Nathan Fletcher Used His Democrat Campaign Committee Fund to Bypass Campaign Finance

The Central Committees for both the Republican and Democrat parties determine the direction of California politics, particularly in the major population centers. The sole purpose of these committees is to get more Democrat or Republican voters, fund campaigns and initiatives that further the party agenda, and facilitate get-out-the-vote operations. They also “anoint” candidates to run for statewide and national office.

With just over three million constituents, San Diego County gets to elect six candidates per Assembly District (San Diego has seven) every four years for their party’s central committee. No doubt thanks to the influence of his then-District 80 Assemblywoman wife Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher, Nathan Fletcher ran for and won a committee seat in 2020. He had to do little to attain or maintain this position. What local investigative arm La Prensa has uncovered is that Fletcher used his role on the committee to build a campaign war chest. As a County Board of Supervisors Member seeking re-election, Fletcher was restrained by County election rules which limited contributions to a maximum of $900, and these contributions could only be accepted from individuals or single-owner companies. However, as a central committee member, he could create a separate campaign fund. This fund bypasses County and State election laws because they have no contribution limits, and no restrictions on who can contribute. So, PACs and the Big Daddy for California politicians — labor unions — could pour as much money as they desired into these funds; and trust us, they have.

A campaign committee fund can even accept contributions from other politicians’ campaign funds, as Managing Editor Jennifer Van Laar reported with a certain six AB5 YES votes that were bought and paid for with the hefty contributions into their campaign coffers from particular AB5 authors. Like behested payments, the “one-hand-washing the other” contribution transfers are a unique form of California grift, and king of the grifters Nathan Fletcher used it for all it was worth.

In California, the maximum contribution a candidate can receive from another candidate’s committee is $4,700 per election. So for the 2020 cycle, a candidate can receive $4,700 for the primary and $4,700 for the general. The contribution for the general election can be made before the primary election is held.

From La Prensa:

San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher has used an obscure campaign committee to accept money above the County Board’s contribution limits from three County law enforcement groups barred from contributing directly to Supervisors by the County’s elections laws, and also in violation of a Democratic Party rule against accepting money from police unions.

The use of a little-known state campaign committee has allowed Fletcher to deliberately take contributions from three County law enforcement unions with interests in front of the County Board of Supervisors without abiding by the County’s strict contributions limits created to prevent conflict-of-interests or pay-to-play schemes in what a political science professor calls “a slush fund.”

Fletcher, who was first elected to the County Board of Supervisors in November 2018 and recently won a second four-year term in November 2022, launched a new 2024 campaign to run for the California State Senate but ended that effort last month after allegations of sexual harassment filed by a former public employee.

[…]

But, in addition to raising money for his County Board elections, Fletcher has also maintained a low-profile campaign committee for the San Diego County Democratic Party’s Central Committee, the publicly elected body that governs the Party’s local operations.

The Fletcher for Democratic Central Committee 2020 account was created on November 1, 2019, and he began making use of the account in his second year as District Four Supervisor.

While serving his second year on the Board of Supervisors, Fletcher began accepting contributions into his Central Committee account.

“It’s very worrisome, it allows the candidates to go around campaign financing restrictions,” Jodi Balma, a political science professor at Fullerton College said regarding the use of Central Committee accounts. “It gives large donors outside influence…It’s kind of a slush fund.”

Giving large donors undue influence is the point of these funds. From Governor Gavin Newsom to L.A. City Councilman Kevin de Leon, Democrat politicians make an art form out of circumventing the will of the people in every way possible.

Fletcher accepted three contributions on January 30, 2020, including a $10,000 check from Manpower San Diego, a local staffing company; $4,700 from Building California Together PAC; and a $1,000 contribution from California YIMBY Victory Fund.

Then on February 15, 2020, Fletcher accepted a $10,000 contribution from the San Diego County Deputy Sheriff’s Association, the labor union representing over 4,000 deputies that endorses candidates for County Board, including Fletcher, but cannot donate directly to his county campaign.

County Supervisors vote to approve the funding levels for the Sheriff’s Department, as well as vote on final approval of new Sheriff’s Department employee contracts, so they have a direct impact on the Department’s 4,000 deputies.

The contribution was also clearly in violation of a 2020 San Diego County Democratic Party resolution barring the Party from accepting “all donations from law enforcement unions and associations and demands that all San Diego Democratic elected officials refuse such contributions as well and reject the endorsement of such associations.“

As both a political science professor and politician, Fletcher surely knew he was circumventing not only County campaign finance policies but his own party’s resolution. In another egregious move reminiscent of the Fletchers profiting off stock that increased exponentially in relation to the pandemic response, Nathan Fletcher’s Central Committee fund accepted a contribution from Pfizer several months after he won his County Board of Supervisors re-election bid.

When on June 6, 2020, more than three months after the election, Fletcher also received a $1,000 contribution from Pfizer, the manufacturer of one of the COVID-19 vaccines the County was encouraging the public to use just as the pandemic was beginning to spread across the country.

“Encouraging” is putting it mildly. Demanding and demonizing the public is more accurate, as Fletcher pushed for COVID vaccinations, boosters, and fostered the myth of “misinformation” and the “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

"City council, county commission, and even school board meetings across our country are being overrun with misinformation about COVID-19, which is slowing our recovery, creating vaccine hesitancy, and causing the unvaccinated to end up in the hospital."

— Supervisor Nathan Fletcher (@SupFletcher) September 8, 2021

Now we have the receipts for what many already suspected.

His narrative that people who are fully vaccinated cannot also be fully against mandated vaccines is simply false.

He is also wrong about who we are…

We are not “anti-vaxxers”
We are not “COVID deniers”,
and we are not “extreme right-wingers”.

We are ANTI-MANDATES.

— Fed Up With Fletcher (@FedUpWFletcher) September 21, 2021

As Fletcher mounted his re-election campaign for San Diego County Board of Supervisors in 2021, the contributions to his Central Committee fund increased, including $10,000 from the Sycuan Band of Kumeyaay Indians and $60,000 from the Southwest Regional Council of Carpenters PAC. Fletcher changed the name of the committee to read, “Fletcher for Democrat Central Committee 2024.” By the end of 2021, after smaller contributions to the San Diego Democrat Party and the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, Fletcher had managed to amass a handsome war chest of $60,319.94.

Sometime between January 1 and April 23, 2022, Fletcher used money from the Central Committee account to pay $10,000 to Amplify campaigns, a political consulting firm owned by Daniel Rottenstreich, whose wife, Brigette Browning, is the leader of the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, a group of 136 unions in two counties.

Rottenstriech was serving as the campaign consultant for Fletcher’s Supervisor re-election campaign at the time.

La Prensa has done reporting on the power couple of Brigette Browning and Daniel Rottenstriech and their muddying of the political waters in San Diego. So, it is no surprise that Fletcher was in bed with them. Sadly, this is probably not even a mile below the surface of the streams of corruption Nathan Fletcher happily swam in. As I stated after the sexual harassment allegations against Fletcher increased to two women,

Expect the personal and professional sewer created by the Fletchers to overflow and stink to high heaven. Once he’s out of rehab, it will no longer be on the taxpayer dime, so we can live with that. In fact, as the Californians who have had to pay the price for both their personal failings and professional malfeasance, we demand an accounting.

Thanks to the crack reporting by La Prensa, the demands for an accounting and Fletcher’s immediate resignation will only increase.