Sacramento supervisors reject effort by sheriff, DA to raise campaign contribution limits

The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors unanimously rejected a request to raise the campaign contribution limits for three county-wide elected offices that would have allowed them to raise as much as $25,000 from a single contributor in an election cycle.

Like in some counties, the three elected offices — the sheriff, district attorney and assessor — effectively have no contribution limits on their races. But the legislature wanted to put an end to this practice and passed a law last year that will limit what a candidate can receive to no more than $4,900 in 2021.

The law, AB 571, was designed to place contribution limits on city and county elective offices that do not have any, but it does not prevent local lawmakers from setting their own, either lower or higher, after the law goes into effect. The proposed change, put forth by District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, Sheriff Scott Jones and Assessor Christina Wynn, was timed to get ahead of the new state law.

The elected officials also wanted to allow contribution limits as high as $12,500 during a single off-election year.

The Board of Supervisors agreed to revisit the issue in the near future but most of them, including Board Chairman Phil Serna, Patrick Kennedy and Don Nottoli, opposed raising the limit to the level suggested in the proposed ordinance.

“This is just so far off the mark of all the others,” Kennedy said.

Schubert and Scott both spoke before the board and raised concerns about the possibility of so-called “dark money” infiltrating the elections. Schubert cited one case of a single donor gave $1 million as an independent expenditure in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s primary. Contributions are limited to $1,500 in Los Angeles County.

Although the sheriff and district attorney have easily won re-election campaigns in the past, Schubert said if the limits are too low it could hinder their ability to run effective campaigns.

“(If you) put a limit here at $4,900, I can assure you that transparency will not be prevalent here anymore,” Schubert told the supervisors. “They will just resort to more and more independent expenditures.”

‘This is really an astronomical sum’

The move prompted opposition from the Sacramento County League of Women Voters and California Common Cause, among others, who called the proposal “troubling” in a written letter to the Board of Supervisors.

“This is really an astronomical sum that goes against the spirit of AB 571,” said Paula Lee, advocacy director for the League. “This proposal however so high that it’s almost the equivalent of no limits at all.”

Opponents argued that raising limits would make it more difficult for challengers because donors are more likely to give to public officials in power. What’s more, they said raising the limits to $25,000 would not eliminate anonymous big-money donors. Instead, the proposed change would make them a bigger influence in local elections than smaller contributors.

The groups argued that even counties with a population greater than Sacramento’s do not have limits as high as $25,000. Orange County, for example, limits contributions to $2,100; Contra Costa County restricts individual donations to $1,675; San Diego County only allows up to a $500 contribution, according to a county staff report.

“These would be some of the highest limits in the state,” said Nicolas Heidorn, a consultant for California Common Cause. “For comparison, the proposed limits are five times what the state senators which represent (about) a million people, accept and even exceed the limits for the attorney general and lieutenant governor all of which are statewide offices.”