Bill Hocker | Feb 17, 2020

The Register reported on supervisor campaign contributions recently:
NVR 1/28/20: Napa County Supervisor Pedroza leads the fundraising field.
The county has a website to track the contributions here (although it does take some effort to extract the information).

From 2018 though Jan 18, 2020 Supervisor Pedroza has raised a total of $372,809, and according to the NVR article currently has $284,713 still on hand. (By comparison Incumbent Belia Ramos has raised a total of $196,629, incumbent Ryan Gregory $132,216, challenger Amber Manfree $70,302, and challenger Mariam Aboudamous $55,660. The real power of incumbency is fairly clear.)

Supervisor Pedroza's fundraising prowess and his stable of all-star wine industry contributors get a write up in each election cycle. They have now been graphed. Notably many of the names have had development projects up before the Planning Commission and BOS in the last few years. I'm sure in any election for any public office in the world the names of contributors come up in the applications and legislation managed by the elected officials. Yet when seeing the vast amounts of money being thrown at a candidate by development interests in a community, far beyond that needed to cover direct campaign costs, one can't help but feel it is more than just friendship. The legal precision of quid pro quo immunizes the intent of contributions, but contributor, recipient and the public understand why large sums of money are given. It is, of course that direct link between elected government employment and urban development that is so hard to counter in a rural community attempting to forestall urban takeover.

It may look bad but it's all above board. An interesting tidbit to be gleaned from the contribution summaries: Mr. Pedrosa's campaign committee, Friends of Alfredo Pedroza, spent over $43,000 at the Meratige Resort in 2019, and at least $131,000 there in 2018. That's a lot of friendship which I, though a District 4 constituent, seemed to have missed out on.

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