By Matt Potter, April 25, 2014
It's a strange-bedfellows tale of trash and casino chips.
The Pala Band of Mission Indians and their affiliated entity Pala Casino came up with $20,000 on April 23 for a campaign committee calling itself Citizens Against Career Inside Politician Bill Horn for Supervisor 2014, run by Service Employees International Union Local 221, representing county workers. Horn is running against Oceanside mayor and fellow Republican Jim Wood.
This isn't the first financial foray by the tribe into county politics, motivated by its number-one land-use cause: halting the Gregory Canyon solid waste facility, a massive landfill being developed by San Diego lobbyist Nancy Chase, widow of project originator Richard Chase.
In November 2012, a group called USA PAC out of Kalamazoo, Michigan, undertook a mysteriously funded $30,000 direct-mail campaign on behalf of then-candidate for county supervisor Dave Roberts.
Originally known as the Congressional Elections PAC, the political action committee had been linked by Mother Jones to conservative Texas construction giant Leo Linbeck, III. Earlier in 2012, the committee had backed Republican Tea Party candidates in Texas and Tennessee, raising questions about why it had chosen Roberts, a Democrat, for its political largesse.
It wasn't until November 20, after the campaign was over with Roberts the victor, that USA PAC was required by federal law to file a campaign disclosure statement. It showed the source of funds for the pro-Roberts mail campaign to be the Pala Band, though no one with the tribe would comment, and the PAC was closed-mouthed as well.
