Solomon Rivera left a $272,000-a-year job advising Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass this year. Months later, he was helping her out in a different way: running Unidos Con Karen Bass, an outside campaign committee supporting her reelection.
A lawyer for Unidos Con Karen Bass says there’s nothing improper about Rivera’s change in duties. Others disagree, saying an ethics investigation is warranted.
As an independent expenditure committee, Unidos Con Karen Bass is allowed to raise campaign donations in unlimited amounts. In exchange for that privilege, the committee cannot coordinate its activities with the mayor or her campaign.
Because Rivera was recently a high-level aide to Bass, he is presumed under city and state law to be coordinating with the mayor’s campaign while running the pro-Bass Unidos committee, said Neama Rahmani, former director of enforcement for the city’s Ethics Commission. That, in turn, would make the money spent by Unidos a contribution to the mayor’s reelection campaign, and subject to the city’s strict limit of $1,800 per donor, he said.
“The law is written to prevent these types of insiders who are not truly independent from going to I.E. committees,” said Rahmani, who supervised investigations for the Ethics Commission from 2012 to 2014.
Rahmani, who is not supporting either candidate, said if he were still with the Ethics Commission, he would have launched an investigation into Unidos, which has spent about $1.1 million on digital ads and other campaign expenses.
Rivera, who spent three years as Bass’ deputy chief of staff, didn’t respond to inquiries from The Times. Stephen J. Kaufman, an attorney representing Unidos, said he is confident there was no coordination between Rivera’s independent expenditure committee and Bass’ political team.
“He has not spoken with or coordinated with the Mayor or her campaign about any communications being made by Unidos Con Karen Bass,” said Kaufman, referring to Rivera, in a statement.
City and state rules around campaign fundraising and independent expenditures rely on the concept of “rebuttable presumption,” laying out situations in which someone must actively counter the idea that they have violated the law.
For example, the law presumes that coordination is taking place if a candidate’s family member is running an independent expenditure committee supporting that same candidate.
“California campaign finance law presumes that I.E. committees that are run by former campaign staff or former government staff of the candidate are not operating independently. It’s a potential violation of the law,” said Washington, D.C.-based attorney Caleb P. Burns, who specializes in election law and isn’t involved with either campaign.
If an investigation were opened into Unidos, Rivera would need to rebut the presumption that he crossed a line and coordinated, ethics experts said. Kaufman said he’s confident Rivera would succeed in doing so.
In the L.A. mayor’s race, independent expenditure committees have raised far more money on behalf of both Bass and her opponent in the Nov. 3 election, Councilmember Nithya Raman, than the candidates have raised themselves.
The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down limits on fundraising by independent expenditure groups, concluding that their activities are protected speech under the 1st Amendment. The court has placed that type of outside political advocacy in a different category from campaigns run directly by candidates, which are in many instances subject to fundraising limits.
While Bass and Raman are barred from collecting donations of more than $1,800, Unidos has brought in five- and six-figure contributions. That includes $150,000 from Service Employees International Union Local 721, which represents thousands of city workers and has negotiated an employment contract with Bass and other city leaders.
Rivera, who also worked for Bass when she was in Congress, ended his tenure with the office on Aug. 31, according to the city’s personnel department. Ten days later, he appeared on paperwork filed with the California secretary of state showing he is now the principal officer of Unidos.
Kaufman said Rivera stopped working for the mayor’s office in April, then received unused sick pay for another four months.
Unidos was formed during the run-up to the June 2 primary election, running Spanish-language radio ads and videos aimed at Latino voters, some of which featured Bass’ family members.
The committee was supposed to submit paperwork to the Ethics Commission about those ads, which ran in May, within 24 hours, according to the city’s ethics rules. The documents were filed Oct. 2, following inquiries from The Times about the lack of documentation.
Rivera isn’t the only Bass advisor to move to an independent expenditure committee in recent months.
During the run-up to the June 2 primary election, Kurt Gonska served as campaign manager for Bass’ reelection committee. He left that post in June after an internal shakeup and, two months later, became a consultant for Building LA, a pro-Bass independent expenditure committee sponsored by the LA/OC Building and Construction Trades Council.
That committee has published mailers and put up billboards promoting her reelection bid, spending about $850,000.
Sergio Perez, who served as the Ethics Commission’s director of enforcement from 2014 to 2018, questioned whether Gonska’s committee is truly independent.
“It’s impossible to imagine that he isn’t taking the Bass campaign playbook into what’s supposed to be an independent expenditure committee,” said Perez, who plans to vote for Raman in the Nov. 3 election.
Gonska pushed back on that assertion, saying the political strategy employed by Bass during the June 2 primary was different from the activities now being conducted by Building LA in the runoff. During the primary, Bass faced multiple opponents and was preparing for a head-to-head matchup against reality TV star Spencer Pratt in the runoff, he said.
“There were other progressives in the race. There were moderates in the race. There was Spencer, who was getting by far the most media attention and the most money. So it was a very different strategy.”
Now, Gonska said, the focus has narrowed to Raman, the mayor’s lone opponent.
Gonska said he hasn’t had any communication with the mayor or her campaign team since joining Building LA, and would rebut any assertion that coordination took place.
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