Thao’s fundraising
I’m reproducing below a report sent to the Coalition by Charles Pine, a longtime Oakland resident. Using data provided by the Oakland City Clerk’s website, Pine raises some questions. We can’t vouch for the accuracy of Pine’s report, of course. But he does raise some questions that deserve answers. Here is Pine’s report:
Sheng Thao's Fishy Funding in Mayoral Race
Oakland mayoral candidate Sheng Thao said in a broadcast email on Aug. 3, "We've raised $310,000 from nearly 1,000 donors! ... THAT is a grassroots campaign." However, Thao's Form 460 filings with the City Clerk reveal that she received nearly half her money from maximum-amount contributors. More troubling, a set of twenty of them raises a question of "straw donor" contributions, which would be illegal.
From Nov. 10, 2021 to June 30, 2022, Thao recorded 168 contributors who gave the legal maximum of $900. They provided more than $151,000 – nearly half of Thao's funds. Small contributions (less than a hundred dollars) totaled only $12,000. In an Aug. 26 email, Thao asserted, "I don’t have a bunch of corporate donors or wealthy folks writing big checks." The numbers indicate otherwise.
Among the contributors of the maximum legal amount, not that many list an Oakland address, just 29. Six are in Piedmont. The remainder live in places like Danville, Laguna Hills, Encino, San Diego, and Los Angeles. More than 30 live in Sacramento, including several political operatives. A dozen-plus out-of-state contributors live in Phoenix, Arizona; Eagle, Idaho; etc.
One set of donors is particularly troubling. Twenty of the maximum-amount contributors bear the Thao surname. Five live in Minnesota; the other fifteen reside in Sacramento, Stockton, and Merced. Although they live 80 to 2,000 miles away from Oakland, they gave $900 to an Oakland mayoral campaign.
Meanwhile, one person named Thao in Oakland donated $100. Another 19 Thaos in other cities contributed between $100 and $675. We don't know if or how many Thaos donated less than $100; campaign filings are not required to list these. The distribution of Thao donors is not what we would expect, a pyramid with a broad base rising to fewer at the highest donation. Instead, the donors are an odd group who contributed the $900 maximum followed by the same number of contributors who gave a range of lesser amounts.
According to a report in Alameda Magazine, "Extended members of the vast Thao clan threw a celebration for [Sheng] Thao in late January [2019] in Merced that was attended by 500 people from across the country." The Hmong culture has about twenty surnames. As a percentage, Hmongs named Thao are more common than Anglos named Smith, and there is no presumption of a close bond among a large group of them.
We have a clue to the Sheng Thao puzzle. Form 460 requires each donor to state his or her occupation. Among the maximum-donation contributors surnamed Thao are a stocker at Walmart, a daycare provider, a supervisor at a deli, two students, a production assembly worker, and a Head Start preschool teacher. These are honorable occupations, but they are not highly paid.
Perhaps these struggling workers dug deep and gave $900 each. An alternative explanation would be that the Thao campaign split someone's very large contribution into $900 chunks and recorded the money in the names of "straw donors." The California Fair Political Practices Commission states, "Failure to disclose the true source of a contribution is ... a serious violation of the (Political Reform) Act."
The attacks on Seneca Scott
I was at my gym the other day, on the elliptical, and they had Fox News on the T.V., so I was forced to watch. They devoted an entire segment to bashing Gavin Newsom and San Francisco. And I thought, “They must really be afraid of Newsom because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be attacking him so much.”
I am thinking now of Seneca Scott, who has received a lot of negative publicity over the last week. Cat Brooks is accusing him of being anti-semitic and anti-trans. And then Oaklandside, which is decidedly leftish, published a broadside that made Seneca sound like a gun nut. And the same thoughts I had about Fox and Newsom arose with respect to the Left and Seneca: “They must really be afraid of Seneca because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be attacking him so much.”
First, Seneca is neither anti-semitic nor anti-trans. He’s been my friend for a couple years now; we talk often, privately. I think I know his mind. I am Jewish and I am part of the LGBTQ spectrum. This chatter about him being prejudiced is nonsense, spread around by Cat Brooks and Oaklandside because—as I say—they’re afraid of him.
Oaklandside’s “expose” is that Seneca had two misdemeanor charges for carrying a gun during an attempted robbery at his garden in West Oakland. Seneca has addressed the specific incident in a way that’s satisfactory to me. I don’t own a gun, but a lot of people are carrying these days, for obvious reasons, and I don’t blame Seneca for owning a gun, which has a permit for. He lives in the Lower Bottoms, a dangerous area; if I lived there, I might have a gun, too. Seneca was accused of carrying his in public, which is apparently illegal, because he didn’t have a concealed carry permit. So even though he wasn’t wandering the streets—he was in his own garden, for crying out loud, defending it against thieves who were trying to steal his water heater--he was cited by the cops. This is a big nothingburger.
But it is indicative of the alarm the Far Left is feeling as Seneca Scott rises in popular attention. A lot of people are going to vote for him because they perceive him as the Mayor who will be tough on crime. That is not a Republican position or a Democratic position; it’s neither Right nor Left to be tough on crime. It’s rational to be tough on crime; in fact, one of the reasons Seneca is running is because the three candidates on the City Council who are also running—Sheng Thao, Loren Taylor and Treva Reid—have not been tough on crime. Thao is clearly the worst, having voted so many times to defund the police. (And by the way, we, the Coalition, like Loren Taylor a lot.) But all three are on a City Council that has not distinguished itself for diligence in dealing with Oakland’s many problems.
Being tough on crime and pro-police shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but the Left has made it into one. Now, they’re trying to portray Seneca almost as though he wears a MAGA cap. Look: Seneca’s own description of his politics is “post-partisan.” That phrase captures the essence of his thinking: He’s not a Republican, he’s not a Democrat, he’s independent, as I suspect many of you are too. We have to move beyond this tired old Democrat-Republican or Left-Right dualism, and that’s what Seneca is doing. We have two months before the election, and I think Seneca has a serious chance to win it. And so, apparently, do his ideological opponents; otherwise, why are they trying so desperately to take him down with lies, insinuations and smears?
Steve Heimoff