Anthem Blue Cross Regifts Ben Hueso

During this spring’s state Democratic primaries, the campaign of assembly hopeful and San Diego city councilman Ben Hueso accepted a $1000 contribution from Anthem Blue Cross, a big health insurance outfit. When the donation was reported here, the campaign said it had returned the money and demanded a “retraction.” Hueso won the June primary, thereby virtually assuring a November victory in the predominantly Democratic district. On August 16, according to state filings, his campaign again accepted $1000 from none other than Anthem Blue Cross. The campaign treasurer did not respond to a request for comment… California Fair Political Practices Commission chairman Dan Schnur, a onetime Pete Wilson aide, has picked retired Union-Tribune politics writer John Marelius to serve on a new commission panel to revise state campaign finance laws.

Another San Diego member of the group — to be chaired by Center for Governmental Studies president Bob Stern and GOP attorney Chuck Bell — is Republican political consultant Jeff Marston. Back in 1993, reporter Marelius chronicled Marston’s failed campaign for assembly and how it collapsed after it got around that a smiling woman and two children with whom bachelor Marston posed in a campaign photograph were not really members of his family, as his direct-mail piece strongly suggested…Ex–city councilwoman Toni Atkins, who also captured a Democratic assembly nomination, has picked up $1000 from an unusual source: San Diego developer Thomas W. Sudberry Jr., a rock-ribbed Republican who over the years has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes such as the state and county GOP and the Lincoln Club, as well as Mayor Jerry Sanders.