County Board of Supervisors candidate Bonnie Dumanis has given $15,000 to a community safety fund over the past three years and is offering receipts from the charitable donations as evidence that she has unloaded any tainted money from a federal campaign-finance case.

Dumanis received significant support from associates of the defendants in a federal case that centered on tycoon José Susumo Azano Matsura, who was not supposed to give money in U.S. elections because he was a foreign national.

As news of the prosecution broke in early 2014, Dumanis immediately returned $1,400 that was given to her re-election campaign as district attorney.

U-T Watchdog then identified $13,250 given to her unsuccessful 2012 mayoral campaign in 27 contributions from associates and relatives of three central figures in the Azano case and asked her about those funds.


At first, Dumanis said the mayoral campaign committee was closed and therefore she couldn’t return the funds as she had with her active DA account.

“Even giving it from my own money — and I don’t have that kind of money to give back — would probably not be within the rules of ethics,” Dumanis said.

She later said she would give the money to charity, “something focusing on crime victims.” And then she said she would reopen her mayoral campaign, deposit the tainted money into it and disburse the funds to the city treasury.


“We would like to do it in as expeditious a manner as possible,” her campaign spokeswoman, Jen Tierney, said in May 2014. “We would like to do it when all cases are closed, so we can reopen the (mayoral) committee, make the payment to the city and immediately close the committee again.”

That did not happen. Jason Roe, political consultant for Dumanis’s current campaign — for county supervisor — said it’s not necessary.

“Seems like a lot of hassle for the same outcome,” Roe said in an email.

Dumanis always said she wanted to wait until the legal process concluded in the Azano case.


So when the final defendant was sentenced in February — former San Diego police detective Ernie Encinas was sentenced to probation — the U-T began asking Dumanis’s campaign whether she would be disgorging the tainted funds.

Emails on Feb. 23, 26 and March 5 garnered no response. On March 12, the campaign replied with receipts for two $5,000 donations.

“She gave $10k to the Safe Communities Fund through the San Diego Foundation,” Roe said. “She did do it.”

The receipts showed the donations were made on Dec. 30, 2015 and Dec. 30, 2016. The Watchdog on March 16 asked how the campaign came up with the $10,000 figure, given the original $13,250 that was identified.


Roe replied on March 19, saying, “Here is another receipt for $5k more bringing total to $15k.”

That contribution was dated Dec. 30, 2017.

Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause, a government watchdog group, questioned the payments.

“Most campaigns, to avoid the appearance of corruption, will disgorge immediately,” she said. “Something about the timing is questionable. (Once) it’s clear the source is of foreign origin, there is an ethical obligation for the candidate to return (the money).”


Campaign expenditures must be reported under state law. However, as long as the candidate was unaware donations were illegal, San Diego Municipal Code says they are not obligated to disgorge them, said Stacey Fulhorst, executive director of the San Diego Ethics Commission.

“Although the city’s campaign laws do have disgorgement requirements, they do not require city committees to reopen if they learn that one or more contributions accepted while the committee was open/active were unlawful,” Fulhorst said.

At the time Dumanis was planning to reopen her campaign committee, contribute the funds and disburse them from there, one reason cited was transparency — campaign funds are subject to rigorous public reporting requirements.

Dumanis’ decision to donate the funds personally makes them more difficult to track and verify.


She also qualified for a $15,000 tax deduction and possibly saved thousands in income tax obligations. Money given to political campaigns is not deductible, but contributions to charities are.

“Yes, it is a tax deduction,” she said Wednesday. She later added that she will take that deduction when she files her income taxes, and stressed that she was under no obligation to give any money to charity.

Citing donor privacy, the San Diego Foundation would not provide documentation to independently confirm the donations.

Dumanis was not the only local politician embroiled in the Azano scandal. The Mexican tycoon, who had a house in Coronado, was convicted of spending some $600,000 on local campaigns with an agenda for turning downtown San Diego into “Miami West.”


Congressman Juan Vargas, state Sen. Ben Hueso and Assemblywoman Shirley Weber also received campaign funds from individuals associated with Azano, who was sentenced to three years in prison last year. Vargas returned $4,500 in January 2014. Hueso also was quick to return funds to the tune of $1,750.

Weber’s campaign said the assemblywoman did not feel returning her $500 donation to someone involved in a crime was the best way to disgorge the funds.

“We thought about it a little bit and returning the money didn’t seem sufficient,” said Joe Kocurek, a spokesperson for Weber’s campaign. “We donated it to a non-profit, which seemed a better option.”

Campaign filings show a $500 donation to Black Storytellers of San Diego in May 2014. The money originally came from one of the defendants, lobbyist Marco Polo Cortes, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy, making a campaign contribution in the name of another and obstruction of a federal agent.


Staff writer Joshua Stewart contributed to this report.

Background

Contact the reporter at andrew.dyer@sduniontribune.com.

× U-T TV Watchdog: Dumanis donations and political scandal


UPDATES:

March 28, 2018, 3:18 p.m.: This article was updated with a quote from Dumanis.

This article was originally published March 27, 2018.