Petrelis Files

Lawyers' Prop 8 Giving:
No = $767K / Yes = $679K

Lots of eyes are monitoring who is giving to either side of the Prop 8 initiative, including the legal eagle eyes of editors and reporters at The Recorder, the daily law journal for Northern California.

The paper earlier this week looked at donations, through the end of September, from state attorneys and found more donations to the No on 8 forces than the campaign to pass the proposition.

I'm not sure the article drew much attention, but feel it's of interest to political junkies following this gay initiative. Let's hope the paper does a follow up story, after the election, and see how the donations flowed in the last month of the race.

Excerpted from The Recorder story, registration req'd:

... But that's not the case when it comes to the legal community. Lawyers contributed more money to the top two No on 8 campaign accounts than they did to the two biggest Yes on 8 accounts, according to the latest state reports for the period between July 1 and Sept. 30.

Donors describing themselves as lawyers, attorneys and law professors contributed more than $767,000 to No on 8, Equality for All, and No on 8, Equality California, the two accounts funding the campaign against the constitutional ban on gay marriage. The Lawyers' Leadership Council for Equality, a group of Bay Area lawyers opposed to the initiative, reports raising more than $300,000 for the campaign since its inception this summer ...

During that same three-month period, legal professionals poured more than $679,000 into two Yes on 8 campaigns. A spokesman for Protect Marriage, the main pro-Prop 8 campaign, noted the relatively small difference in legal donations to the two sides ...

Sifting through more than 8,000 pages of donation records filed by the major Prop 8 campaigns this month reveals a few common themes. Many of the lawyer-donors to the Yes on 8 side live and work in Orange County, the Central Valley or the suburbs of Los Angeles, all typically hubs of social conservatives in California.

Lawyers at Latham & Watkins and Irvine-based Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear together contributed almost $50,000 to the Yes on 8 campaign, although neither firm did. Latham — the second largest U.S. law firm — was also the source of $20,350 in individual contributions to the No on 8 side.

Lawyers donating to the No on 8 campaign hail more frequently from the Bay Area, Los Angeles and, in a number of cases, New York. Many attorney-donors work for the state, appellate courts or other public agencies. Attorneys at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein; Morrison & Foerster; and Proskauer Rose were significant donors to the campaign against Prop 8. Lieff Cabraser lawyers gave $38,950, while MoFo attorneys donated $29,500 ..

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