Teaming up with Sempra

The Teamsters Union’s public affairs council and utility giant Sempra Energy have something in common: Both gave $2500 last week to the San Diego County Democratic Party, only the recent of many off-year special-interest contributions that have been flooding into both local Democratic and Republican coffers of late. And if there were any doubts remaining that San Diego County politics had succumbed to the year-round campaign malady that some say is plaguing American Democracy, last week’s filing by freshman county supervisor Dave Roberts may dispel it. The May 20 document declares that the Solana Beach Democrat, elected just last year, intends to run for re-election in 2016. Such statements are required by law of candidates setting out to raise campaign cash…. The latest two recipients of largesse from the political action committee of cell-phone giant Qualcomm, lobbying hard alongside other big high-tech outfits to get more visas for foreign engineers: GOP house speaker John Boehner on April 13 ($500) and Virginia congressman Bob Goodlatte, also a Republican, on the same day ($2500)… Meanwhile, the Sacramento Bee reports that the new owners of the Kings NBA basketball franchise — including co-chairmen Paul, Hal, and Jeff Jacobs, offspring of billionaire Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, who last year lost his bid to make over Balboa Park — are planning to buy Sacramento’s downtown shopping mall, the proposed site of a controversial new taxpayer-financed basketball venue. Unlike the elder Jacobs, who last year gave $2 million to a political action committee backing Barack Obama, the leader of the Jacobs basketball group, Indian-born Silicon Valley mogul Vivek Ranadive, kicked in $2500 for the GOP’s George Romney.