OCEA’s John Leos at the union’s celebration of Jerry Brown’s inaugural, with OCEA Prez Robert Gibson and OCEA GM Nick Berardino
The Orange County Employees Association (of which the Anaheim Municipal Employees Association is part) has spent another $12,428 in its effort to get county worker and government union activist John Leos elected to Anaheim City Council.
That’s on top of the $50,000 the big government union put into a separate campaign account, “The Committee In Support of John Leos for Anaheim City Council 2012.”
This spotlights how dependent on OCEA are the council hopes of Leos, whose fundraising is even more anemic than during his 2010 council run. He had raised only $10,775 as of September 30, while the OCEA had donated nearly six times that amount on his behalf.
The $12,o0o-plus was spent through the union’s IE committee and went to buying spots for Leos on seven slate mailers. Six of those seven slates — with names such as “Save Prop. 13,” the “National Taxpayers Limitations Committee Newsletter” and the “Small Business Action Committee” — belong to Landslide Communications, owned by longtime conservative activist and slate king Jim Lacy.
It makes for interesting politics: the left-leaning OCEA buys spots for government union activist Leos on conservative activists slates while simultaneously hiring a left-wing Occupy Movement consultant to run its pro-Leos campaign.
