Political Contributions

The tall stranger in the Stetson strides slowly into Santa Barbara's City Hall as a lone guitar plays in the background. His cowboy boots click as he smoothly makes his way up the stairs. In a corridor, he slips a wad of cash to a man in a suit and an unseen announcer describes the mysterious Westerner in words meant to send a chill through the hearts of Santa Barbara voters. "Why is this Texas developer spending more than a quarter-million dollars on the elections in Santa Barbara?"

Nearly half the members of the House subcommittee that oversees more than $600 billion in Pentagon spending have been targeted by ethics investigators who are probing the conduct of a once-influential Washington lobbying firm, according to a confidential document that the House Ethics Committee says was inadvertently exposed. The seven members -- five Democrats and two Republicans -- received campaign donations from clients of the firm while sponsoring federal spending on projects that benefited the clients.

California's economic problems are starting to hit politicians where it hurts -- in their campaign treasuries. The California Retailers Assn. said it was discontinuing campaign giving because of the recession. President Bill Dombrowski said retailers were "looking to cut expenses and preserve cash." The group made more than $106,000 in campaign contributions over the last two years.

Mayoral candidate Walter Moore has qualified for city matching funds and collected a $43,000 check for his campaign. Moore is one of the nine candidates challenging Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in the city's March 3 primary election, and the only one to raise enough in campaign contributions to qualify for city matching funds. Candidates must raise at least $150,000 in contributions of $500 or less from individuals to qualify. Moore had raised close to $203,000 as of Jan. 17 and had spent all of it, records show.

Top officials with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported Friday that they donated more than $180,000 in in-kind contributions to Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California. The contributions included tens of thousands of dollars for expenses such as airline tickets, hotel and restaurant bills and car-rental bills for top church officials such as L. Whitney Clayton, along with $96,849.31 worth of "compensated staff time" for church employees.

Bowing to a legal challenge posed by Democrats, Republicans on Monday abandoned plans to use a $1.3-million Amway donation to pay for televising the GOP convention on Pat Robertson's Family Channel, opting instead to use taxpayer funds for that purpose.

Indicted Assemblyman Scott R. Baugh (R-Huntington Beach) has amassed more than $78,000 in contributions to his reelection campaign since March, according to financial records filed this week with the county registrar of voters. The reports indicate that the Baugh for Assembly campaign has collected nearly $12,000, while the Friends of Scott Baugh committee collected more than $66,000 in contributions.

From opulent buffet dinners to bottomless cocktail glasses, from grip-and-grin receptions to boisterous parties in nightclubs, the business of this convention has been undergirded by a web of corporate and lobby sponsors. While the Treasury provides $12.5 million each to the Democrats and Republicans to help them stage their respective conventions, that's barely a down payment.

The three leading U.S. stock markets say they are contributing a total of $520,000 to try to defeat a California ballot proposal that would make it easier for shareholders to sue companies for fraud. Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange say Proposition 211 would hamper companies' ability to raise capital by discouraging them from making financial forecasts and by increasing legal expenses.

At the height of the battle over earthquake insurance, in the waning days of the 1996 legislative session, it was going to be a true Sacramento political evening Wednesday night. Both party leaderships were holding big fund-raisers, and both were anticipating heavy participation by the insurance industry. But threatened by protests, the Republicans postponed their event and the Democrats came under some fire for theirs.