You will no longer hear about the wild recall election in Rosemead. After spending over 200K Wal-Mart suceesfully helped Gary Taylor and Jay Imperial retain their seats. See story here. It has to be demoralizing to supporters of the recall to see the Wal-Mart open the week before the election. See previous post with links to all the others here.
September 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
The $200,000 figure dramatically understates their actual spending. They put $300,000 just from Aug. 4 to election day into their “Rosemead Neighbors (sic) Against the Recall” group. They also gave $8500 directly to one of the targeted councilmen. The supposedly “independent” “No on Rosemead Recall” group also incurred debts of over $5000, which we have to assume will be covered by Wal-Mart at some point.
Wal-Mart had also dumped $40,000 into their Rosemead PRIDE front group last summer. Additionally, Rosemead PRIDE ran up debts of over $20,000, which we have to assume will be covered by Wal-Mart at some point.
Then there was their “commercial” spending, including surveys and mailers ostensibly aimed at identifying Wal-Mart customers. That information was undoubtedly turned over to the “political” groups promoting Wal-Mart.
So their actual investment (just in the recall, never mind the March 2005 election) is at least $400,000, and probably closer to $600,000 to win an election that had about 4,300 voters. That’s over a $100 a voter. For goodness sake, they paid for several planes to pull banners above the city during that last week! They paid for a Spanish-language ad in an English newspaper! They had money to burn, and they did.
No way a simple grassroots organization can counter those kinds of dollars.