New Commercial: Follow The Money Trail

TV ads and mailings on behalf of Lorri Galloway have been appearing, claiming that Disney is buying off candidate Gail Eastman in exchange for a $120,000,000 taxpayer funded hotel deal. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=573PaLAjinc
While we have already addressed the major points of misinformation here (See “Lorri Gets Desperate” for Details) let’s address what is behind those ads and mailers.

Anaheim Families and Business Owners for a Better Tomorrow, is a legally filed PAC, run by professional political operative Kinde Durkee. Ms. Durkee is routinely shown in internet searches being tied to campaigns of questionable nature, especially those mailings that mislead with false information, using “doctored” logos of other organizations. When one looks at the funding behind the PAC, we find that it is largely financed by neither Anaheim Families, nor Anaheim Businesses. Here are the latest FPPC filings showing where the money is being donated from:
http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1308647&session=2007&view=late3

Wylie Aitken, Santa Ana Attorney, heavy involvement in the Democratic party machine
Amin David, Latino Activist, head of Los Amigos, and ironically the one Anaheim address shown on the filings
UA Local 250, Gardena
OC Federation of Labor Committee PAC (COPE) Burbank
Service Employees Int’l Union Local 1877, Sacramento
Elm Street, Burbank

Why would these companies and Unions run negative pieces against Disney and another candidate? The obvious reason to discredit Gail Eastman is that she clearly has the best chance of defeating Galloway for re-election. With Galloway out of office, these Unions and developers lose their ally on City Council. As reported earlier in the post “Galloway Caught with Her Hand in the Affordable Housing Cookie Jar”, Elm Street was given a massive and unprecedented increase in profits by Galloway and Chavez, bumping their profits from the standard 15% of an affordable housing project to an unheard of 50% of the project. That is 35% of many millions of dollars that will never come back to the affordable housing fund it came from. Galloway did this while looking directly at the developer and saying, “I hope you acknowledge how much Council has been supportive of you.” It appears they are showing their appreciation now.

How much of an ally has Galloway been to the Unions? Let’s look at Galloway’s own words, as seen on the questionnaire she filed for an endorsement by COPE.
http://oclabor.org/images/docs/Galloway_Questionnaire.doc
Lorri Galloway tells the Unions that as an elected official and representative of the people of Anaheim, she will walk Union picket lines and speak at Union rallies. In this document, she admits to participating in recent civil disturbances that blocked traffic, and resulted in multiple arrests in the Resort District of Anaheim. During these protests, Union employees, many who do not work at the Disneyland Resort nor live in Anaheim, dressed as Disney characters, and shut down public streets with the intent of being arrested for the publicity. This created a direct expense to the taxpayer for the public safety employees we paid to direct traffic, arrest, and process these troublemakers, led by an elected City Councilwoman! In addition, witnesses report union workers blowing air horns at guest rooms to disrupt the “guest experience” of our tax-generating visitors.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/union-disney-unite-2157943-company-workers

Is this an appropriate role for an elected official?
While the mailings were paid for by Unions and developers, to date, FPPC/Secretary of State Late Filings do not show the expenditure for the TV ad, which clearly states on the screen that it was paid for by Anaheim Families and Business Owners for a Better Tomorrow. Who has enough of a stake in Lorri’s Galloway’s leadership to put up that much money to keep her in office? Stay tuned as we look into that very question.