Solomon Rivera earned $272,000 a year as a deputy chief of staff to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, advising her on city business. His official departure date was Aug. 31. Ten days later, state paperwork listed him as the principal officer of Unidos Con Karen Bass, an outside spending committee supporting her reelection.
The Line Between Staff and Outside Spending
The central question is whether a committee spending money to support a candidate is genuinely independent of that candidate’s campaign. The timeline involving Rivera, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, has prompted election-law scrutiny. Unidos Con Karen Bass is registered as an independent expenditure committee, which may raise unlimited donations if it does not coordinate with Bass or her campaign. It has spent about $1.1 million on digital ads and other campaign expenses, and received five- and six-figure contributions, including $150,000 from Service Employees International Union Local 721, a union representing thousands of city workers that has negotiated employment contracts with Bass and other city leaders.
Attorney Neama Rahmani said Rivera’s recent work inside the mayor’s office could trigger a rebuttable presumption of coordination under city and state rules. Under that presumption, an insider who moves to a candidate-supporting independent committee may be treated as coordinating unless the committee can show otherwise. Rahmani said he would have opened an investigation into Unidos if he were still with the city Ethics Commission. He described the rule as a safeguard against insiders moving into ostensibly independent groups while continuing to act on a candidate’s behalf.
A Presumption, Not a Finding
If coordination were established, Unidos’ spending could be treated as a direct contribution to Bass’s reelection campaign, potentially exceeding Los Angeles’s $1,800-per-donor limit for mayoral races. Washington, D.C.-based election-law attorney Caleb P. Burns said California law presumes that independent expenditure committees run by a candidate’s former campaign or government staff are not independent. He also pointed to a similar presumption involving a candidate’s family member running a supporting committee.
A California Precedent
A California case offers a precedent, though it involved a different role and does not establish coordination in the Bass matter. A staff memorandum from the California Fair Political Practices Commission says the commission settled a case after determining that Assemblyman Luis Alejo’s 2010 campaign manager coordinated three supportive mailers with an independent expenditure committee where he was a principal officer.
The committee formed ahead of the June 2 primary, when Bass faced multiple opponents, and ran Spanish-language radio ads and videos aimed at Latino voters, some featuring Bass’s family members. The Los Angeles Times reported that Unidos filed paperwork for those May ads with the city Ethics Commission on Oct. 2, after the newspaper made inquiries; city rules require such filings within 24 hours of an ad running. Stephen J. Kaufman, an attorney representing Unidos, said Rivera stopped working for the mayor’s office in April and received unused sick pay for four months before his official Aug. 31 end date. Kaufman said the transition was not improper, that Rivera had not spoken with or coordinated with Bass or her campaign about the committee’s communications, and that Rivera could rebut any presumption if investigated.
Another Former Bass Operative Joins an Outside Group
Rivera is not the only former Bass campaign insider working for an outside group supporting her. Kurt Gonska managed Bass’s reelection campaign heading into the June primary, then left in June after an internal shakeup. Two months later, he became a consultant to Building LA, a pro-Bass independent expenditure committee sponsored by the LA/OC Building and Construction Trades Council. The group has promoted Bass’s reelection with mailers and billboards and has spent roughly $850,000 so far.
Sergio Perez, who said he plans to vote for Bass’s runoff opponent, Councilmember Nithya Raman, in the Nov. 3 election, questioned whether Building LA is operating independently. Perez argued that Gonska’s experience on Bass’s campaign could carry over to the outside group. Gonska said the campaign’s primary strategy differed from Building LA’s runoff approach and that he had not communicated with Bass or her campaign team since joining the committee. He said he would rebut any claim of coordination.
Outside Money on Both Sides
The scrutiny around Rivera and Gonska comes as independent expenditure committees have poured far more money into the mayor's race than Bass and Raman have raised on their own, according to the Times. The Western States Regional Council of Carpenters had raised more than $10 million for its Estamos Con Nithya committee backing Raman as of Oct. 22, including $6 million from hedge fund manager Aaron Sosnick, the Times reported. A committee sponsored by the Los Angeles Police Protective League had spent nearly $4.8 million on ads opposing Raman as of the same date. Earlier reporting from the Daily Breeze found the police union had also spent nearly $2.8 million on independent expenditures supporting Bass, while Airbnb had contributed $1.75 million toward that effort.
This kind of outside spending is possible because the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that independent expenditure groups' activities are protected political speech under the First Amendment and struck down limits on their fundraising, even as Bass and Raman themselves remain barred from collecting donations above $1,800 per person. A September poll by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times and reported by the Daily News, found Raman leading Bass 39% to 28% among likely voters, with a third still undecided, as the two head toward the Nov. 3 runoff.
