Donation limits set for 2019 elections

Redondo Beach City Councilmen Christian Horvath, Todd Loewenstein, and Nils Nehrenheim discuss campaign finance reform. Photo

The Redondo Beach City Council set plans to reform political campaign financing and donations on Tuesday night, in a 4-1 vote that, if it lives past its second reading, will limit the amount of money people can donate toward City Council and Mayoral campaigns.

City Attorney Michael Webb made clear that Redondo was treading on familiar ground when he played a clip from the 1993 movie Groundhog Day before the discussion.

Like Bill Murray’s weatherman, cursed to live the same day over and over again, Redondo has lived through a series of false starts and hard stops in its plan to legislate financing and donations for electoral campaigns. Redondo, unlike neighboring Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach, has no campaign donation limits.

It fit the theme when Councilman Christian Horvath’s successful motion on Tuesday night was a modified version of a proposal that was accepted by the previous City Council in 2016. His previous proposal died on the floor at its second reading, when he lost his supporting votes.

According to Horvath’s new motion, an individual’s donation to a candidates will be capped at a max of $750 for City Council elections, and $1,500 for Mayoral elections. Those limits do not apply to other elected offices, including the Redondo Beach Unified School Board.

The limit will increase accordingly with the Consumer Price Index, up to the nearest $50. Paid lobbyists will also be required to register with the city to ensure the public knows about their activity.

The city will later discuss the establishment of both an ethics commission and additional filing periods to track post-election donation activity.

Mayor Bill Brand has long lobbied for hard-line reform, including preventing donations from the city’s leaseholders and vendors and ending the election cycle, and the donation deadline, immediately after the election has been finalized.

“It doesn’t mean that there’s a conflict, or that it influences decisions, but the perception’s bad, and it really changes the public’s view of how things are being run,” Brand said.

Councilman Nils Nehrenheim took issue with slate mailers, as with one that ran supporting candidates John Gran and Martha Barbee, and opposed a harbor rezoning measure in 2017. That mailer is believed by residents to be connected to the Legado companies, which were opposed by Nehrenheim and his associated activist organizations prior to his election.

In his own plan, Nehrenheim set higher donation limits, and also proposed issuing $10,000 fines for organizations that did not comply with a proposed slate mailer registry. But his motion was preempted by Horvath’s, which Nehrenheim ultimately supported.

The most heated moments occurred early in the discussion, when Councilwoman Laura Emdee accused Nehrenheim and Councilman Todd Loewenstein of attempting to squash political opposition, and labeled their calls for transparency as “disingenuous” due to their own PAC support.

“I think you’re trying to limit your opponents,” and trying to make it harder to compete for those not supported by large organizations, Emdee said.

Both Nehrenheim and Loewenstein led political organizations opposed to development projects, though both publicly stepped away from leading the organizations before running for office. Both were aligned with Rescue Our Waterfront PAC during their 2017 elections.

Visibly offended, Loewenstein said he had no idea how he was “trying to benefit [himself].”

“I didn’t take money from ROW PAC; I was out there, walking the pavement,” Loewenstein said.

He acknowledged that the City Council can’t prevent a PAC’s outside attempts to boost a candidate through campaign mailers, but that they can attempt to limit direct donations toward candidates.

“The reason you pass laws is to make it more difficult to do certain acts,” Loewenstein said. “We have to make it more difficult for someone to come in, drop a pile of money and move on…candidates need to go out, spread the word about what they stand for and get people to buy in.”

The ordinance will come back for discussion at a future meeting, and if it is not killed, will take effect prior to the city’s March 2019 municipal election. It’s not yet clear if it will be proposed to take effect immediately after its second reading, or 30 days after its final approval.

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