Schmooze and Partake

Another top executive at utility behemoth Sempra Energy has given big money to the campaign to ban gay marriage in California. On August 1, Darcel Hulse contributed $5000 to the ProtectMarriage.com - Yes on 8 committee. He’s president and chief executive officer of Sempra LNG, a Sempra subsidiary that is building terminals to handle imported liquefied natural gas from abroad. On March 10, Poway’s Margot Kyd, vice president of supply management at SDG&E and the Southern California Gas Company, also gave $5000 in support of the measure; her husband, Tom Kyd, a media developer with Catholic Exchange, an Encinitas-based website, contributed $15,000. Up north, a lot of the utility money has been leaning the other way. San Francisco–based Pacific Gas & Electric has given $250,000 to defeat Prop 8.… Speaking of high-powered utilities, communications giant AT&T has been showing off its political largesse in a big way of late. On April 7, it spent $49 to take John Ferrera, chief of staff for Democratic state Senator Denise Ducheny, out to a Giants game. On June 22, Ducheny’s senior policy advisor Kim Craig got a $50 ticket to Petco Park. Golf was also on the menu. On June 14, Democratic Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña got two tickets worth $200 to the U.S. Open on Torrey Pines. Jamie Mori, executive assistant to GOP Senator Mark Wyland, also got a ticket, as did her husband Valado, along with Tony Strickland (a Republican candidate for state senate in the 19th District) and GOP Assemblyman Martin Garrick. Besides AT&T, the Viejas Indian tribe continued its customary generosity to those in power, giving a raft of legislative staffers each $201.86 worth of tickets, food, and beverages at Petco Park during a party there on April 17. Recipients included Wyland staffer Caroline Beason; Garrick assistants Marie Joyce, Tom Stinson, Matthew Dobler, and Michael Carrier; Valentino Separa, Kelly Smoke, and Matthew McGhee, all staffers for GOP Assemblywoman Shirley Horton; Todd Cranney, Barbara Aker, Elizabeth Saidkhanian, and Erick Dietz, staffers to Republican Assemblyman George Plescia; and Collin McGlashen, Cathie Dawson, and Christopher Marsh, staffers to GOP Assemblyman Joel Anderson. Democratic Assembly candidate Marty Block got only a small token of respect: lunch worth $15.12 at the tribe’s Grove Steakhouse.