The campaign against Measure O, the citizens' initiative to start the ball rolling toward public ownership of California American Water's Monterey District, was notoriously deep-pocketed. Final campaign disclosure forms confirm the numbers reported during election season: More than $2.4 million, almost all of it from Cal Am.
(The pro-Measure O campaign, by contrast, stitched together about $100,000 and lost.)
But the Risk We Cannot Afford Committee's final Form 460, published today on the Monterey County Elections website, reveals a bit more about where all that Cal Am money went. Among the highlights of the May 18-June 30 expenses, rounded to the nearest thousand:
- $116,000 to Buying Time LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based "political paid media strategy" firm
- $25,000 to campaign manager Paul Higgins (who collected another $23,000 March 18-May 17)
- $32,000 to Google, presumably for web ads
- $8,000 to Facebook (not a surprise to those of us who saw the No on O ads bombard our feeds)
- $54,000 to Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin, Metz & Associates, a Santa Monica-based public opinion research and strategy firm
- $41,000 to NCC Media
- $29,000 to KSBW-TV
- $26,000 to KION-TV
- $13,000 to NSBW-TV
- $9,000 to KCBA-TV
- $6,000 to Monterey County Herald
- $2,000 to Monterey County Weekly
- $2,000 to Carmel Pine Cone
- $101,000 to Trilogy Interactive, a Palo Alto-based design and strategy firm
- $240,000 to Terris Barnes Walters, an S.F.-based campaign firm
- $15,000 to Ramos Cordova Strategy Group, which collected an additional $28,000 between March 18-May 17. (The firm includes local activist Carlos Ramos and Salinas-based attorney Juan Uranga)
- $12,000 to campaign worker Chris Marohn, who was paid another $10,500 March 18-May 17.
The campaign spent just under $2.3 million all told, leaving an ending cash balance of almost $128,000. It still owes on a $250,000 loan made by Cal Am.