Transfer Technique Is Prohibited in San Diego Area

The campaign cash transfers that helped elect Don R. Roth to the Board of Supervisors and Robert L. Richardson to the Santa Ana City Council were legal in Orange County, but the same technique has been outlawed by some local governments.

In San Diego, for instance, all such transfers have long been illegal under that city’s rigorous campaign ordinance, which limits all contributions to $250 and mandates that they come only from individuals.

San Diego County passed a similar law a year later; it too prevents transfers of campaign money from one candidate’s treasury to another.

“That’s $250 per person, per election,” said Linda Bunch, filing officer for San Diego County, which has adopted the same contribution limits as the city of San Diego. “And it’s only people--no PACs, no committees, no corporations, no partnerships. Just people. It’s very strict.”

Likewise in Chula Vista, Poway and Santee. Each of those cities has decided that candidates should get their money from human beings, not political or corporate groups. As a result, each one bans transfers, which are made by politicians’ political action committees.

Most local governments in California have not enacted specific bans on transfers or limited contributions to individuals, though for a brief period, all transfers were forbidden under state law. That was part of Proposition 73, a 1988 statewide initiative co-authored by Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra).

That initiative was ruled unconstitutional in 1990, just weeks before the November election. It was thrown out on what many consider a technicality, however: The proposition capped contributions to political races based on calendar years rather than election cycles, a distinction that the court said favored incumbents over challengers.

One result of throwing out Proposition 73 was that the state’s only ban on transfers went with it. So transfers that were legal before 1988 are legal again now, except in those few jurisdictions that have seen fit to address the problem on their own.