Campaign Contribution Scandal Rocks Horrible Little Town

Campaign Contribution Scandal Rocks Horrible Little Town

AUGUST 18th, 2008
NEW ORLEANS
J.B. Best

Months of research into campaign contribution records covering Piedmont, CA, have produced a series of startling revelations concerning the outsized political influence wielded by this tiny, affluent town nestled next to the Oakland Hills in the Bay Area.

Piedmont, an unlikely city-within-a-city whose per capita income is three-and-a-half times that of surrounding Oakland, was at the end of 2003 the launching site of a coordinated intervention into the 2004 senatorial race in Pennsylvania. Records indicate that on New Year's Eve of 2003, three residents of Piedmont moved to load the coffers of one of incumbent Republican Arlen Specter's key campaign organizations, Citizens for Arlen Specter.

While a larger investigation is under way, some small measure of Piedmontese financial intervention is confirmed: one resident, a self-described homemaker, donated $250; another, an employee at a mental health services corporation, donated $500, and a third, a financial analyst for a Lake Tahoe-based LTD, donated $250. (The Federal Election Commission places a $2300 annual limit on campaign contributions per candidate.)

The political and economic elite of Piedmont have been tight-lipped about the matter, refusing response, and some have suggested, darkly, that a "blanket of silence" has settled over the city, according to one resident who requested anonymity per traditional Piedmontese protocol. The questions, however, remain: who else was involved in this coordinated scheme, who coordinated it, and who, if any, among the current City Council administration authorized it? Are similar operations still active? Have Lake Tahoe and Piedmont brokered a coalition designed to influence the direction of national politics? And perhaps more to the point, why did Piedmont engage in a possibly vast conspiracy to sink the chances of Democratic senatorial candidates in far-off Pennsylvania?