Strawberry Field Owner’s Campaign Donations Revealed
via Citizens for North County Facebook
By Richard Riehl
It must have been quite a shock for L.A.’s Caruso-affiliated executives to see the stack of signed petitions delivered to the Carlsbad city clerk’s office last Thursday. The 9,000 signers of the referendum petition are calling for a public vote on the developer’s plan for a lagoon-view shopping center, as promised in the title of the initiative, Measure to be Submitted Directly to the Voters.
When the Carlsbad city Council unanimously approved his plan on August 25, Caruso had already spent nearly $3 million on signature gatherers and a blizzard of glossy, full-color mailers to persuade 20,000 Carlsbadians that his plan to build a shopping mall was all about saving the Strawberry Fields.
The day after the council voted, a grassroots group, Citizens for North County, announced its plan to launch a referendum drive. Caruso had to redouble his marketing campaign. But this time his mailers, accompanied by daily prime time TV ads, featured headshot photos of and quotes from all five city Council members, as well as the owner of the Strawberry Fields. Each repeated the lie that signing the referendum would destroy the Strawberry Fields, despite the promise of Prop D to preserve them, passed by voters in 2006. The Caruso mailer included a detachable, postage-paid card to return to the city clerk for signers of the referendum to have their names withdrawn.
About 700 signers chose to do so. Caruso relied on the confusion caused by his two dishonest campaigns to “Save the Strawberry Fields,” the first by signing an initiative, the second by refusing to sign a referendum, to keep residents from signing anything. Heads he wins, tails we lose.
While the strange bedfellows of big-money and elected officials urged us to turn down our right to vote, the citizen-led referendum drive soldiered on, relying on social media to generate hundreds of volunteers to station themselves in city parks and other public places to collect 9,000 signatures in 30 days on a paltry $9,000 budget. That’s 300 signatures a day at a dollar apiece.
It took 90 days for Caruso’s professional signature gatherers to snag 20,000 signatures. With a $3 million budget, that amounts to only 222 signatures a day at $150 each.
I couldn’t help but wonder why the city Council not only refused to put the Caruso plan up for a vote in a special election, but even to delay their decision for 30 days to enable residents to be more fully informed. The August 25 meeting was packed with dissenters. You’d think elected officials would be more responsive to their constituents.
That made me curious about campaign contributions, so I went to the city’s website, where I found, among Mayor Matt Hall’s financial supporters, the name of James Ukegawa, the man you see posing in the Strawberry Fields on Caruso’s mailers and in his TV ads. He’s identified as a “Carlsbad Strawberry Company Farmer” on the mayor’s filing form, stamped by the city clerk on July 30, 2014. Ukegawa’s $5,000 contribution is dated June 7, 2014.
The “Strawberry Company Farmer” is identified on Michael Schumacher’s campaign finance filing as the “Owner of Aviara Farms.” He made two contributions to Schumacher’s campaign, one for $2,500 on September 12, 2014, the other for $1,760 on October 29, 2014.
Mayor Hall and Council member Schumacher had $9,260 good reasons between them to support their favorite constituent.
As I perused the many other contributions to the campaigns of these two candidates, I noted the number of out of town real estate companies, building and construction firms, and for some unknown reason, the special generosity of the executives of the Rancho Santa Fe Grand Pacific Resorts. I’ll leave that mystery to an investigative reporter, if there are any left after the collapse of print journalism.
The willingness to accept significant contributions from out of town businesses shows the hypocrisy of elected officials who blame “outside interests” for the success of a referendum drive. Click here to find the city’s web page disclosing campaign contributions.
The San Diego County Registrar of Voters has 30 days, not including weekends, to validate the referendum’s signatures to see if there are 6,523, the magic number that will force the city Council to either hold a special election or put Caruso’s plan on the ballot in the 2016 general election.
A few years ago, Carlsbad boasted of a $50 million reserve fund, I’m guessing it’s grown substantially since then. The city says the cost of a special election would be $500,000. Mayor Hall says it would be a waste of money. Considering what’s at stake, I’d say it’s a bargain.
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Dear Richard,
Thank you for continuing to shed light on this. You are revealing facts that many of us have known for months now. Fortunately you have a platform from which to announce them to a wider audience. Sadly supporters will ignore these facts; nothing you say will change their minds. Whether they have a pecuniary interest in seeing this project move forward or just really want to shop at a Nordstrom store on the lagoon is anybody’s guess. In any event, here are some more FACTS for you:
1. Jimmy Ukegawa has at least a partial ownership interest in a racing horse.
2. Janette Littler (Callidus Consulting Group) is a paid political consultant who works for Mayor Hall, Councilmember Schumacher AND Caruso Affiliated.
I’m sure there are many more FACTS out there. Those who are interested in hearing the truth are welcome to consider the ramifications of these FACTS. Those who choose to ignore them, well, you have your reasons.
We saved the Caruso brochure that shows the mayor and all the council members so that we remember not to vote for any of them next election. Once the farmer gets his big payout, he’ll move to La Jolla and the fields will lay fallow until furrows of condos cover them.
This story seems near the status of allegory. All the simple facts are buried under an avalanche of propaganda written by mass comm public relationers from a vast distance. It’s a lab experiment in greed and power to determine how far the the p.r. technique of inversion — of victims as criminals, environment as ownership, voting as fraud — can get in the battle to defeat representative government.
That it took the efforts of so many people to undo and expose this conspiracy is testament to how far Greed had made its way into daily life. I hope the Carlsbad story gets into the gut of Sacramento and the nation and leaves a serious burn.
Hi Bob. I just wanted to let you know I agree 100% with your views on this campaign of deception. I am astonished that anyone who has witnessed this tragic assault on Carlsbad and the surrounding communities could possibly allow this sort of action to rake place. I sincerely hope the referendum causes the council and mayor to retract their approval or let us vote. I cannot imagine the next Caruso campaign if it does go to a vote. I will wait and see. Thanks for sharing your opinion.
It will make little difference in the election. A council that makes huge financial missteps (as in the waste of over 45 million dollars spent on an unnecessary gold course that has never carried its annual costs) can never be effectively challenged. This is because Carlsbad uses an at large system in which the candidates with the most votes wins, which means that incumbent council members are always at the top. The only hope for real competitive democracy would be a district system which would require candidates to win a majority to be elected. It would mean real debate and bring light to the politics of reality rather than that of obscurity.
Fat chance of this ever happening in a system where money too often rules and keeps Carlsbad is trapped in the hands of developers.
When we save water it really is going to supply the hundreds of new homes that are filling in our open spaces, and not a real reduction in usage. It will also soon mean thousands of additional cars jamming our rapidly deteriorating traffic patterns. Riehl has a lot more reporting to do.
You are absolutely right, Allen. The at-large elections have to go if there’s to be any substantial change in city leadership. The referendum drive brought a lot of grassroots activists together. If this group continues to grow and stay active, maybe there’s hope.
Allen makes an excellent point. However, rather than giving up the fight before it has even begun, I prefer to echo the words of John Paul Jones…(We) have not yet begun to fight. In other words, when you rile up 9000 people, don’t expect things to go on as usual any longer.
And, I might add, with each new day dawning, more light is being shed on this shady deal. Just check out Joan of Park’s latest post on her Facebook page. Seems the Strawberry guys HATED the idea of a Caruso development just a few years ago. I wonder what changed their minds. Hmmm?
Richard
First let me say I have enjoyed reading all your commentaries on this Mall on a Lagoon project. I am wondering if most people really understand the traffic impacts this project will have for most of North County residents and anyone who travels the I-5 freeway? Caltrans didn’t factor this project in when it did its final EIR/EIS for its I-5 North Coast Corridor Project.
Caruso promises to invest in improvements to exit ramps and signage to minimize the impact on traffic beyond what has been projected by SANDAG without his project. The city council bought that promise. Based on his track record of deception thus far I wouldn’t trust the developer to keep ANY of his promises.