Dark Money: Autumn Burke Sells Out to Big Oil

INSIDE INGLEWOOD-At the Westchester Playa/LAX candidates’ forum held on March 29, Autumn Burke … candidate for California Assembly … was asked about the big oil contributions she has accepted. She answered that she had returned some, but has not returned them all. Worse, she has accepted many more big oil contributions since then.

Perhaps the most remarkable contributions are from Sempra Energy out of San Diego which has a financial relationship to the Political Action Committee (PAC) called Fairpac Independent Expenditure Committee. According to mailers supporting Burke's campaign, the Fairpac PAC is “sponsored by the Civil Justice Association of California” and is responsible for flyers that are made to appear as if put out by firefighters.

Burke has been called upon to return her campaign contributions to Sempra Energy but to date has not done so. She has since accepted two more contributions from the oil company that continues to deceptively promote itself.  

Moreover, she has accepted a number of other big oil contributions:

• Californians for Jobs and a Strong Economy, a PAC funded by special interest groups including PG&E, Chevron, and Sempra 

• FairPAC which is backed by the Civil Justice Association of California (The board of directors includes reps from Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Sempra and Shell.)

• PG&E Corp

Fracking, a big oil practice which introduces chemicals that makes water flammable, poisons the water and even makes water wells explode, is the next big campaign being carried out. It will line big oil’s pockets at the expense of residents’ health, safety and property values.

Stories published in the September, 2013 editions of LA Times, Daily Breeze and the community newspaper which to which I contribute—the Morningside Park Chronicle—told of an “unexplained” methane explosion at a Hawthorne water well—which is similar to thousands of such incidents across the nation in the last few years.

The Hawthorne well, owned by Golden State Water Company, had been out of use for years. The explosion required street closures near Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). It remains uncapped for four days. The well sits on a reservoir which is immediately adjacent to the Inglewood Oil Fields to the north, a field which has been fracked as late as 2013.

The field is owned by Freeport-McMoRan, a gold-mining company. The company’s spokesperson, Lisa Paillet, has not responded to numerous requests for comment over the last several months.

Freeport-McMoRan is a paid display advertiser in a number of South bay and South L.A. newspapers in which the subject of tracking has yet to be taken up.

And it may not stop there.

A PAC named Keeping Californians Working was recently mentioned in a May 8 Napa Valley Register story titled “Independent money fueling attack mailers in Assembly race.” In the story about dark money, it was stated that “Keeping Californians Working… [is] a new group in California politics, having just filed its organizing forms with the Secretary of State’s office in mid-April, but has quickly amassed $1.3 million in spending cash.

The story went on to state that “[Keeping Californians Working] has spent…$118,000 on Autumn Burke, a Democratic candidate for an Assembly district representing coastal areas of southern Los Angeles.”

In a May 11 story in the Davis Enterprise, it was disclosed that “Chevron has given [Keeping Californians Working] $500,000.


According to a top-rated Web site regarding campaign finances and the developments that many old guard pols like to keep hidden, www.AroundTheCapitol.com, [[hotlink]] “[b]y operating independently of campaigns, interest groups can invest far more than the $4,100 allowable direct contribution per candidate.”

Reached via e-mail, Burke’s campaign manager, Tina McKinnor, did not respond.

 

(Randall Fleming is a veteran journalist and magazine publisher. He has worked at and for the New York Post, the Brooklyn Spectator and the Los Feliz Ledger. He is currently editor-in-chief at the Morningside Park Chronicle, a weekly newspaper based in Inglewood, CA and on-line at www.MorningsideParkChronicle.com) 

-cw

  

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 40

Pub: May 16, 2014