Shriver to continue fundraising
CITY HALL — City Councilman Bobby Shriver over the past four months raised more than $316,000, mostly from $250 donations, and said Wednesday he had no intention of letting up.
Records filed at City Hall this week show Shriver called upon his many business and personal connections to amass an amount that far exceeded what any other elected official raised in 2004. It could be the largest political war chest ever raised by a City Council candidate in Santa Monica history.
Phil Donahue, Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand and Oprah Winfrey were among the donors, as were William R. Hearst III, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, And that was just in the last 10 weeks. Since Labor Day, when Shriver formally entered the race for a seat on the City Council, the Kennedy family scion collected checks from hundreds of celebrities, entertainment and business executives, lobbyists, high-profile attorneys and others. He also was backed by several local unions, and his colleagues on city and college boards.
Candidates for local office since 1992 have been limited by law to accepting individual contributions of $250 or less per calendar year, meaning Shriver had to cast a wide net in his fundraising efforts.
“What is the secret to my fundraising success? I guess that I’m an old man and I know a lot of people,” Shriver, 50, said Wednesday. “I’ve worked with a lot of people and, when I ran, a lot of the people gave me some money. The real bottom line is that the money really allowed me to tell my story.
“If I hadn’t been able to get my message out, people wouldn’t have known about my message,” he added. “They would have thought it was a campaign about the hedges.”
It was after being threatened by City Hall with fines of up to $25,000 a day for keeping too-tall hedges at his Adelaide Drive home that Shriver first walked onto the local political stage.
Shriver also benefited last year from endorsement mailers and canvassing paid for by local luxury hotels Casa Del Mar and Shutters on the Beach, though he denied any affiliation with their campaign effort. In total, the hotels raised more than $350,000 in 2004, money they spent backing Shriver, along with candidates Matteo Dinolfo, Kathryn Morea and the incumbent Herb Katz, documents show.
Katz ranked a distant second in the fundraising among council candidates last year, loans not included, pulling in nearly $88,000 in campaign contributions.
Denny Zane, a longtime political activist and cofounder of the powerful Santa Monicans for Renters Rights group, said Shriver’s war chest far exceeded any in his memory. SMRR raised just $136,110 in 2004, according to documents filed at City Hall this week.
“It’s an awesome accomplishment,” said Zane, who expected Shriver to win even without as much money. “I think Bobby was an attractive candidate apart from that. I think he could have won the election with a lot less. Certainly, spending that much money helps if you want to be a front runner. I think beyond that he was an attractive candidate for Santa Monica.
“He had liberal credentials,” Zane added. “He had an issue of concern, and he was energetic. You put that together with a lot of money and you can win.”
Fundraising won’t slow down for Shriver, who after paying off $100,000 he loaned his campaign, said he plans to hire an outside entity to study homelessness and look into regional solutions. That group likely would put together a coherent plan for transforming one or more empty building at the Veteran’s Administration property in West Los Angeles into shelters. Though Shriver and a volunteer already are working on that plan, at some point he said it will need to be “professionalized.”
“People in the city now are working on a lot of different things and, at least, I want to have focus brought to this thing from my own point of view,” said Shriver, adding veterans make up as much as 30 percent of the local homeless population. “There are the empty buildings at the VA. To have empty buildings at the VA and homeless vets sleeping on the beach in Santa Monica seems to me to be an opportunity to do a good thing.”
Shriver said he also is considering hiring an assistant to help him with city business.
“I may do that,” he said Wednesday. “I am watching how things shape out. I’m straining right now. I guess I would say it’s the amount of correspondence and if that continues at this current rate, I probably will hire someone to help me be responsive. I don’t like it when I’m not responsive.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 3, 2005. Read the original PDF.