California Realtors spending big against Sacramento City Council candidate Caity Maple
A statewide Realtor group is spending big to try to keep a Sacramento City Council candidate out of office.
City Council candidate Caity Maple, who supported a local rent control initiative two years ago, is getting heat from the California Association of Realtors independent expenditure committee. The group has spent more than $60,000 on mailers, a website, online ads, polling and research against her.
Maple is running against state worker and Active Transportation Commission member Tamiko Heim in the race to represent District 5, a stretch of neighborhoods from Oak Park to parts of south Sacramento.
Both are Democrats, with Maple drawing support from unions and Heim from developers, business groups and the city police union.
One mailer from the Realtor organization, which hit voters’ mailboxes this month, refers to Maple as a lobbyist and tie her to American Express, Netflix, Facebook, the bail industry and online lenders.
Another new mailer highlights $750 in campaign donations she received from lobbyists who have worked for tobacco companies and drug companies.
“She calls herself a ‘community advocate’ and ‘policy expert,’” one mailer reads in big letters next to a photo of Maple’s face. “She won’t say lobbyist.”
Maple, 30, was a state registered lobbyist from 2017 through July 2019, but is not currently, state records show. She later worked as government affairs director for the Sacramento retail cannabis company Perfect Union.
When she was a lobbyist, Maple was a junior legislative advocate at a firm that represented diverse clients. She said she worked exclusively for cannabis clients, local governments and an animal welfare nonprofit. She did not work for the business clients named on the mailings, she said.
If elected, Maple has said she wants to beef up the city’s tenant protection program to make it harder for landlords to evict renters and raise rent.
She supported a failed 2020 ballot measure that would have done so. The California Association of Realtors spent at least $167,500 to oppose the measure, and National Association of Realtors spent at least $250,000. The realtors’ groups argued the ballot measure would have made building housing more expensive.
Maple also wants to join Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela in calling for the city to require developers to include more affordable units in market rate projects, she said.
“I think it’s concerning to these folks that I may come in and take stances that could hurt their bottom line,” Maple said.
The Sacramento Bee contacted the Realtors association for comment, and it has not responded to questions about the ads.
The association also paid for a mailer going after Maple’s attendance record when she was a volunteer board member for the Midtown Neighborhood Association.
“To ensure our community has a voice, we need a representative who will show up,” reads the mailer, which includes a photo of a pink empty chair.
Maple was on the board in 2016, when she was also working at a nonprofit, driving Uber and Lyft, and bartending, she said. The meetings were in the weekday evenings, and she often had to skip them to work, she said. When she would miss a meeting, she would tell the chair at the time, Angela Tillotson, she said.
“We will miss you your thoughtful and intelligent perspective and positive energy that you brought to the board,” Tillotson said in an email to Maple in February 2017 when Maple moved and resigned from the board.
Maple’s biggest donors are the Sacramento Central Labor Council and United Food and Commercial Workers, which each donated roughly $6,000. Councilwoman Angelique Ashby donated $1,000.
Heim’s biggest donors are the California Apartment Association, the California Association of Realtors, Sacramento Police Officers Association, Committee for Home Ownership of the North State Building Industry Association, the Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which each donated between $5,000 and $6,000.
This story was originally published May 24, 2022 at 10:09 AM.
