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Santa Ana city staff say they’ve received complaints that the city council’s political aides have campaigned for their bosses on the taxpayers’ dime and pushed the council to overhaul the program.
But some city council members say their aides aren’t political after two aides volunteered against recall efforts, another volunteered for a councilman’s previous campaign and another was paid as a consultant for work on the Mayor’s 2022 campaign.
Now, officials are scrambling to lay some ground rules to keep council aides from engaging in campaign activity.
City Council members at last week’s meeting voted to overhaul the two-year-old political aide program after staff also raised concerns about a lack of uniformity in their pay, contracts and loose rules.
Many of the changes unanimously approved Tuesday ban political aides from campaigning activity for council members and local council candidates while working under contract with the city.
Longtime City Attorney Sonia Carvalho said there needed to be “bright lines” established to ban aides from engaging in political campaigning amid complaints from council members that such activity was taking place.
“If you allow this campaign activity,” Carvalho said at Tuesday’s meeting, “then we think what could happen is we’re going to get more of those complaints like we have gotten, like, ‘well, we saw that council aide at the campaign event.’”
Mayor Valerie Amezcua and Councilwoman Thai Viet Phan said at Tuesday’s meeting that their aides – tasked with responding to constituents, acting as liaisons and writing communications about strategy – are anything but political.
[Read: Santa Ana Struggles Managing Political Aides For City Council]
Amezcua said that she spends more time with her aide, Claudia Perez, than her husband, calling Perez her “road-dog.”
“She is my BFF and she is my ride or die,” she said at the June 4th meeting. “I can show you everything she has done for the mayor of this whole city, not just awards.”
In an August 2022 interview with Lucy Casillas from La Konsentida broadcasted on Facebook, Amezcua introduced Perez as her campaign manager.
“This is Claudia Perez, my campaign manager and dear friend,” she told Casillas at the time.
In the interview, Perez said Amezcua is a qualified and exceptional candidate who has proven herself on the school board and will bring the city together.
“Valerie is the right woman for that. She is right for the job,” Perez told Casillas.
Publicly available campaign finance disclosures from 2022 show Amezcua’s campaign paid Perez $7,500 for campaign consultant work, $1,684 for a fundraising event and $5,477 to reimburse her for a victory party at the Santa Ana Elks Lodge.
On LinkedIn, Perez identifies herself as Amezcua’s chief of staff and lists her skills which include political campaigns, politics, fundraising, administrative support, community relations, scheduling, lobbying, policy analysis and legislative relations.
Amezcua did not respond to questions as to what exactly Perez’s responsibilities are for her, her involvement with her campaign or Carvalho’s comments on the complaints.
Phan said at Tuesday’s meeting that the term “political aide” was offensive to her and her team.
“I make it very clear, and you can depose any of them, that we do not engage in campaign or political activity while we represent the city of Santa Ana,” she said at the June 4th meeting.
Phan reiterated those remarks in a Thursday phone interview and said that none of her aides have worked for or consulted for her city council campaigns.
In a follow up text message, she said that Lisbeth Rosales, one of her aides, remembers volunteering at a phone bank event held by the Working Families Party against a police union backed effort to recall Phan last year.
“To be clear, she was not paid to do it, not from my campaign and definitely not during her council aide time,” she wrote.
Recall organizers missed the August deadline to submit signatures to spark a recall against the council member.
Phan said her aides help organize and administer programming and events like the free legal clinic in her ward, meet with constituents as well create flyers for events.
“In order to bring the services that my residents need, in order to do these free legal clinics, in order to do the down payment assistance programs,” Phan said in the phone interview. “I needed help and we didn’t have that capacity on staff and we don’t get to direct our staff because they respond to the city manager’s office.”
Under a new contract template approved Tuesday, the political aides would be responsible for administrative support, meeting with residents, coordinating council member projects, and writing emails and memos about strategy, policies and procedures.
As part of the overhaul, council members voted to prohibit aides from serving on city commissions, to limit pay to $60 an hour for aides with a $5,000 maximum per month, and to do live scans on aides.
They also explicitly barred aides from working as a campaign manager, campaign treasurer or consultant for council members or running for local office.
The new rules also prohibit: campaigning for council candidates while working as an aide, using city resources to campaign for council candidates, accepting contributions on behalf of a candidate and receiving payment or reimbursement from a city council candidate or their campaign account.
Aides can still volunteer for a candidate’s campaign in their free time.
Complaints About Aides Engaging in Political Activity
The changes came after top-level executive staff last month highlighted complaints about political aides undermining city employees, roaming city hall after hours and a lack of uniformity on council aide contracts – all funded by taxpayers.
On Tuesday, Carvalho’s office at the request of officials last month brought a template general outlining the parameters for hourly pay and responsibilities of the council aides – including prohibitions against aides’ politically campaigning for their bosses.
Councilman Johnathan Hernandez said in a Thursday phone interview that he made a complaint about Amezcua’s aide engaging in political activity.
“She’s using her role as a campaign manager and as the chief of staff to build contacts and create a political machine. I spoke out against that because I find that to be a misuse of public funds and I find it to be a conflict of interest,” he said.
“This community deserves elected leaders who are going to be trusted with our resources. We have a mayor who is openly lying and misleading the public.”
Hernandez sent Voice of OC a flier for the mayor’s birthday fundraiser this year with Perez’s contact information on it as well as a Facebook video link of Amezcua & Perez’s radio interview with La Konsentida.
He said that none of his policy aides have worked in any capacity for his campaign.
Councilman David Penaloza said in a Thursday email he was never in support of the council aide program from the start and called it a “slippery slope” with concerns surfacing almost as soon as it started.
He said Manny Escamilla – the first contracted council aides working for Vicente Sarmiento – the mayor at the time, ran for office in the city.
“He was at every city event, as the ‘mayor’s rep’ and would often even try to add himself to the speakers list whenever the mayor would be absent. The former Mayor, through the city, paid him over $20,000 for three months of work to essentially campaign around the city,” Penaloza wrote.
Escamilla denied that he campaigned for himself when he was an aide in a Thursday phone call and said he ended his contract before announcing his campaign.
“There definitely is an issue about being an aide and campaigning at the same time and I do think there should be a prohibition on that,” he said.
After publication of this article, Escamilla said his total billings for his aide work was a little less than $8,300.
He lost his 2022 run for city council against Penaloza.
Penaloza also said there have been complaints that Council member Jessie Lopez’s aide was campaigning for the councilwoman amid the police-union backed recall against her last year that ultimately failed while billing the city.
Lopez said in a phone call Thursday that her aide, Valerie Magdalena, has not worked or consulted on her campaigns, but volunteered in her own time against the recall and that Penaloza, Amezcua and Bacerra raised concerns about that.
Lopez said Magdalena helps with policy research, community events, meeting with constituents, doing her newsletter and research on council agenda items – even providing recommendations as a resident herself.
Councilman Benjamin Vazquez said Thursday that his aides help out with community events, social media posts and research on council agenda items to help create questions and handle his calendar.
He added that while none of his aides have worked or consulted for any of his campaigns, Yenni Diaz, one of his aides, has volunteered for his campaign in the past.
Penaloza said his aides help out with policy research, city events, following up with constituents and city staff, procurement of office giveaways and community office hours but uses their services minimally.
He added that his aides have never worked for, consulted or volunteered for his campaigns.
“I’ve personally told them that they cannot participate in ANY political campaign,” Penaloza said. “And if they did, I would have to terminate their contract in order for them to engage politically.”
Councilmember Phil Baccera did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
In 2022, Bacerra’s campaign contributed to Andrew Linares’ failed school board campaign.
Linares later became Bacerra’s aide.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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