.

This is just a rough draft, and certainly not a set in stone policy. Obviously any taxpayer funded TV, radio, robocall or online ad would fall under the same general guidelines, etc. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable for us to ask the “big talkers” to stop talking, and start putting their alleged beliefs into practice.
It is time for us to ask more of those who are using taxpayer money to kill trees and send out political advertising. We’ve had enough of screaming headlines and distortions of facts from the people claiming to be “clean money” candidates. It’s time for them to take the “clean money” – but stop playing dirty with the voters.