Utility giant Sempra Energy continued to pour money into local Republican Party coffers right up until the verge of the election, according to state campaign disclosure records. Sempra’s final preelection contribution, $10,000, was on Election …
Some San Diegans came out on top in this year’s electoral derby. Some didn’t. Among the biggest winners was La Jolla’s Christine Forester, the widow of noted architect and artist Russell Forester. On August 22 …
Union-Tribune investigative reporter Brooke Williams has asked the office of San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders to turn over documents it has in its files on a former U-T colleague. In a Public Records Act request …
Legislative-lobbying filings are in for the third quarter, and, as usual, utility giant Sempra Energy has been one of the big free spenders. The company paid $120 for food, beverage, and transportation for each of …
With the expected onset of a recession, the City of San Diego is facing mounting budget woes. But so far, at least, Mayor Jerry Sanders has continued to spend plenty on the City’s Sacramento lobbyist. …
It’s down to the final week of the campaign, the time when special interests that don’t want their contributions widely reported — at least not until after the election — start dumping money into the …
One of the oddest political websites this season is spikemike.com, a full-on — if not particularly artful — attack on San Diego city attorney Mike Aguirre. At the top of the page is a video …
Proposition 2, the measure that would lessen restraints of some kinds of farm animals, including chickens, has so far drawn $7000 worth of support from Jerry Cesak, one-half of the famous Jeff & Jer radio …
Rana Sampson, an ex-cop, law-enforcement consultant, and wife of San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders, has given $1000 to the campaign against Proposition 8, the measure to outlaw gay marriage in California. Last year, the mayor …
A week ago Saturday, as President George W. Bush and other federal officials hastened to bail out the U.S. economy, Democratic San Diego city attorney Mike Aguirre, facing his own uphill battle against his better-financed …
Speculation abounds about whether or not John Moores will have to unload at least a part of his San Diego Padres baseball team in order to come up with enough scratch for a multimillion-dollar divorce …
Allied Waste Services, the national waste hauler that operates the City of San Diego’s Sycamore Landfill off State Route 52 at Mast Boulevard near Santee, is ramping up its campaign to expand the facility. Neighbors …
The battle over Prop 2, the Humane Society–sponsored measure to limit allegedly cruel confinement of chickens and other animals on California farms, is heating up, and a bevy of well-heeled San Diego–area denizens are choosing …
North County GOP congressman Darrell Issa became a hero to those opposed to the $700 billion bad-mortgage bailout that was muscled through Congress two weeks ago by the Bush administration and establishment politicians from both …
On another ballot front, the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, proprietors of a big East County casino, gave $175,000 on September 16 to the campaign against Proposition 5, which would expand state drug-treatment programs …
On Thursday, September 4, viewers by the millions tuned in to see Republican presidential nominee John McCain make his acceptance speech. But those watching KNSD, Channel 39, the NBC affiliate in San Diego, got an …
San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders has entered the fight against Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage measure on next month’s ballot, at least by proxy. The Sanders family imprimatur comes in the form of a fund-raising …
Back in 1997, Chargers owner Alex Spanos didn’t have anything at all good to say about voter referendums. That was when the multimillionaire developer was waging war against San Diegans who were seeking to put …
As the Union-Tribune hovers closer and closer to possible death, awaiting a buyer to rescue it from oblivion, parent company Copley Press has been rushing to clean up some messy loose ends. Latest development: Copley …
The pro- and anti-gay-marriage campaigns continue to rack up prodigious contribution totals. Last week the Yes on 8 forces, seeking a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in the state, picked up $5000 from La …
The battle between pro– and anti–gay-marriage forces continues. Among the latest to back Proposition 8, the proposed statewide ban on gay marriages, is Robert Bolingbroke of Rancho Santa Fe, who recently kicked in $25,000. The …
Many are predicting that next year’s state budget deficit will grow to $7 billion, but that hasn’t stopped the University of California from its habit of handing out big salaries to high-ranking executives. At their …
Carlsbad-based self-help guru Deepak Chopra is reportedly getting paid big bucks to appear in a new series of commercials for Microsoft that attempt to rebut those long-running Apple “I’m a PC and I’m a Mac” …
As a result of gerrymandering by the state legislature, San Diego’s congressional incumbents don’t have much to fear in their quest for reelection this fall. Democrats Susan Davis and Bob Filner, along with Republicans Brian …
The 1990 Gulfstream IV executive jet owned by David Copley's once-proud Copley Newspaper chain, which is still trying to unload the Union-Tribune, is on the block. The luxurious aircraft — used by Copley to transport …
Democrat Lori Saldaña is busy campaigning for reelection to her third term in the state assembly, representing the 76th District, which covers such San Diego neighborhoods as Point Loma, Pacific Beach, and Clairemont. With GOP …
When word broke two weeks ago that GOP presidential nominee John McCain had picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, among the few San Diegans to have actually met her was a small …
La Jolla–based General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., owned by La Jolla millionaires Linden and Neal Blue, has made millions of dollars on its best-known product, the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, which has seen service over …
Late summer has been a busy fund-raising time for opponents and advocates of Proposition 8, the measure on November’s ballot to ban gay marriage in California. And, in what has become a regular theme of …
Just how ideologically polarized is San Diego’s state legislative delegation? Pretty much, judging from a recently released scorecard of how legislators voted on a series of critical bills. But some are more absolute than others. …
One of La Jolla’s most august and well-heeled institutions is throwing a fund-raising party inspired by the classic 1970s porno movie, Debbie Does Dallas. A flyer for the September 6 bash, “Debbie Does Disco,” put …
With the Union-Tribune up for sale, executives are rushing to clear the decks of as many unwanted encumbrances as possible. At least one is apparently now history, after a federal judge late last month dismissed …
Where did San Diego’s most prominent political givers place their bets during this year’s California primary? Padres owner John Moores gave $15,000 to the ill-fated “Yes on Prop 93” campaign to loosen up legislative term …
Another top executive at utility behemoth Sempra Energy has given big money to the campaign to ban gay marriage in California. On August 1, Darcel Hulse contributed $5000 to the ProtectMarriage.com - Yes on 8 …
Sempra Energy, lobbying hard to build that controversial power line across Anza-Borrego state park, has taken its battle to the stomachs of legislators and their staffers. According to the company’s latest lobbyist disclosure statement, filed …
The Gill Action Fund, a political arm of the Colorado-based Gill Foundation, which recently named ex–Jerry Sanders PR aide Fred Sainz its director of communications, gave $250,000 to the No on Prop 8 campaign last …
Ex-KFMB Channel 8 TV weathercaster and part-time Mission Beach stand-up comic Larry Mendte has been making the wrong kind of headlines in his adopted hometown of Philadelphia lately. Mendte, who departed San Diego to work …
How will the convention business hold up in an oil-starved world? Will video conferencing start to trump air travel and hotel stays? Nobody yet knows, but San Diego taxpayers have been paying an increasing amount …
Last week’s announcement that publisher David Copley is looking for someone to buy the Union-Tribune marks the end of an era for San Diego, which has labored under the yoke of the Copley newspapers for …
Both Barack Obama and John McCain have released updated lists of their so-called bundlers, fat cats who hit up their friends for the maximum amount of campaign contributions allowed by law. That can be as …
San Diego city attorney Mike Aguirre and Chargers owner Alex Spanos finally may have something in common. At loggerheads for years over Spanos’s attempts to build a new taxpayer-financed football stadium, Spanos and Aguirre have …
KPBS, the San Diego State University–owned public broadcasting operation that has been suffering financially of late, is looking for a new voice from the right. The website of the TV station and FM radio combination …
A major figure in the dark saga of Andrew Cunanan, the gay serial killer from San Diego who made international headlines when he murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace in Miami in 1997, has turned up …
Patients experiencing interminable delays in scheduling appointments for care at the San Diego Veterans Administration hospital aren’t just imagining things. So concludes a health-care inspection report released last month by the VA’s inspector general. The …
When Saint Louis–based brewing giant Anheuser-Busch, owner of SeaWorld, gets taken over by a Belgium-based beer maker, will state politicians be left out in the cold? The most recent lobbying disclosure form filed by Anheuser-Busch …
UCSD’s California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, which spends a tidy chunk of its taxpayer-furnished budget on public relations, has recently outdone itself, coming up with what it calls an “experiment in institutional lifecasting.” …
Is San Diego due for a wave of undocumented Irish immigrants? With increasingly hard economic times on the Emerald Isle, officials there are predicting that 20,000 undocumented Irish will try to get into America during …
“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 impending ballot battle over gay marriage continues to pick up local financial backing from those on both sides of the issue. Latest to donate to the campaign for the measure banning same-sex marriages is …
With the imminent departure of station manager Doug Myrland and yet another round of staffing cuts, has the time come to pry KPBS from the deathlike grip of San Diego State University? That’s the question …