Overview: Campaign finance reform in La Mesa
Finding the right cap is a challenging balance.
Too high and donors have the potential for undue influence. Too low and PACs form to use independent expenditures unregulated under the Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC.
LA MESA – Engaged citizens in the La Mesa Conversations group have been working since March on drafting the city’s first campaign finance reform policy.
With no ordinance of its own, currently the East County city defaults to the limits set by state law, with individuals able to donate up to $5,900 per election in the 2025-2026 cycle.
“We want to promote transparency, fairness, public trust in our local elections, and that’s why we’re working on this ordinance,” Janet Castaños said while opening the La Mesa Conversations meeting on Aug. 21.
At that meeting, members finalized the draft they will hand over to Councilmember Lauren Cazares.
To fulfill a campaign promise, she partnered with the group in order to introduce a citizen-backed campaign finance reform ordinance to the full city council.
She will consult the La Mesa Conversations draft, but will craft a policy she deems fair, legal and likely to pass. She expects that will be in October or November.
“Limiting campaign contributions, I think especially when a council does it themselves, is a good faith effort to show that we want our community’s contributions to matter. We want them to have access to us as elected officials,” Cazares said in a phone call.
The ‘Goldilocks’ number
Already, Cazares shared donation data from her 2024 run so the group could see how a campaign is financed. Her average donation was $206 with only a few outlying donations to the maximum amount.
Her average donation was used to formulate the contribution limit the group is submitting.
Although they anticipate Cazares and the council will exceed their suggestion, they proposed capping individuals’ donations per election cycle to $1,000. Initial suggestions were for $2,500.
“$2,500… that is 12x the average person. That is income inequality, right there. So should someone be able to get theoretically, potentially, 12x the influence of someone who’s poor? I don’t think so,” said Aaron Amerling.. “I’m willing to say, ‘Sure, like 5x.’”
Finding the right cap is a challenging balance.
Too high and donors have the potential for undue influence. Too low and PACs form to use independent expenditures unregulated under the Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. FEC.
It is not within the purview of the city of La Mesa to regulate PAC spending.
“It’s tricky,” Cazares said. “I think that ethically (campaign finance reform is) the right thing to do to attempt to even the playing field, but until Citizens United is overturned, it’s not a real evening of the playing field.”
Citizens United removed restrictions on corporations and unions spending on elections, as it infringed First Amendment free speech rights. Critics believe the decision has ballooned the influence of wealthy donors and corporations on American governments, especially since the donors and certain expenditures do not need to be disclosed to the public.
Cazares’ comparison of San Diego found cities with low thresholds, for example Coronado’s limit of $200, had more dark money flood the race – leaving voters with no knowledge of which interests supported candidates.
Another issue, former city councilmember Jack Shu said, is that grassroots candidates depend on individual donors more than institutionally-backed candidates.
Too low caps he believes would make running a clean campaign without establishment support even more difficult. In Shu’s own campaign, three $888 donations from family friends gave him more breathing room to tackle issues rather than spending all his time fundraising.
“By restricting what an individual candidate does, you may be hampering the grassroots candidate that’s raising some money, but needs a few $1,000, $2,000 donations, but is battling a PAC that has no rules,” Shu said.
Beyond donation limits
The effort to pass a campaign finance reform ordinance initially was sparked by La Mesa receiving a D grade in a 2023 report card on integrity in San Diego elections put together by Citizens Take Action. Cypress mayor David Burke founded the organization to get big money out of politics and boost civic engagement.
“An elected official is less likely to be swayed by an individual or group that contributed $250 to their campaign than by a donor who contributed $2,500,” Burke wrote in the report.
Under Burke’s grading criteria, not having a local limit on campaign contributions was dinged while the La Mesa’s transparency on campaign finance data received 25 out of 30 points.
Still, locals thought the data transparency could be improved.
“It just wasn’t clean,” said Castaños, who spearheaded the citizen-led effort to pass the ordinance.
Candidates’ data is available on the city website. However, members of the group found the campaign disclosures difficult to parse, with duplicate entries and no easy way to import it.
In addition to lowering the donation threshold to $1,000, the group agreed the ordinance should include a call for the campaign disclosures to be available to the public permanently and in a user-friendly format. California’s Political Reform Act only requires the data be preserved for four years.
Moving campaign disclosures further out from election day was another idea so voters had time to review the information before casting their vote.
“Otherwise, what happens as you get close to the election is they do crazy stuff and you don’t know about it,” Shu said.
If passed, the ordinance would not take effect until the 2028 election, so it does not seem to target any of the candidates who have already announced for 2026. Cazares plans to run for reelection in 2028.
“Not only is it the next full cycle, but [it’s] also a good faith effort: ‘Hey, I’m regulating myself. I’m regulating my own campaign,’” she said.
