Vallejo mayoral candidate Pippin Dew outpaces rivals in campaign fundraising

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VALLEJO – Former City Councilmember Pippin Dew and Vallejo Surveillance Advisory Board Chair Andrea Sorce have both raised substantial funds to support their campaigns for Vallejo mayor but Dew has raised twice as much as Sorce, primarily through support from businesses, unions and political action committees. 

Local business owner Dwight Monroe Jr. and community advocate Ravi Shankar are significantly behind Sorce and Dew. Monroe has reported a total of $4,500 in contributions, including about $2,500 he contributed to his own campaign, and Shankar reported $133 and $2,000 that he loaned to his own campaign.

Dew’s campaign has raised a total of $122,000 since July 2023 as of the most recent campaign finance report on Saturday. Businesses, unions and PACs contributed approximately $50,000 to Dew’s campaign with $71,000 in contributions from individual donors.   

Contributions to Sorce’s campaign come almost entirely from individual donors and she has raised $61,000 during the same period. 

Sorce points to the funding disparity as a key feature of her “people powered” campaign.  “I am really proud of the campaign we're running, and I'm proud not to have any contributions from special interests,” Sorce said in an interview. She added that she has turned down campaign contributions for this very reason but declined to name those groups or organizations. 

“Vallejo government has not been responsive to the needs of the community,” Sorce said. “And I think a big reason for that is the undue influence of special interests. We've seen politicians take contributions, either directly or indirectly through PACs and go behind closed doors and prioritize the interests of their donors over the interests of the people, and the people of Vallejo are ready to change that.” 

Local businesses and unions are among Dew’s top campaign funders. She also received a $5,000 donation from the California Real Estate Political Action Committee which is a campaign funding arm of the California Association of Realtors. Dew, a realtor, is president of the Solano Association of Realtors, which is a local branch of the statewide organization. 

A nonprofit political funding arm of the National Association of Realtors independently spent $35,356.71 on voter research, online advertising and mailers to promote Dew’s candidacy. There are no spending limits for independent expenditures of political action committees and organizations as long as there is no coordination with the campaign or the candidate. 

Dew’s top campaign funders include the Mare Island Dry Dock, Medic Ambulance, and the Northern California Carpenters Regional Committee, which contributed the maximum donation of $5,500 each. The Vallejo Chamber of Commerce contributed $5,000, the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades contributed $3,500, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 180 contributed $2,500, Lewis Investments and Sir Winston Funeral Service each contributed $1,500 while Recology, California Machinists, Laborers International Union Local 324 and Lori Wilson for Assembly each contributed $1,000. 

Dew said that she is proud to have contributions from businesses as well as unions. She credits the support to relationships that she has built through her volunteer work as well her eight years on the City Council.

“I feel that I've gotten all of the support that I have because I have been showing up consistently for almost 20 years,” Dew said. “Before I was on council I was volunteering with the Vallejo Chamber of Commerce and really working to advocate for the business community and create more jobs for local residents while always thinking about creating the pipeline for our youth so they can start thinking about those jobs and get into those jobs earlier.”

Dew said that over the years many of the same businesses that contributed her campaign had supported her fundraising efforts for community events like August Summer Nights and Goal Getters, which is a young women’s leadership and empowerment day that brings local women’s soccer teams together with students to work on drills and share stories that illustrate the connections between mental and physical health. 

“They know I don’t ask for support except when it’s something that is really important for the community,” she said. But when it came to her campaign she said that her contributors chose to support her because they recognized the work she had done in the community and simply felt that she is a good fit for the role.

“I approach every decision by getting the facts, trying to understand the concerns, understand the opportunities, and weigh them all in the balance to see what gives us the greater good for the entire community,” Dew said. 

But Sorce said she believes this is a crucial time for leaders in Vallejo to be free of any outside influence.

“I think Vallejoans have lost trust in their government, and rightfully so,” Sorce said.

“One way to rebuild trust is to clean things up, and I think that's why it's so important to have leaders that don't have those connections to special interests, that don't have even the appearance of a conflict or owing something or being beholden to a certain group.” 

In her campaign, Sorce has derided the use of no-bid contracts and has pointed to real estate deals like the sale of 157 acres on North Mare Island as an example of a sweetheart deal at Vallejo’s expense. 

Sorce’s husband, former city special advisor Slater Matzke, recently settled a wrongful termination lawsuit that alleged the city fired him for calling attention to terms in the sale that were favorable to the Nimitz Group, which later created the Mare Island Company to manage development on the Island.

Sorce’s campaign contributions are mostly from individuals. She has received support from a vanguard of active Vallejo residents including Liat Meitzenheimer and Don Osbourn of Fresh Air Vallejo, retired attorney Mike Nisperos, who was appointed to the Police Oversight and Accountability Commission, event producers Askari Sowonde and Mario Saucedo, Daniel Boon of the Mare Island Special Tax Elimination Alliance and Jasmine Salmeron, chair of the Measure P sales tax oversight committee among many others.   

Sorce has also received contributions from Moschetti’s Coffee and the Solano County Orderly Growth Committee and she has received endorsements from the Solano County Democratic Party, the Sierra Club and Planned Parenthood.

One of Dew’s largest contributors, the Mare Island Dry Dock, fits prominently into Dew’s campaign. She received the maximum $5,500 from the company. Mare Island Dry Dock CEO Stephen Dileo also made an individual donation of $1,000 along with a non-monetary donation of $763. Dry Dock executive vice president Richard Palmer donated $2,500.  

Dew has promoted efforts to advance Vallejo’s shipbuilding and repair industry through coordination with regional organizations to attract shipbuilders while encouraging existing businesses like the Dry Dock and Moose Boats to expand production and service to include zero emission passenger ferries and specialized service vessels for the offshore wind industry. 

Dew confirmed that campaign contributor Lewis Investments is an arm of Lewis Management Corporation, which is a partner in the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course development and involved in the Costco project, a development of a new Costco, retail space and 178 single family homes that is currently in the early stages of construction at Admiral Callaghan Lane and Turner Parkway.

Dew said that the company is familiar with her efforts as a councilmember to move the Costco project forward as well as her contributions negotiating the contract for development of the golf course.

Controversy arose over the $400,000 sale price of the golf course when community members learned that the developer had posted an ad to resell the property with a sale price of $18 million.

Dew was on council during deliberations over the sale of the property in 2021. She said she stands by the deal because the contract ultimately included profit sharing agreements with the city at each stage of the development process.

Sorce has questioned whether that profit sharing will ever come to fruition. “Every few months, we see another extension of the negotiation of the community benefits, Sorce said. “If you sell the land and close escrow and transfer the deed – I mean, you can try to negotiate profit sharing later, but they hold all the cards since we already gave them the land, so I don't put a lot of trust in that process at all.”

In 2022, the California legislature enacted Senate Bill 1439, which is intended to prevent local government officials from accepting campaign donations in exchange for political favors. Under this law, local elected officials are prohibited from participating in a decision that could affect the financial interest of a campaign contributor for a year after the contribution.  

If a City Council decision comes up in which a Vallejo elected official’s voting power could financially impact a contributor within 12 months, the official would have to recuse themselves, return the funds or potentially face misdemeanor charges. 

Another Dew campaign contributor, Medic Ambulance, provides services in Vallejo but the company’s contract is with Solano County. However, the company also has a contract to provide billing services for the city of Vallejo’s first responder fee, which covers some of the fire department's costs in responding to an emergency and is charged to a service recipient's insurance company.

Recology contributed $1,000 to Dew’s campaign and is currently under contract to provide waste and recycling service throughout the city. The contract was amended in 2022 to accommodate organic waste pick-up in compliance with state law. It was originally awarded in 2016 for a period of ten years. The 2022 amendment extended that period by five years. Dew was among six councilmembers who voted unanimously to approve a rate increase to cover the additional service.