Petrelis Files

Unopposed, City Attorney Herrera has a 6-Figure Campaign Bank Account

Last week, I blogged about the Soviet-style election for San Francisco voters in November and how the incumbents of three city-wide offices on the ballot had no challengers.

Today I checked the Ethics Department's web site, which despite some new colorful graphics remains a cumbersome and very user-unfriendly portal, to see how much City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Assessor Carmen Chu and Treasurer Jose Cisneros had each raked in for their cakewalk reelections.

The biggest campaign bank account belongs to Chu at $177,000, followed by Herrera with $128,000 and Cisneros at the low end with $47,000. I'm omitted Supervisor Katy Tang from the list since her race is not city-wide and she has challenger, Ivan Seredni.

Check out this graphic from the Ethics Commission:

When I clicked on the tab for expenditures incurred by the Herrera campaign, this confusing graphic popped up showing contributions on the left side and just a ballpark graph  of how much he's spent. Details about what he used the money for wasn't shown. As I said above, this commission's site is not user-friendly:

Sure would be great to learn from the incumbents themselves, with no challengers to compete against, why they need to raise robust six-figures for unnecessary campaigns. The commission also one day might finally create an easy-to-use site that allows citizen journalists and voters to access basic info about contributions and expenditures of the candidates, many of whom had a hand in devising the laws that govern the commission.

Following the money in 2013 in San Francisco should not be the hassle it currently is under John St. Croix as executive director of the Ethics Commission.