Deen, Seo raise $9 million for 66th District Assembly race
By Mark McDermott
Sara Deen, a candidate in the 66th Assembly race, at her home in Rancho Palos Verdes. Photo by Tony LaBruno
Nearly $9 million has gone into deciding who will represent the South Bay in the state Assembly. Two of every three dollars came from groups that neither candidate controls.
The race between Sara Deen and Paul Seo for the open 66th District seat is the most expensive open-seat contest in the district’s history, and the most money outside committees have ever poured into a South Bay Assembly race. Only the 2016 rematch between Al Muratsuchi and David Hadley, in which the candidates themselves raised a combined $7 million and attracted $2 million more in outside spending, cost more in total.
Deen and Seo together raised about $2.9 million through Nov. 2, according to filings with the Secretary of State. Seo’s committee took in $1.5 million; Deen’s $1.44 million, including $300,000 of her own money. Outside committees, which by law cannot coordinate with the candidates, reported another $5.9 million: $1.93 million supporting Seo, $2.14 million opposing Deen, $1.16 million supporting Deen and $673,000 opposing Seo.
Put another way, roughly $4.1 million has been spent to elect Seo or defeat Deen, and $1.8 million to do the reverse.
Seo is a deputy attorney general at the California Department of Justice who specializes in corruption prosecution. He also serves as mayor of Rancho Palos Verdes. Deen is a dentist, business owner and interfaith leader. She also serves as a school board trustee for the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District.
The largest single source of money on either side is a dentists’ political action committee. The California Dental Association PAC gave $831,129 to South Bay Teachers and Health Care Providers Supporting Sara Deen, the only outside committee working on her behalf.
The California Teachers Association gave $300,000, the California Federation of Teachers $100,000, the Cooperative of American Physicians $120,000, and Smart Justice California, a criminal-justice reform fund backed by Patty Quillin and Elizabeth Simons, $175,000. The committee spent $1.16 million promoting Deen and $673,000 attacking Seo, all of the latter in the final five weeks.
The money against her came from landlords, Realtors, a trial law firm and the state Chamber of Commerce. Advance California, sponsored by the California Apartment Association, spent $522,000 on media buys and text messages opposing Deen between Oct. 11 and Oct. 30, and $560,000 more supporting Seo. Housing Providers for Responsible Solutions, funded by the California Association of Realtors and the apartment association, spent $396,000 against her and $317,000 for him. Together the two landlord committees account for nearly $1.8 million. In the primary, a committee funded by the Chamber’s JobsPAC, whose own largest donors are Edison International, PG&E, Sempra and Meta, spent $580,000 against Deen and $132,000 for Seo.
The newest and least familiar player is PACSA PAC, which describes itself as sponsored by “a coalition of victim advocacy organizations.” Its only reported funder is Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, the Irvine law firm known for sexual abuse litigation, which gave $1 million. PACSA spent $451,000 against Deen in October on digital and text ads, postcards and mail.
Seo’s outside support also includes the Asian Pacific Islander Leadership PAC, $215,000; the state prison guards’ union, $171,000; Latinos for an Affordable California, $210,000 in the last week; a dairy farmers’ committee, $117,000; the California Alliance of consumer attorneys, environmentalists and grocery workers, $157,000; and the charter school committee funded by Reed Hastings, $32,000. Thrive Los Angeles PAC spent $2,500 on a billboard.
The pattern echoes the race’s primary spending. The pro-Deen committee spent $786,000 before June 2; the Chamber-funded committee and the apartment association spent about $937,000 against her and for Seo. She finished second anyway, 2,704 votes behind Seo and 3,752 ahead of the leading Republican.
The candidates’ own campaign contributions tell the same story in miniature. Deen’s $1.44 million came mostly from individuals, about 800 of them, with a heavy tilt toward physicians and dentists, plus the teacher and nurse unions that endorsed her. Seo’s $1.5 million came about half from individuals and half from committees: the SEIU family of unions gave about $80,700, the Laborers $47,200, police and fire unions $63,000, plaintiffs’ law firms roughly $92,000, and the campaign committees of 26 other politicians, from Attorney General Rob Bonta to Sen. Adam Schiff, $111,000. The Realtors’ PAC gave him $11,800, the apartment association $5,900 and Airbnb $5,900.
The spending has produced a mailbox and media war. The filings describe mailers, media buys, digital ads, text messages, phone banks, postcards, polling and one billboard, most of it dated in the four weeks before the election. The pro-Deen committee reported $373,000 in spending between Sept. 24 and Oct. 30; the apartment association’s committee, $725,000 between Oct. 11 and Oct. 30; PACSA, $451,000 between Oct. 5 and Oct. 29.
The district has seen a money fight before. In 2016, Muratsuchi, who had lost the seat to Hadley by 706 votes in 2014, won it back in a race that drew $7.47 million into the two candidates’ accounts, according to the National Institute on Money in Politics. Muratsuchi alone raised $6.5 million across the two cycles, nearly $1 million of it from Democratic Party committees, because the seat was the difference between a Democratic supermajority and not. Charles Munger Jr.’s Spirit of Democracy spent $1.4 million against Muratsuchi; the state Republican Party spent $686,000 for Hadley; the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians mailed a flyer of Muratsuchi with five Nisei veterans who said they had not endorsed him; and a pro-Hadley mailer put a cockroach on a cookie.
That was a Democrat against a Republican with control of the Legislature at stake. In 2012, the last time the seat was open, Muratsuchi raised $2.3 million and Republican Craig Huey spent about $1 million. The three contests from 2020 through 2024, all Muratsuchi against a Republican, never drew more than about $600,000 combined.
This year’s race is two Democrats, both, somewhat unusually, from the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
The state caps a direct contribution to an Assembly candidate at $5,900 per election, whether the donor is a person, a business, a union or a PAC. Small contributor committees, the vehicle the teachers, nurses and SEIU use to pool members’ money, may give $11,800; political parties are exempt from the cap, and a candidate may give her own campaign any amount. There is no limit on what an outside committee may spend.
The fuller accounting will not arrive until Feb. 1, when the post-election statements are due. ER
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