Touching donors

The hiring of Ann Spira Campbell, ex-wife of former San Diego Opera honcho Ian Campbell as a UCSD fundraising executive was just the beginning. She has been tasked to hit up $1 million-plus donors. Now the school is seeking a “director of development, donor relations” to ride herd on the charitable givers Campbell scares up. Duties will include inventing “creative, integrated, and highly-collaborative donor relations programming for key donor cohorts.” Meanwhile, the university is also looking to hire a new public relations person for its international relations and social sciences program with a “proven ability to understand differing points of view on controversial subjects and to work diplomatically with persons inside the university and with the press and public.”

As city-council candidates including Joe LaCava and Barbara Bry line up to run for La Jolla’s seat on the San Diego City Council, a former council hopeful is still owed some big cash from his own campaign committee. Republican flying-school maven Phil Thalheimer struck out in his 2004 council bid against Democrat Sherri Lightner; as of the end of last year, the most recent reporting period, Thalheimer for City Council owed him $1,102,058 on cash loans he made to the group.