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Ana De Castro Maquiz wasn’t irate over an Oct. 18 article in the Hollister Free Lance that opponents of San Benito County’s Measure A had misreported $189,000 in campaign contributions.
The San Jose Mercury News also recently reported that opponents of the measure, which could dramatically impact all commercial development in the county, had raised substantially more than what appeared in a public campaign finance portal for Measure A’s opposition, Neighbors to Preserve San Benito. This is because $189,000 of the group’s approximately $265,000 in donations were filed under its 2022 No on Measure Q campaign.
But De Castro Maquiz, who is chief deputy clerk-recorder-elections for the county, told BenitoLink on Oct. 25 that she didn’t believe Measure A’s opposition had been deliberately misleading.
“People make mistakes, and really, in this case, we do see that it’s just an honest mistake,” De Castro Maquiz said. “They just logged in incorrectly, and they have been contacted.”
It was just the latest wrinkle in a contentious battle over Measure A, which would cancel four planned commercial nodes near Hwy 101 and going forward would require a public vote to rezone agricultural, range or rural lands in unincorporated parts of the county.
The measure has drawn fierce support from Bay Area environmental groups, such as Palo Alto-based Green Foothills, which has hired Aromas farmer Jessica Wohlander as a local associate. In a phone interview on Oct. 28, Wohlander said that she wasn’t sure if the misreporting had been a mistake or an attempt to hide the origin of donations, but that either way, voters were deprived of crucial information.
“It’s upsetting that due to this misfiling, voters may have been misled as to not only where the No on A campaign’s donations are coming from, but the extent to which these outside real estate and development interests are funneling money into the No campaign,” Wohlander told BenitoLink.
Six donations were misfiled to No on Q, namely:
- $140,000 on Sept. 30 from the California Association of Realtors Issues Mobilization PAC
- $25,000 on Sept. 25 from Bristol SB LLC
- $1,000 on Sept. 23 from Mary Filice of Filice Farms
- $1,000 on Sept. 23 from Cathy Alameda of Top Flavor Farms
- $10,000 on Aug. 24 from Mark Johnson
- $10,000 on Aug. 24 from Santa Maria Group LLC
Seth Adams, land conservation director for Walnut Creek-based Save Mount Diablo, which supports Measure A, didn’t respond to a request for comment for this article. But Adams was interviewed recently when BenitoLink took a long look at Measure A.
During that interview, Adams said Measure A’s opposition was failing to report significant expenditures and income. Asked what evidence he had of this, Adams said opponents had conducted a phone poll some time ago but didn’t report it. He didn’t mention possible misreporting by Neighbors to Preserve San Benito of contributions to No on Q, rather than No on A.
Adams appeared to take aim at Neighbors to Preserve San Benito, though he referred to the group as Preserve San Benito Neighborhoods. “The opponents are a fake astroturf group saying they’re grassroots when they’re funded by developers,” he said.
Former San Benito County Supervisor Anthony Botelho, who is principal officer for Neighbors to Preserve San Benito, and David Bauer, a treasurer for the group, didn’t respond to messages left at listed numbers. Bauer was also treasurer for the group’s 2022 No on Measure Q campaign.
California Transportation Commissioner Bob Tiffany, another treasurer for the group, told the Free Lance he’d spoken with Bauer and that Bauer had “been speaking to the county clerk, and there was an error made. And so, apparently, the initial 2024 Measure A filings mistakenly got applied to the 2022 Measure Q. And my understanding is they are in the process of getting that rectified.”
Tiffany also told the Free Lance that local Realtors who didn’t want their property values affected by Measure A’s passage had sought donations from the California Association of Realtors. The organization also donated $15,000 to the opposition on Aug. 27, which was correctly reported in No on A’s portal.
Whether anything comes of the misreporting remains to be seen. De Castro Maquiz said it would be up to the California Fair Political Practices Commission to determine enforcement. In general, the county leaves the responsibility of reporting to filers, though there are some exceptions.
“If we do see a mistake, we do talk to the filers and let them know,” De Castro Maquiz said. “And most importantly, we make sure that they are understanding where we’re coming from and why there might be a potential change that is necessary.”
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