Bill Sanders Brings His Total Contributions to Steve Ortega to $17,500 with recent $5,000 Contribution
by Ben and Jerry
The agenda for the Tuesday, June 6 City Council meeting lists that mayoral candidate Steve Ortega received a $5,000 contribution from magnet Bill Sanders which makes a total of $17,000 Sanders has given to Ortega's campaign.*
Sanders is the co-founder of the Paso del Norte Group, father-in-law of Congressman Beto O'Rourke, and the "man behind the curtain" in regard to the Downtown Land Grab and planned displacement.
Also of note on this coming Tuesday's agenda, are $5,000 from Rick Francis (WestStar Bank formally Bank of the West) which adds on to Francis previous contributions to total $12,500, $5000 from Charles Jordan, $1500 from Bill Burton, and Jack Chapman $1500.
Sanders has given $2,000 to District 7 Candidate for City Representative Tania Chozet. Rick Francis gave $1,000 to Chozet and Bob Hoy gave her $1,000. Steve Fox gave her $1,000.
According to the June 2, El Paso Inc. interview, Ortega says his top four campaign supporters are Dan Longoria, J. Kirk Robison, Bob Hoy, and Octavio Gomez.
Although Longoria, Robison, and Bob Hoy are part of the Baker's Dozen, they are not the highest contributors so Ortega's answer was incorrect.
Inaccuracies in his campaign finance report were mentioned in "Ortega Campaign Finance Report Debacle: Mishandling of Finances" and by Martin Paredes in "Steve Ortega Underreported $40K."
Among the allegations in these stories were that Ortega is trying to hide his contributions from Bill Sanders and other Paso del Norte Group and Mountain Star contributors. The alleged method used were the submission of hard-to-read financial reports (they appear to have been photocopied and re-photocopied, use of small font) and waiting until after the election to amend the reports adding the top donors' contributions.
Ortega's top donor was Bill Sanders followed by Fernandez, Francis, and Hunt.
*For couples donating, we count them under the person most politically involved.
