Former SM Mayor claims inner-circle politics were at fault
Embattled former City Councilman Mike Feinstein has been cleared of any wrongdoing by his political party, of which some members accused him of misappropriating tens of thousands of dollars intended for the Los Angeles County Green Party.
For the past five years, Feinstein has been fighting accusations within the state Green Party and has been subject to investigations by the Santa Monica Police Department, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office and the California Fair Political Practices Commission, which polices political contributions. None of the investigations resulted in action against Feinstein.
At issue was previously untracked money given by donors that Feinstein used to open a Green Party office at 2809 Pico Blvd. After Feinstein deposited a $10,000 check intended for the Los Angeles Green Party by former member Bill Pietz in January of 2001, Feinstein said he had used the money for Green Party business, specifically for the Santa Monica office. But some Green Party members who may have had an ax to grind with Feinstein for various reasons, publicized the spending of the money as a misappropriation. Feinstein’s adversaries were able to convince others who were naive to the back-room politics to pursue Feinstein’s alleged mishandling of the money, he said.
Complicating matters was that Pietz did-n’t know that his donation was used for a Santa Monica office. When it became an issue, Feinstein’s colleagues within the party failed to back him when he referenced the new Green Party office in Santa Monica. Because of inner-party politics and fear of negative publicity, many of the supporters Feinstein thought he had turned their back on him by saying he had no authority to raise money for the party, Feinstein said. They claimed they didn’t know about the Santa Monica office, despite that they had used it for meetings in 2000 and 2001, Feinstein said.
In fact, the state Green Party’s largest public meeting, which was covered live on C-SPAN in July of 2001, was at the Santa Monica office.
And because he received no backing from a small but vocal group within the party, Feinstein for years refused to show his colleagues the bank records despite their repeated requests.
“Having people denying they had a connection with me was absurd... I was shocked,” he said.“The last thing I was going to do was give up my only asset in this. They didn’t recognize me as a fundraiser and they wouldn’t admit the office existed so why would I give up any bank records?”
A former mayor of Santa Monica, Feinstein had characterized the dispute as a political turf battle within the Green Party and that many of his adversaries were looking to create controversy where there was none.
The refusal to release financial records put him at odds with Green Party leaders while the dispute was played out publicly, even during his bid for reelection to the City Council in 2004. He lost the race, garnering nearly 5.7 percent of the vote.
Not helping matters was Feinstein’s refusal to speak publicly about the missing money or the dispute within his party.
“This matter was never more than an internal administrative issue, that in an ideal world, would have been handled much better by our young and growing, volunteer-based political party,” Feinstein said on Tuesday. “As a result, because I believe so strongly in the mission of the Green Party, I kept my public comments on this to a minimum. I sought not to make more of it than it really deserved, believing it would be resolved internally sooner than later, and putting inaccurate and sometimes outlandish speculations to rest.”
After officially voting on the matter this past weekend, the Green Party of California (GPCA) announced on Monday that it has reviewed documents and records surrounding funds raised and spent between January 2000 and August 2001 to operate the Santa Monica Green Party office. The party has determined that Feinstein used donations to pay the rent on that space, which he opened as a local Green Party headquarters.
“While the GPCA and Michael Feinstein both acknowledge that ideally this matter would have been resolved much earlier, both parties also recognize that misunderstandings may occur even among the most well intended,” said Beth Moore Haines, a GPCA spokeswoman. “In particular, owing to the incomplete nature of records kept at the time, it is understandable how different understandings occurred. Now that this matter has been resolved, all parties look forward to doing productive work on behalf of the Green Party.”
Feinstein said the timing of his name being cleared has much to do with a changing of the guard within the GPCA. In the spring of 2005, many of the old members had been voted off the leadership committees, making way for a fresh perspective and new people who wanted to move forward and put an end to the internal bickering.
“It took a receptivity within the state party that was willing to listen and I could talk openly with them... It took five years for the party to clarify what most of the people knew back in 2001,” he said. “Now that a clearing of the record has occurred, it is to the benefit of all involved. And despite the sometimes vexing nature of this matter, I harbor no permanent ill feelings towards those who acted upon misinformation, jumped to unwarranted conclusions and unnecessarily escalated the issue far out of scale.We are all human, these things happen, but life is too short to remain attached to the past.”
Since the election of new members, Feinstein spent several months retrieving financial statements from the credit union he used for the local Green Party account. Those records were reviewed by the GPCA last fall and the organization’s coordinating committee took a formal vote on their legitimacy on Friday.
The committee also recognized that Feinstein had authorization during the period in question to raise and spend funds for an office on behalf of the Green Party of California; the funds raised and spent by Feinstein were used for expenses related to Green Party purposes and, therefore, there was no misappropriation. With the review complete, the GPCA considers the matter closed.
“This is a happy and welcome moment for myself and the Green Party,” Feinstein said. “I applaud the current Green Party state leadership for making the effort to clear up and clarify the record.”
But Feinstein’s battle with his colleagues didn’t come without pain. However, he knew that with patience, time and money spent defending himself, there would be a day that he would be exonerated.
“I stayed with it because I wasn’t going to be called a liar,” he said. “I may be a lot of things but I’m not a liar.”
After more than a year of requests from Green Party officials — who Feinstein said were led astray by his adversaries — they were successful in launching a criminal investigation which was conducted by the SMPD. But the DA’s Office didn’t file any charges, citing a lack of evidence.
After still more failed attempts by Green Party officials to get Feinstein to disclose where the money went, party members filed a small claims lawsuit against him. But it was dropped. Then the investigation was taken to the state level, where the Fair Political Practices Commission was asked to review the documents. But the commission declined to get involved, saying it was an internal matter, Feinstein said.
In the midst of it all, state Green Party officials signed a nationally distributed letter telling members that Feinstein was not recognized to speak for the party or to raise money for it. But Feinstein, a Green Party pioneer who helped establish Los Angeles County as the state’s strongest Green Party base, continued to work on behalf of the political party he has worked so hard to help build.
Moore Haines attributes the internal dispute to a political party experiencing growing pains, both in terms of style and leadership of its members and how financial records were kept. The party went from holding meetings in members’ living rooms to having offices and operating with by-laws.
“We all had to grow up on how we did that, Mike too,” he said. “This won’t be repeated, we’ve learned from our mistakes.”
Now records and policies are handled much more professionally and its members, both activists and business professionals, are able to understand each other better, Moore Haines said.
“Mike has made incredible contributions to the Green Party but he has made mistakes too,” she said. “We have gone from political immaturity to a full grown political party.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 28, 2006. Read the original PDF.