Election Wrap-up: The Final Vote Counts, and the Whopping $70K School Board Campaign Contribution That Showed Up on Election Day

Loophole in campaign finance law allows unlimited contributions to school board candidates, which became major factor in Contra Costa County Board of Education race between two Martinez residents

The November election results have been certified, and while the final vote tallies changed no outcomes in races involving Martinez, there’s still news to report about how it all played out — including which groups helped to tip the scales.

Here we go:

Charter Schools PAC spends big on CoCo school board race

Speaking of tipping the scales, the Charter Public Schools Political Action Committee landed on them like a thousand-pound elephant in the race between Yazmin Llamas and Vicki Gordon, both Martinez residents, for the Area 3 seat on the Contra Costa County Board of Education. In an eye-popping contribution that wasn’t publicly disclosed on the Contra Costa County campaign finance portal until Election Day, the PAC dropped $70,000 in support of Llamas, a current Martinez Unified School District trustee who easily defeated Gordon, a former MUSD and Contra Costa Community College District trustee, 63% to 37%. The contribution itself was dated Oct. 31.

That such an exorbitant contribution by one donor is even permissible is the result of a puzzling loophole in state campaign finance law that places no cap on individual contributions to school board campaigns while applying strict limits for other local races such as city council and county supervisor (an effort to eliminate the loophole last year failed).

But the timing of the contribution raises as many questions as the amount. Because it was made less than a week before the election, and after many ballots had been cast, most voters had no way of knowing that Llamas’ campaign was being bankrolled by charter school interests, which often find themselves on the opposite side of similarly deep-pocketed teachers unions in education election battles across the state (Gordon had the support of several local teachers unions).

Typically, candidates raise funds, and disclose them, in campaign filings well before the election — and before making significant campaign-related expenditures. But Llamas’ campaign racked up significant debts that went toward a series of glossy mailers before reporting any major contributions; her final pre-election campaign filing, dated Oct. 22, showed only $200 in contributions and $17,560 in expenditures.

Although the $70,000 contribution report filed by Llamas’ campaign was dated Nov. 5, the Charter Public Schools PAC disclosed the contribution on the date it was made, Oct. 31, through the California Secretary of State’s Office. State law requires that contributions totaling at least $1,000 made within 90 days of the election be reported within 24 hours, but in this case, voters following a local race would have no way of knowing about such a contribution unless they happened to check the Secretary of State’s campaign finance portal. Campaign finance reports for local races such as city, county or school boards are typically filed with the respective county elections or city clerk offices.

Campaign finance disclosure obtained through the Contra Costa County Elections Office shows the $70,000 contribution from the Charter Public Schools PAC to Yazmin Llamas received on Oct. 31 and disclosed on Nov. 5, the date of the Election

Why the Charter Public Schools PAC weighed in with such a large contribution, and so close to the election, is a mystery. California Charter Schools Association Advocates, which sponsors the PAC, did not respond to a request for comment about the size and timing of the contribution.

Asked about the contribution, Llamas did not address it specifically while texting me the following statement: “I am proud of the campaign we ran and am deeply grateful to voters for supporting our vision of making Contra Costa schools that help every child reach their full potential.”

Although the contribution and its timing appear odd to say the least, it apparently was in compliance with state campaign finance laws. In addition to the lack of contribution limits in school board races, there is no requirement that major contributions be made and disclosed prior to voters receiving and casting ballots.

Assembly Bill 571, which took effect in 2021, applied by default a state campaign contribution limit to city and county candidates when the city or county has not already enacted a contribution limit on such candidates. But the bill excluded school board races. If it had applied, the Charter Public Schools PAC would have been allowed to give Llamas no more than $5,500, though it would have been free to spend as much as it wanted in independent expenditures not coordinated with Llamas’ campaign. Organized interest groups with specific policy agendas routinely get around caps on direct contributions to campaigns by using political action committees to spend lavishly to support or oppose a candidate through independent expenditures, as was the case in this year’s county supervisor race (see below).

According to the Sacramento Bee, state Sen. Bill Dodd tried to close the school board contribution loophole last year with a bill that would have capped such campaign contributions at $5,500, but it never made it out of committee. Among the opponents of the bill? The powerful California Teachers Association.

“No candidate for local office needs contributions larger than those for a Senate or Assembly district,” Dodd said in February 2023 when he announced the bill, according to the Bee article.

CTA’s opposition to the bill appears to have backfired, at least in this race, enabling the Charter Public Schools PAC to spend big to defeat the favored candidate of its local teachers unions. The Pittsburg Education Association PAC, which represents Pittsburg Unified teachers, spent at least $54,000 between direct contributions and independent expenditures in support of Gordon’s candidacy, including $26,000 on digital ads, according to campaign finance filings. It also spent $2,500 to support Gordon in a legal challenge that she lost over her ballot designation and official campaign statement, when a judge prevented her from using the title “teacher” (she was hired as a substitute teacher by the Martinez Unified School District shortly after filing to run for the county board seat).

It’s little wonder that charter school advocates and teachers unions would want to spend big to elevate their favored candidates in races for the Contra Costa County Board of Education, which often plays a pivotal role in the approval of local charter applications as well as setting pay standards for county teachers.

Despite her generally progressive political views, Llamas has had no luck gaining support from teachers unions in her two races, both of which she won handily. When she ran for the MUSD board in 2021, the Martinez Education Association, which represents district teachers, endorsed her opponent and stuck with the endorsement even after it was revealed that its candidate had donated repeatedly to WinRed, the primary fundraising platform for Donald Trump and his MAGA political movement (teachers unions rarely align with Republican politics).

In another odd twist, the Charter Public Schools PAC in February gave $10,000 to another PAC that opposed Anamarie Avila Farias in her successful campaign for state Assembly. Llamas now will be replacing Avila Farias on the county Board of Education. Avila Farias, who had the backing of the CTA in her Assembly race, endorsed and actively supported Llamas’ campaign for the county school board seat, just as she had in her run for the MUSD school board two years ago.

“As the outgoing board member, I was proud to support Yazmin,” Avila Farias said in response to a request for comment for this post. “She is a shining example of leadership that reflects our community’s needs: a current school board member, a UC Berkeley graduate with a strong educational background, and, above all, an engaged mother with school-aged children in our public schools. … I aggressively worked to garner support for Yazmin as I believe her thoughtful voice for students was needed on the Contra Costa County Board of Education.”

Unlike Llamas, Avila Farias had strong teachers union support in both her race for the county school board seat four years ago and the Assembly seat this year. That support may explain why the Charter Schools PAC spent $10,000 to try to knock her out of the March primary in her Assembly race, and raises the question of whether the $70,000 given to her close ally, Llamas, was a fence-mending attempt ahead of her election to the Assembly, where many of the state’s education policy battles are fought. Avila Farias emerged over two other Democrats in the March primary, putting her on a glide path in the heavily Democratic district for the general election, which she won going away against Republican Sonia Ledo (64% to 36%).

Responding to a request for comment on the Charter Schools PAC’s donation to Llamas and its timing, as well as Dodd’s effort to implement contribution limits on school board races, Avila Farias said: “You will have to ask the charter association or any others about the timing of their contributions to her campaign. I can’t speak to previous legislation but can say I support a campaign system that is equitable for all candidates.”

It’s not unprecedented for the Charter Schools PAC to give that kind of money to local school board candidates. According to data from transparencyusa.org, the same PAC gave $325,000 to Los Angeles Unified School District Board candidate Dan Chang, $160,000 to Santa Clara County Board of Education candidate Grace Mah and $106,000 to Riverside County Board of Education candidate Jennifer Mejares Pham.

All of which begs the question: How in the world does it make sense for any person or group to be able to give as much money as they want to school board candidates while being limited to $5,500 for candidates for city council our county supervisor?

Final vote, money totals in high-profile supervisor’s race

When it came to big money in local politics, no race came close to matching the contest between Shanelle Scales-Preston and Mike Barbanica for the District 5 seat on the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors. In that race, competing labor-backed political action committees unleashed a firehose of money — and ugly attacks — on the two candidates.

When the campaign dust cleared, Scales-Preston, a current Pittsburg City Council member and longtime aide to U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, prevailed by 3,421 votes out of more than 79,000 cast (a margin of 52% to 48%).

Although crime and public safety emerged as a resonant campaign issue up and down the state, the big losers in this race were the public safety unions aligned with Barbanica, himself a former cop and current Antioch council member, who failed in their attempt to paint Scales-Preston as soft on crime. Two PACs sponsored by the Contra Costa Deputy Sheriffs Association poured roughly $839,000 into ads seeking to boost Barbanica and tear down Scales-Preston.

On the flip side, a PAC funded largely by local trade and service industry unions spent over $618,000 supporting Scales-Preston and attacking Barbanica.

The independent special interest campaigns, as is often the case in hotly contested elections, dwarfed the spending by the candidates’ campaigns, which were constrained by contribution limits on the part of donors (unlike the school board race discussed previously). Scales-Preston’s campaign had spent nearly $174,000 through Oct. 19, while Barbanica’s campaign had spent nearly $172,000.

Add it all up, and a race for one seat on the five-member Board of Supervisors generated roughly $1.8 million in campaign spending, much of it in the form of glossy mailers filled with outlandish, misleading or in some cases flat-out false claims.

Greg Young’s impressive City Council victory

Greg Young’s victory over Dylan Radke for the open District 2 seat on the Martinez City Council was surprisingly lopsided. Young, a former Martinez planning commissioner, won the race over longtime Parks, Recreation, Marina and Cultural Commission member Dylan Radke by a hefty 529 votes (56% to 44%).

Few observers probably saw that coming, as Radke had some significant name recognition and support, including the endorsements of the Thousand Friends of Martinez open space group (which also endorsed Barbanica), the Martinez Police Officers Association and a host of current and former elected officials, including current Councilman Jay Howard and former mayors Rob Schroder and Mike Menesini. He also hailed from a prominent local political family; Radke Martinez Regional Shoreline Park is named after his parents.

Radke also was much quicker out of the campaign gate, saturating his district with yard signs and mailers. But Young caught up fast, thanks to the endorsement of the local firefighters union and widespread financial support that included nearly $4,000 in transfers from Avila Farias’ Assembly campaign. Through Election Day, Young reported $17,462.61 in total contributions, compared with $20,624 for Radke.

Young, a senior deputy commissioner for the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, focused his campaign largely on his acumen as a “budget expert” with 30 years of financial experience, and pledge to protect public safety from budget cuts. One mailer listed among his priorities to “fully fund our fire and police departments, prioritizing them over all other services — we must be safe” (the City Council has actually boosted police funding in recent years to address a chronic staffing shortage, and although one of Young’s mailers prominently featured a photo of firefighters battling a raging blaze, fire services are funded by the county, not the city). His platform also highlighted smart development of the Marina as “the key to supporting a healthy Martinez economy” and creating “public/private partnerships that drive new lending to first-time homebuyers.”

Young will become the city’s first Black City Council member when he is sworn into office on Wednesday. Look for a profile of him in this newsletter later this week.

New faces coming to Martinez Unified School Board

Although there was only one competitive race for a seat on the Martinez Unified School District Board of Trustees in November, the board will welcome at least two new members in 2025.

Logan Campbell unseated incumbent Carlos Melendez in the Trustee Area 1 race, winning by 166 votes (53% to 47%). And with Yazmin Llamas headed to the Contra Costa County Board of Education, the board will in all likelihood appoint someone to fill the final two years of her term representing Area 3 (it could call a special election, but that is highly unlikely).

Incumbents Courtney Masella-O’Brien and Anne Horack Martin both ran unopposed for their seats this year; Llamas’ and Tanya Brugger’s seats both will be up for election in 2026.

Some final election numbers

• The final vote tally for MUSD’s Measure O construction bond showed 8,700 votes in favor and 6,803 opposed for a winning margin of 56.12% (it required 55% for passage). As was the case in the county school board race, the Yes on Measure O campaign also benefited from a lack of campaign contribution limits, as it received $20,000 from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), which will be counting on the school board to pass another project labor agreement that will steer construction work from the bond to its union members. An additional $10,000 came from California Design West Architects, which presumably also will look to cash in with contracts on bond-funded projects.

• According to the county Elections Office, turnout for the Nov. 5 election in Contra Costa County was 74.6%, with 86.8% of ballots cast using the Vote-By-Mail (VBM) system as opposed to voting in person.

• In another installment of “Making the National Local” … While Donald Trump won the national popular vote for the first time in his three presidential runs, he garnered only 29.4% of the vote in Contra Costa County compared with 67.3% for Kamala Harris. Still, that was a slight improvement over 2020, when he came away with only 26.3% of the county’s vote compared with 71.6% for Joe Biden. The roughly 3 percentage point gain for Trump countywide was about half of the 6 percentage point swing in the national popular vote (Trump won by 1.5 percentage points in 2024 after losing by 4.5 points in 2020).

Personal disclosure on election campaigns: In the interest of transparency, I am disclosing the following contributions I made during this election cycle to candidates referenced in this post. When I launched this newsletter prior to the 2022 election, I chose not to make any individual contributions in order to maintain a level of independence in my reporting of the election. Upon reflection over the past two years, I decided that as a longtime Martinez citizen who has actively engaged with elected officials on a number of issues that I care about, I should not allow the publication of this newsletter to deny myself the right to take an active role in electoral politics by supporting candidates who I believe share my values and will make our city a better place for all residents. I also believe that it is important for regular citizens, to the degree possible, to do what they can through individual campaign contributions to stem the influence and ability of deep-pocketed special interests to control electoral politics for their own benefit, often in misleading and deceptive ways. However, my contributions should not be construed as endorsing all of a given candidate’s positions or political values or the manner in which they conduct their campaigns; in fact, I have yet to encounter a candidate in local, state or national politics whom I agree with on all issues and matters of politics. The purpose of this newsletter has been, and will remain, as a platform to provide residents and voters valuable information, context and perspective that they can use to form their own opinions about local governance and candidates whom they wish to support, regardless of whether they align or differ from my own. With that said, here is a list of the individual contributions I made:

Greg Young, City Council: $100

Shanelle Scales-Preston, Contra Costa County Supervisor: $50

Logan Campbell, Martinez Unified School Board: $50

Anamarie Avila Farias, California Assembly: $50