Poseidon adventures

“Jerry Brown 2010,” the campaign committee expected to fund the likely gubernatorial bid of the Democratic state attorney general, collected $5000 from Stamford, Connecticut–based Poseidon Resources on June 18. That was just two weeks after the narrow June primary victory of San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders, another Poseidon favorite, who received maximum $320 contributions from various employees of the firm after backing Poseidon’s North County desalination plant. (Sanders consultant Tom Shepard also has worked for Poseidon.) A report by Brown’s office released two weeks before the election cleared Sanders of wrongdoing in the infamous Sunroad overheight building scandal and attacked city attorney and fellow Democrat Mike Aguirre, a Sanders nemesis, for making the charges. Another June 18 donation to Brown: $6000 from Byron Georgiou, a longtime Brown intimate who later was associated with the firm of currently imprisoned superlawyer Bill Lerach. Georgiou once ran for Congress here; he now uses a Las Vegas address. … Big happening downtown: a morning fund-raiser this Sunday for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at the El Cortez. According to the campaign’s San Diego website, tickets to a VIP Breakfast with Obama cost $14,250 a person. The general reception is a bit less, at $2300. The website says it’s likely to be Obama’s last visit to San Diego before Election Day. … Jerry Sanders PR man Fred Sainz, whose take-no-prisoners style earned him the silent enmity of many members of the local media, has engineered a cushy landing for himself at the Denver, Colorado–based Gill Foundation, dedicated to advancing the lesbian and gay agenda as well as various liberal causes, such as Norman Lear’s People for the American Way and NARAL. According to its latest IRS filing, made last August, the group — founded by computer-industry figure Tim Gill — is worth $193 million.

Sainz, who made his way up through the ranks of the national Republican Party and was a protégé of ex–GOP mayor Susan Golding, presumably will concentrate on Gill’s sister political arm, Gill Action Fund, which has a special tax status allowing it to collect funds earmarked for political activities. According to the Denver Post, as of last August the Gill fund provided 38 percent of the funding for campaigns opposing same-sex-marriage bans in eight states. The group is expected to play a major role in the battle against Proposition 8, the measure on November’s ballot to outlaw gay marriage in California.