The Sara Josephine Jacobs Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation transferred $100,000 to the Cal Coast Cares Foundation at Faulconer’s behest.

Faulconer’s Sara Jacobs play

Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who has raised millions of dollars of special interest money for his nonprofit One San Diego, has a new politically related beneficiary. Per a June 5 filing with the city clerk’s office, on May 6, the Sara Josephine Jacobs Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation transferred $100,000 to the Cal Coast Cares Foundation at Faulconer’s behest. The money was designated for a “small business relief fund,” per the disclosure. It was an interesting bit of timing.

Qualcomm, co-founded by Irwin Jacobs, grandfather of Sara Jacobs, gave $100,000 to Cal Coast Cares for a “small business relief fund” just a month earlier, also at the mayor’s behest. Sara Jacobs is running against city council president and fellow Democrat Georgette Gomez to replace Congresswoman Susan Davis in the 53rd District.

The local Sara Jacobs fund is not the first charitable account named after the younger Jacobs. “Created with a gift from recent alumna Sara Jacobs and her parents. Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs, the Sara Jacobs Fellowship Fund was established to provide fellowships for graduate students enrolled at [Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs],” per the school’s 2012 annual report. “Funds from their gift will, in perpetuity, provide financial aid for students with a preference for alumni from one of the four Columbia-affiliated undergraduate programs (Columbia College, The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School of General Studies, and Barnard College).”

Sara Jacobs’ quest for Congress has been fueled by millions of family dollars.

Sara Jacobs’s quest for Congress has benefited from an avalanche of family cash, including a total of $2.5 million for so-called independent expenditures from grandfather Irwin during Sara’s 2018 failed bid for North County’s 49th District Seat.

Whether Faulconer’s behest of the Sara Jacobs fund money will lead to Jacobs’ campaign-related activities in the days before the November election remains unknown. The mayor is likely to run for statewide office after being termed-out at year’s end and has not been shy about using his own nonprofit One San Diego for PR advantage. In another Faulconer behest, Costco has contributed 2000 handmade masks worth a total of $14,000 to deploy at the downtown Convention Center’s homeless shelter, according to a June 5 mayoral filing. “Because the pandemic effects were creating staffing challenges at the City’s various shelters, the program centralized staff in one place to ensure personnel could be efficient even with limited numbers,” says the mayor’s website. “On April 10, outreach staff began to bring in unsheltered individuals living on San Diego streets into the convention center to provide a safe and sanitary environment amid the pandemic.”

Mara’s gifts

San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott, up for reelection against attorney Cory Briggs this fall, has been talking up her gun control efforts. “Our team recently met with law enforcement agencies from CA, CO, CT, FL, MA, MD, and WA to discuss the rapid progress of our Gun Violence Restraining Order program and compare notes,” Elliott said in a June 18, 2019 tweet. “Thank you to [Johns Hopkins] for hosting this Extreme Risk Protection Law Implementation Summit.”

At this point, Mara Elliott must be wondering whether a San Diego Police Officers Association endorsement is a good thing.

Elliott’s statement of economic interests, filed June 4 of this year, shows she got $692 from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for a speech at the event. Other gifts, Elliott reported, included two free tickets worth $440 to last June’s high-society fundraiser, Rendezvous at the Zoo, from the multi-national law firm of Duane Morris. The company has been “named a top law firm for cannabis law by Business Insider,” according to the firm’s website. “The publication reached out to 29 players in the cannabis industry, from VCs to startups to multistate operators, to get their take on the best law firms in the industry,” a news release adds.

Duane Morris employees have given a total of $24,845 to city politicos since 2011, with a total of $2750 to Elliott’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. Attorney Sharon Blanchet, onetime close friend of slain lawyer Dan Broderick and his wife Linda, came up with two tickets last October 19 to the Humane Society Fur Ball valued at $300. The San Diego Police Officers Association, which has endorsed her reelection bid, gave Elliott two tickets valued at $140 to a December reception.