Groups spent over $4M on soda-tax fight
American Beverage Assoc. alone donated nearly $2M to Better Way for Santa Fe & Pre-K anti-tax campaign
Two political action committees that duked it out for months over a proposed Santa Fe tax on sugary beverages spent more than $4 million on their campaigns, final finance reports showed Tuesday, shattering fundraising records for a municipal election.
The group that worked to defeat the proposed tax, Better Way for Santa Fe & Pre-K, won not only the election but the money war, taking in about $2.18 million in cash and in-kind contributions and spending about $189.31 per vote. All cash donations came from the American Beverage Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group that poured in more than $1.9 million for everything from mailers and canvassers to newspaper, radio and TV ads.
Nearly $560,000 in cash from the association arrived several days after the May 2 special election, according to the final finance statement filed with the city clerk. But spokesman David Huynh said the post-election cash infusion wasn’t an effort to conceal from voters how much money the group was actually spending.
“Some of the work may have been done before the election, but we definitely followed what the city attorney and the city clerk told us: that as soon as our vendors send us invoices, that we should try to pay them as promptly as possible, which we did,” he said.
Sandra Wechsler, campaign manager
for Pre-K for Santa Fe, which supported the proposed tax to generate funds for preschool programs, said before the election that she expected the opposing political committee would report an infusion of cash after the ballots were counted.
“We’re not surprised that the [American Beverage Association] spent over two million dollars to defeat our efforts to fund pre-K for every child in Santa Fe,” Wechsler said Tuesday in an email. “They represent corporations that care only about their profits, not about the health and well being of our community.”
The last round of campaign reports show her group took in nearly $1.9 million in cash and in-kind contributions, which worked out to about $224.25 per vote.
The vast majority of Pre-K for Santa Fe’s donations and in-kind contributions, $1.47 million, or 78 percent, came from Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York City mayor who spent more than $18 million supporting similar measures in the Bay Area cities of San Francisco and Oakland. Unlike Santa Fe’s proposal, however, those measures passed.
Bloomberg made more than $774,000 in in-kind contributions listed in campaign finance reports as research, consulting and media. He also gave the campaign nearly $700,000 in cash, including $295,000 in the fifth and final reporting period, which helped the campaign cover more than $140,000 in debt that the campaign reported a day before the election.
Wechsler said Pre-K for Santa Fe had sought Bloomberg’s help.
“We reached out to Bloomberg and asked for support knowing that the [American Beverage Association] is willing to spend endless amounts of money to protect their profits,” she wrote.
Wechsler said Bloomberg “did not get involved until mid-March when it was clear that the ABA was already spending millions trying to influence both the council vote and the election. Bloomberg helped ensure actual community voices could be heard about the need for pre-K.”
Wechsler said the campaign was worth the effort. “This is the start of an important conversation about critical issues that impact the future and health of our community,” she wrote.
The proposal, which voters soundly rejected, called for making distributors pay a tax of 2 cents per ounce on sugary beverages sold in Santa Fe. Proponents said the tax would raise about $7.7 million annually to support prekindergarten programs for nearly 1,000 children.
The Rio Grande Foundation, which was reprimanded by the city campaign review board for failing to file a campaign finance report, filed a one-page statement Monday with the City Clerk’s Office.
The Albuquerque-based freemarket think tank reported a $7,500 in-kind contribution from the Interstate Policy Alliance for the production of an online video that criticized the mayor and his proposed soda tax.
The alliance, based in Washington, D.C., describes itself as “a foundation-supported partnership between free-market oriented think tanks on the state and national level.”
Former City Councilor Karen Heldmeyer expressed shock at the amount of money that was spent in the election.
“I hope people pay at least as much attention to the mayor and council races in March, but I hope the spending isn’t anywhere near as high,” she said. “Grass-roots campaigning is a lot cheaper and a lot more enlightening.”