The Mayor's Campaign Money, And Your Right To Know From Whom It Came

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Publisher's Perspective / Opinion

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(July 27, 2017, 4:40 p.m.) -- At this point in LB's 2018 election cycle, LB's Mayor and five Council incumbents have one basic strategy: to create the impression that they are unbeatable and deter serious (and not desultory) challengers from entering the races against them.

Earlier today, the Long Beach Business Journal chose to report what, in our opinion, amounts to an incomplete story, apparently provided by Garcia's 2018 re-election campaign: that it has collected over $240,000 since it began collecting contributions in April. Some may find the sum impressive and decisive; others may find it obscene and corrupting; opinions on this aren't relevant for now.

In our view, a news story should include five basic W's, the first of which is "who" (the others are what, when, where and why). So exactly who gave the Garcia campaign the money? Do they live here or just use LB for their benefits? What relationship, if any, do they have matters that have come, or may come, to City Hall or the City Council for approval? In our view, the "who" is a key part of this story.

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We and you have a right to know that information to "follow the money." The Garcia campaign knows the identity, occupation and employer (if self-employed, the name of the business) of every one of its contributors over $100 because it has to disclose this information on or before July 31. Of course, it's more useful to the campaign to release just the numerical total in advance, perhaps to blunt the impact of pesky details that will come out a few days from now

LBREPORT.com will report the names and relationships of these contributors to City Hall developments, projects or other desired outcomes, as we always do, as soon as the information is available in the coming days. Watch for it.. .

And we also note: history shows that money is necessary to win an election, but it's not always sufficient...and in the present atmosphere, may be less effective than in the past.

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