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Indybay Feature

Were Steve Glazer and Arnold Schwarznegger Separated at Birth?

by Steven Maviglio
"Special Interests" Monsanto, Dow Chemical, Big Ag Backing Glazer
arnold_delta.jpeg
Match the following statements with who said them:

“We need to take important steps to limit the corrosive impact of special interest power and lawmaking abuse.”

“The biggest problem that we have is that California is being run now by special interests.”

State Senate candidate Steve Glazer said the first. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said the second.

Seeking to tap voter discontent, both based their campaign themes around running against “special interests.” Like Schwarzenegger, Glazer (a political consultant himself) no doubt has seen dozens of polls that show voters believe that powerful interests have too much control over the political process.

But as we learned from the failed experiment of putting Schwarzenegger in office, one politician’s special interest is another politician’s campaign donor.

Glazer – for all his bravado – has been the beneficiary of millions of dollars of campaign contributions that neatly fit the definition of the very same “special interest power” he talks about.

In addition to $1.1 million from Los Angeles developer Bill Bloomfield, Glazer has also banked contributions from mega-corporations like drug maker Eli Lilly, Monsanto, the California Chamber of Commerce, Western Growers, and even the California Citrus Mutual Political Action Committee (must be all those orange groves in Orinda).

Remember too that Glazer was the political consultant to many of these same contributors, getting paid $15,000 per month to advise them on political matters.

But now he says he can stand up to the very same interests who put food on his table.

How, exactly, does that work?

At least with Schwarzenegger, when he told voters he’d take on special interests, you could kind of believe him. After all, he was an outsider. And he probably had a billion dollars in his bank account.

But Glazer? Sure, he’s a millionaire. But Glazer also is as big a political insider as they come (though oddly, he doesn’t mention it on his campaign website).

That’s why his rhetoric rings particularly hollow.

That doesn’t stop him from trying to fool voters with a “Clean Government Pledge.”

Glazer has been hammering Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla for accepting the IRS rate for her meals living expenses while in Sacramento. His pledge says that he won’t “accept any tax free Per Diem expense payments for work in the state Capitol on weekends and holidays.”

How many of those are there? Next to none. Yet he’ll take taxpayer money for his living expenses every other day of the week.

Then there’s his pledge to “not accept campaign contributions in the final 60 days of each legislative year from any individual or entity that has legislation under review.”

So that means Glazer would accept campaign contributions the day of the biggest vote of the year (the state budget) in June. He’d take them during the days when any legislation he proposes is in the Senate. But he wouldn’t take them during the Legislature recess in August when the Senate isn’t in session.

Talk about phony-baloney.

Steve Maviglio is a consultant to Working Families Against Glazer 2015
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