Today at high noon, the C-P's Chris Potter promises a searchable online database of donors to the mayoral candidates. Huzzah!(If assembling the software was the difficult part, may we humbly inquire whether similar databases might be forthcoming for city council candidates?)
Anyway, using previous data provided by the P-G, the Comet submits this theory for peer review: Bill Peduto's contributors are artsy!
Henry John Simonds: filmmaker. Charles Humphrey: makes filmmakers. Michael Berger: gallery owner. Susan Rothenberg: artist, we think, if it's the same Susan Rothenberg. Ellen Kaplan Goldstein: appears in the Scene section, at benefits (very suspicious). Burton Morris: the pop artist has made no financial donations yet, but is an old friend of Peduto, and seems to have made in-kind contributions in the past. Peduto enjoys significant financial support from more private individuals than Ravenstahl, and we wonder how many of these are connected to the arts world.
Of course, Ravenstahl has his developers, contractors, and financial institutions. We leave it to others to judge the lesser of evils.
Don't forget the bloggers:
ReplyDeletePeople for Peduto $200 2006-12-22
Contributor name: Lupinacci, Maria T.
Contributor hometown: Pittsburgh, PA 15203
The database is up and running now, I think. We've got Peduto and Ravenstahl up, as well as the incumbents on City Council. More to come in the days ahead.
ReplyDeleteI welcome any suggestions about how this thing could work better. And thanks for the plug.
-- potter
Chris, the way to make this work -- really -- is with what I call 'transparent PACs.'
ReplyDeleteA few years ago I wrote letters to a number of local banking CEOs to ask them to establish such accounts. They do it for Trusts. It would be easy to do it for PACs as well.
Call me... 412 298 3432 and I'll describe what -- exactly -- needs to be done.
There are band-aids. And then there are real market place solutions.
Picture bank by phone for candidate accounts -- where anyone can see the transactions, as they are being made (deposts and checks).