Quick Take
Assemblymember Gail Pellerin held financial stakes in Big Oil and other companies that conflict with her strong environmental stance, a Los Angeles Times investigation showed. However, Santa Cruz's support for Pellerin, who declined to speak on the subject, appears to not have wavered.
California Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, whose District 28 covers a large swath of Santa Cruz County and reaches up into San Jose, declined to give further clarity following an investigation that found the first-term state legislator held financial stakes in Big Oil and other companies the conflict with her environmentalist platform.
The investigation, published by the Los Angeles Times on Dec. 17, found Pellerin had $2.1 million in stock holdings, which included stakes in ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron; mining company Freeport-McMoRan, which was fined nearly $7 million by federal regulators for polluting two watersheds in Arizona; and Dow Chemical Company, whose pesticides have been linked to brain damage in children.
By Jan. 11, the Times reported Pellerin had sold her stock in the companies. The former Santa Cruz County Clerk issued a statement explaining that her late husband, Tom, who died in 2018, had been an “avid investor” and that she had been working with her money advisor to divest and align her financial house with her values. She called the investigation “timely.”
Asked by phone and multiple times over email for comment, Pellerin and her team declined to offer further clarity to Santa Cruz County voters on the gap between her environmental platform and the conflicting financial interests she held throughout her 2022 campaign and first year in office, sending over only the same statement she provided for the statewide audience of the Los Angeles Times.
“Assemblymember Pellerin is not available for an interview as she has no additional comments on this matter,” Ashley Labar, Pellerin’s chief of staff, wrote via email.
Andrew Goldenkranz, president of the Democratic Central Committee of Santa Cruz County, and who also headed the local arm of the state’s Democratic Party when it endorsed Pellerin’s 2022 bid, said news of the investments initially concerned him.
“As I say when dealing with environmental lobbyists around the state: Let’s remember who our friends are. Gail has been a solid, solid vote,” said Goldenkranz, who also teaches an Advanced Placement-level class on the environment at Cupertino High School.
When he approached Pellerin about the investigation, he said he did so “as an ally instead of breathing fire.” According to Goldenkranz, Pellerin told him that after her husband died, she was saddled with her family’s finances as well as taking care of her children and her role as county clerk, and that cleaning up the portfolio was “something she hadn’t gotten to fast enough.”
“She is committed to making the turnaround, and I am completely satisfied with that,” Goldenkranz said. “If she said she’s going to make things right, then I believe she’s going to make things right.”
Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley, who, as a state legislator in the late 1990s and early 2000s helped lead on environmental issues, said he “absolutely” trusts Pellerin, and that knowledge of the stock holdings wouldn’t have impacted his support for her in 2022, nor will it impact his support for her in 2024.
For her first year, Pellerin received a 90 out of 100 on the Sierra Club’s environmental voting scorecard, the only knock being a “not present” for Assembly Bill 1337, a bill currently held up in the state Senate that would impose greater penalties on water customers who use more water than allowed. Despite the investments in Big Oil, many locals have maintained their confidence in Pellerin’s votes.
“I’m sorry she wasn’t aware of everything in her investment portfolio sooner, but she took care of it once she knew,” said Peggy Flynn, co-president of the Democratic Women’s Club of Santa Cruz County, which endorsed Pellerin in 2022. “I’m confident that her votes, which are the most important thing, were not compromised. I have complete faith in her as a great, ethical representative of our region.”
Former Santa Cruz County supervisor Gary Patton, who practices environmental law and also endorsed Pellerin in 2022, said he hadn’t talked to the assemblymember but is glad to see she is “apparently now redirecting her investments away from corporations whose actions are harming the environment.”
“One lesson, clearly, is that we all ought to see if our investments are consistent with our environmental and other values,” Patton said via email. “The news about our assemblymember’s investments … points out the need to be more active and vigilant in making sure we have divested ourselves of investments that support bad environmental activities.”
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