Future candidates for elected office in San Luis Obispo County will have new restrictions to follow when it comes to high-dollar campaign contributions.
The SLO County Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 on April 4 to repeal a $25,000 cap it set for how much a single individual or entity could contribute to a candidate—opting instead to use a state limit of $5,500 per contributor.
Fourth District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding spearheaded the local ordinance repeal after he took office in January. On April 4, he called the move “one thing we can do to reduce the influence, or potential influence,” of money in local politics.
“I think we need to strive to get big money out of politics and reduce special interest influence. We have a unique opportunity to do that right now,” Paulding said.
The Board of Supervisors adopted the $25,000 donation cap in late 2020 to preempt a new state law from imposing a lower cap. The limit was one of the highest adopted by any county in the state.
At the time, 1st District Supervisor John Peschong and 5th District Supervisor Debbie Arnold argued that county candidates needed the ability to compete with independent expenditures, which are exempt from the limits due to Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission.
Peschong and Arnold made the same arguments on April 4 in speaking against the repeal. They warned that lowering the local contribution limit would invite more “dark money” into independent expenditure campaigns, which can activate for or against a candidate with unlimited spending.
“If we are going to have a $5,500 limit, there’s going to be even more dark money brought into the community. They’re set up by unions, they’re set up by local folks, they’re set up by businesses, but that’s what will happen,” Peschong said.
Though Paulding and 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson shared the concern about an influx of independent expenditures—Paulding called Citizens United “one of the worst and most influential decisions of our Supreme Court”—they said that the county should focus on doing what it can to reduce the amount of money flowing into local candidates.
“The question is, are we going to deal with what we do have influence on, or not?” Gibson said. “I think we do have to step up and make a statement, take control by relinquishing control, ironically, and reverting to the state cap. This is not going to solve the influence of money in campaigns unilaterally.”
Gibson added that hundreds of local residents voiced their opposition to the $25,000 cap when it was adopted in 2020.
Ed Cabrera, vice president of the League of Women Voters of SLO County, underscored that point in a public comment that supported the repeal.
“Voters in SLO County recognize the corrosive influence large money contributions have on our democracy and want clear limits on what individuals, corporations, and PACs can contribute,” Cabrera said. “Large contributions … distort our political process and undermine fair representation. They contribute to public mistrust of government institutions and voter apathy.”
The county’s repeal won’t just affect the campaign contribution limits, but also shift regulatory powers from the SLO County District Attorney’s Office to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, a state agency.
“It does remove enforcement from our notably partisan DA, and I think that is incredibly important,” Gibson said.
In its time on the county books, only a handful of campaign contributions reached the former $25,000 limit. Many more exceeded the newly adopted $5,500 threshold.
In 2022, Gibson and his election challenger, Bruce Jones, both accepted near-maximum donations from the Democrats of SLO Club and the SLO County Cattlemen’s PAC, respectively.
During his unsuccessful run for supervisor in 2018—prior to the county or state imposing any contribution limits—Paulding received a $40,000 donation from the Holland family, which came in the wake of Andrew Holland’s high-profile death in county jail.
Third District Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg, while voting for the repeal, expressed pessimism that it will succeed at keeping big money out of politics.
“Money in politics is what makes people get elected,” Ortiz-Legg said. “So, it’s naïve and I think it’s also completely shortsighted in thinking that somehow bringing this down to $5,500 is going to take money out of politics. … I just think that there’s a lot of wishful thinking in some ways here.” Δ
This article appears in Apr 6-16, 2023.