Political moola

San Diego — Cash from that big-money push against school-board member Frances Zimmerman financed by Padres owner John Moores, his downtown real estate partner, Republican Malin Burnham, and Qualcomm mogul Irwin Jacobs, among others, has made its way to a firm linked to old Tom Hayden radicals from the 1970s. An October 12 disclosure statement filed by the Moores group lists a payment of $7700 to an outfit called Siegel & Nicholl, with a Camarillo address. Los Angeles County fictitious name records show that the name of the company is registered to Jack Nicholl and Mark Siegel. According to a February 1985 report in the Los Angeles Times, Nicholl was once president of Hayden's Campaign for Economic Democracy, a left-wing group financed by cash from the exercise empire of Jane Fonda, then Hayden's wife. CED advocated redistribution of capitalist wealth and "watchdogs" on corporate boards. Mark Siegel, another one-time CED staffer, left to work for Los Angeles city councilman Joel Wachs, the Times reported. In June 1999, Nicholl joined with San Diego political consultant Larry Remer, another one-time CED backer, and schoolboard member Ron Ottinger, in a failed bid to promote a statewide ballot measure to hike sales taxes for after-school programs. According to the Moores group report, Remer's Primacy Group was paid $281,979.71. Others getting money from the anti-Zimmerman effort include the Santa Monica polling company of Fairbank, Maslin Maulin & Associates ($19,000); and Orange County Republican political consultant Eileen Padberg, who once worked for George Bush, Sr. ($10,111) ... Meanwhile, Remer's daughter, Yalie Terra Lawson-Remer, is carrying on the family tradition. Last Friday, her Student Alliance to Reform Corporations (STARC) staged a training session for local high schoolers designed to "bring radical action to San Diego," according to the group's news release. The "Who Owns America Tour," held at the M. Larry Lawrence Jewish Community Center in La Jolla, was "inspired in part by the successful WTO protests in Seattle last November."

Go to Hellman

Warren Hellman, wealthy father-in-law of UCSD chancellor Robert Dynes, has given $50,000 to a well-funded anti-growth-control campaign being waged by San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, according to the San Francisco Examiner. Hellman has joined Brown and other big-money San Francisco interests, including Bechtel Corp and Catellus Development, in opposing Prop L, a ballot measure that would ban so-called "dot-com" Internet-related office developments in certain parts of the city. Brown and the Hellman faction are sponsoring their own milder measure, Prop K, which opponents claim is a spoiler designed to bring about the defeat of both propositions and thus retain the status quo. Hellman is no stranger to the Internet. His venture-capital company, Hellman & Friedman, is partnered with Padres owner John Moores in a Charleston, South Carolina, software outfit called Blackbaud Inc., aimed at the nonprofit and university fundraising market.

Conventional spending habits

Due to the adroit handiwork of then?San Diego city manager Jack McGrory, no outsider can say exactly how much city taxpayers spent on the Republican Convention of 1996, though it's a safe bet the figure was well north of the official estimate of $13 million (the grand total, including private and federal money, was said to be at least $45 million). But that was far less than the grand total of this year's Republican bash in Philadelphia, where taxpaying locals anted up $14.9 million for police and other services, and the State of New Jersey, across the river, kicked in $5 million. In all, taxpayers funded $38.9 million, or about 59 percent of the $66 million total cost, including $13.5 million in federal funds, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer ... The former business editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune, Scott Fagerstrom, has departed the paper to become managing director of the "media relations" practice at the big PR firm of Hill and Knowlton in Orange County.

Contributor: Matt Potter