Strange Altas PAC Transaction #2: Teaming Up with the OCEA
By Chip Hanlon | 10/29/10 | 3:36 PM EDT | 17 Comments
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This story gets pretty twisty-turny, so I'll try to boil it down as much as possible...
As you know, yesterday I wrote about one odd transaction that ran through one of the county's leading conservative groups: Why Did the OCEA Funnel Money Through Atlas PAC?
Very Odd. Well, today we'll look at the other; here's strange Atlas transaction number two (open this document).
There, you have a simple excel sheet of information that's fully available, publicly: on sheet 1, you have the contributions Atlas has received during this cycle and on sheet 2, its expenditures.
Line 2 on each excel sheet shows the in-and-out flow of funds I described yesterday.
On line 1, however, you see the biggest single contribution Atlas has received-- $15,000 from Urban Street Properties, Inc. of Newport Beach on October 7th, 2010-- and the corresponding expenditure 6 days later. Actually, Atlas seems to have added $1000 to make it $16k that went out the door to a different PAC than I wrote about yesterday. This one's called California Homeowners Association PAC (CHA)... let's have a look:
CHA has received money from precisely 4 donors (see their filing here):
- Atlas PAC ($16,000)
- California Citizens for Fair Government PAC (CCFG), which I showed yesterday to be a front for the OCEA ($12,000)
- Committee for Improved Public Policy ($8,000). That's a new one I'll come back to.
- Elaine Raahauge, an individual business owner ($1000)
Technically, CHA received money from 5 sources, since that Atlas PAC contribution is really only $1000 from them and $15,000 from Urban Street Properties, as I mentioned.
Now let's put rubber to the road... let's look at each of these CHA funding sources and post the motivation behind why each might have a motivation to financially support, say, the mayoral campaign of Jon Dumitru in Orange:
1) Atlas PAC: Lee Lowrey confirmed on Monday when I spoke with him that he is a close, personal friend of Dumitru. Check.
2) CCFG: We know this PAC is funded entirely by the OCEA. Who's a member of the OCEA? Jon Dumitru (he's a "Shop Steward" there, in fact, and a negotiating representative on the OCEA's general employees unit). So, coincidentally, is his pal on the Orange city council, Denis Bilodeau. Check.
3) Committe for Improved Public Policy: Another PAC, one supported by many contributors I don't want to dig into too deeply because it could make the whole story too confusing. BUT, one $15,000 contributor to this PAC is a company called CR&R Waste and Recycling. When CR&R won its contract to haul trash for the city of Orange, Mayor Carolyn Cavecche voted against. Jon Dumitru and Denis Bilodeau voted for it. Oh, and the company's review comes before the council in December of this year. Check.
4) Elaine Raahauge: she and her husband own a variety of gun stores and shooting-related businesses. Their shooting range is leased from the O.C. Water District. Who sits on the OCWD? Denis Bilodeau. Check.
5) Urban Street Properties: why'd these guys give $15,000 on behalf of Jon Dumitru? I honestly don't know. Lee Lowrey refused to say. Jon Dumitru didn't return my Monday voicemail. Even the company's president, Robert Compean, refused, telling me this morning "I'm not going to talk about that." I've reached him twice this week and each time he hung up abruptly. Frankly, I don't need to give myself a "check" on this one because I think the record is clear; I'll leave it to some other intrepid reported to figure out the relationship between Compean and Bilodeau and/or Dumitru. I'm sure there is one and by now I'm sure you are, too. (to others, Compean's not hard to find... just Google his name... the 714 number you'll see is apparently his direct cell)
Now, I haven't even told you yet what all five of these contributions were for, I've only alluded to it. So, just to be perfectly clear, here is what CHA, the supposed "California Homeowners Association" PAC, spent its money on:
AN INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURE HIT PIECE on Republican Mayor of Orange, Carolyn Cavecche.
Ayyyyup... this means that in the end, the Atlas PAC and the OCEA pooled their resources to hit one Republican (Cavecche) on behalf of another (Dumitru) by mail. Talk about kicking the holy sh*t out of the Baugh Manifesto!
So, yes, people: Jon Dumitru went in front of the Orange County GOP Central Committee, preached his anti-public employee union bona fides so effectively that he nearly secured the Party's endorsement (over the sitting Republican mayor), all while having been cooking up the assorted union shenanigans I've outlined above. Good times.
I could go on and on, but your outrage meter is already at 11, I'm quite sure. It had better be.
Let me just say this: I don't think the Atlas PAC should take heat here. If you take a look at the spreadsheet I link to at the top of this post and look at that donor/member list, you see some of the finest conservative names this county has to offer-- great, great folks whom I think very highly of, personally. I sincerely don't like having to even bring the Atlas name into all of this, but there was no way around it. I've called around a lot this week and am 100% certain its members had no idea any of this was going on; it's pretty clear this was a short-sighted decision by one or two people at the top of the group who either:
- truly had no idea the OCEA was the source of all CCFG PAC funding
OR
- who did know and who carelessly put the reputation of Atlas at risk on behalf of a friend.
Either way, it is clear someone brought CCFG to Lee Lowrey and Atlas. At the end of yesterday's post, I said the shady OCEA funding trail lead to one person. Actually, it pretty clearly leads back to one of two (or perhaps both) people, both of whom happen to sit on the Orange city council. Actually, the question of "who set up this OCEA/Atlas PAC funding scheme all boils down pretty simply:
It's either Jon Dumitru who lined all of this up and who's violating all sorts of campaign laws regarding independent expenditures as a result
OR
It's Denis Bilodeau, and he is simply a bald faced liar on the topic of how he deals with public employees unions.
Which is it, fellas?
Either way, you look like a couple of self-proclaimed anti-public employee union holy rollers who are, in fact, anything but.
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