Quick Take
As the campaigns ramp up for the dueling affordable housing measures on the November ballot in the city of Santa Cruz, nearly all campaign cash has come from special interests — with everyday residents largely sitting out of the fight.
The latest campaign finance reports for Santa Cruz’s two competing housing measures show that money has largely flowed in from a handful of big-dollar contributors, with small donors staying on the sidelines.
In fact, the money race can so far be boiled down to: Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley, nonprofit affordable housing developers and the unions on one side, the statewide realtors lobby on the other.
Of the combined $260,128 contributed to the campaigns so far, only $1,600, or 0.6%, of the money has come from individual small donors.
The dueling ballot measures — one proposed by Housing Santa Cruz County, the other by the Santa Cruz County Association of Realtors — seek to combine a new citywide parcel tax with a real estate transfer tax to raise money for an affordable housing fund. The realtors have been transparent that their measure exists only to defeat Housing Santa Cruz County’s.
Lookout previously pored through each measure to highlight the many technical differences, but broadly, the measure proposed by Housing Santa Cruz County puts forward a greater and broader tax and expects to bring in around $5 million per year toward affordable housing and homelessness initiatives. The realtors’ proposed taxes are lower and more narrow, and thus expected to bring in a fraction of their rivals’.
Victor Gomez, the government affairs director for the Santa Cruz County Association of Realtors who came up with the idea to kill Housing Santa Cruz County’s measure by submitting a competing one, said he expects the fundraising to continue as a battle between special interests.
“I’m not sure you could really outline it any differently,” Gomez said. “We are a special interest, there to protect property rights and we’re going to bat for that. It’s funny, I think you can characterize both sides as Big Real Estate.”
In the absence of polling numbers, campaign finance reports can offer an early view into how well the sides are connecting with voters, and how interest groups are lining up. The latest filings cover April 1 to June 30. Nearly all the reported money came in before May 1, which means the filings focus on the signature-gathering phase of the campaign. The sides — broadly defined as Housing Santa Cruz County and Keeley, and the Santa Cruz County Association of Realtors — submitted their measures’ petition signatures during the week of May 12.
During that three-month window, Housing Santa Cruz County raised $105,000, bringing its total for the year to $185,128. Keeley was the largest individual donor, throwing in $50,000 during the spring. Keeley said the money was the entire inheritance he received after the recent death of his stepmother. The Santa Cruz mayor has put in a total of $56,000 into the campaign so far.
Other major donors during this period include Hayward-based affordable housing developer Eden Housing, which contributed $25,000, followed by $10,000 donations from Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas’ ballot measure committee, and the Northern California Carpenters Union. The only small donations came from longtime county policy analyst Andy Schiffrin ($100) and Delta High School teacher Tamar Ragir ($500).
The Santa Cruz County Association of Realtors reported a single $75,000 donation from its parent organization, the California Association of Realtors, in March, and didn’t raise anything in the most recent reporting period. However, Gomez said fundraising has picked up in July and will continue through August. The National Association of Realtors just approved a $40,000 contribution to the local campaign for polling, and could look to infuse the campaign with “a couple hundred thousand dollars,” Gomez said.
“If people believe in what we’re doing and our cause, then we will accept money, but I don’t think we’re really going to do a big push for smaller contributions,” Gomez said.
Keeley, who made balloting an affordable housing funding measure a cornerstone of his mayoral campaign in 2022, is not only the Housing Santa Cruz County measure’s top donor but is also leading its fundraising effort. He declined to estimate how much money he and the campaign are aiming to raise, saying he didn’t want to “disclose what the artillery is capable of.”
However, Keeley, known for a certain fundraising prowess, has previously said his strategy is to first determine “whatever it takes to win” and aim for that number. He said he expects the realtors to raise nearly $500,000 dollars, claiming “that’s how much it takes to kill a good idea.”
Yet, Keeley did say that small donors are not likely to be a main variable in the fundraising formula.
“I’m not going to go up against the California Association of Realtors, who have more money than god, with my arms tied behind my back,” Keeley said. “This is fighting fire with fire.”
The election is scheduled for Nov. 4.
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FOR THE RECORD: This article has been updated to correct the percentage of contributions that have come from small donors. It is 0.6% not 0.006%.
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