The last few items addressed on the agenda as Tuesday’s City Council meeting were a collection of six Discussion Items, but as the meeting sailed past 1 o’clock in the morning, it was clear everyone on the dais was keen to wrap things up as quickly as possible.
Item D came at the request of Councilmembers Dan Hall and Natalya Zernitskaya along with Councilmember Ellis Raskin that in order to “promote free and fair elections” the Council should direct Staff to return with options to raise the individual contribution limit during political campaigns.
This was the only 16 Item Torosis and Negrete had initially indicated that they would vote against and was introduced by Hall as he’d requested some discussion on it.
“This past election cycle was the most expensive Council race in Santa Monica's history… We have in the past kept our individual contribution limits low as an attempt to provide greater access to the average person,” Hall said, adding, “We're asking to explore options to remove the politics of raising the limit by tying the amount to inflation and we are attempting to give greater access to local politics to candidates who don't come into a race with significant [expenditure] backing to give them a reasonable shot of raising enough money.”
Raskin was the first to express his support, saying, “What the intent of this item is, is to recalibrate the balance of how money is spent between independent expenditure committees and candidate control committees … This gives candidates more flexibility to accept larger donations from people that would otherwise contribute to independent expenditures.”
Zernitskaya was also in support, saying, “This item would just try to see how we could be more in parity with our sister cities, and try to give folks who might not be well off enough to self fund a campaign the chance to really have a fighting chance in a in a very expensive political climate.”
Torosis added some interesting remarks, “It's no surprise that I plan to be running for reelection in 2026 and so I don't think that it would be appropriate for me to vote yes for this. However, I do want to note that I've actually done research on this increasing individual contribution limits does actually provide more equity with respect to the candidates that can run.
“I just want to point to our mayoral race, Rick Caruso spent $160 per vote, Karen Bass spent $10 per vote. Candidates that have money to self fund are at an enormous advantage, especially when the contribution limits are as low as they are here, and that increases the influence of outside expenditure committees … It provides an opportunity for well-funded, independently-funded candidates to buy air time and increase their messaging.”
Negrete highlighted a number of pros and cons. “I can see both sides, so I definitely agree [but] I don't know that by raising it – and especially by the amount that was suggested, tripling it almost – would stop IEs or PACs from being created.
“And I actually think there's another version of that … Some of us had to knock on doors every single day the entire campaign, because we couldn't sit back and rely on people who could write the full check for the maximum amount, or know that we had PACs and IEs that were out there, like get accepting donations of well beyond $1,500 more like $10,000 and up. So for me, I have a hard time for virtually the same reason … I wish we could cap what IEs and PACs could do that would really be controlling it, but we can’t do that.”
Zernitskaya explained that her intent in signing on to this item was not just to raise it to $1,500 immediately, but to study what other cities are doing and to figure out how Santa Monica could be more in line with our peer cities on what's allowable. “No matter what we do, it's still going to always be very expensive and unfortunately, really difficult to run a campaign. So I'm not opposed to also looking at other ways we could help diversify candidate pools as part of this,” she said.
The item was ultimately moved by Hall and seconded by Raskin and passed 6-1 with only Torosis voting against it.
scott.snowden@smdp.com
