While the San Francisco Chronicle has repeatedly questioned campaign donations to District 4 Supervisor candidate Jaynry Mak, the paper has ignored troubling contributions made to its favored candidate, Doug Chan. Last Friday, the Mak campaign revealed that the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) and the San Francisco Association of Realtors have spent nearly $25,000 in mailings on Chan’s behalf. Significant donations were also made by downtown interests whose priorities may well differ from District 4 residents. That the Chronicle did not deem these donations newsworthy, while challenging small donations received from Mak’s family and friends, reflects the media’s broader effort to conceal corporate influence over local elections.

On August 7, Chronicle columnists Matier & Ross wrote that the candidate with the “most dough so far in this fall's San Francisco Board of Supervisors sweepstakes is Jaynry Mak, a little-known but apparently well-wired political insider who has amassed more than $100,000 -- with a good chunk of it coming in $500 checks from an assortment of maids, handymen and even the unemployed.” This was followed on September 14 by an article repeating the above claims and charging Mak with failing to disclose her ownership interest in real estate valued at more than $6 million and the income she received from it while working as Fiona Ma’s legislative aide.

These stories had one goal: to portray Mak as a “political insider” and violator of ethics laws. The fact that Mak was on maternity leave during nearly all of the period she failed to disclose her ownership interests was ignored, as has been the fact that she has been charged with no wrongdoing for receiving contributions.

The Chronicle has never had a problem with political insiders, and typically endorses them. But the paper wanted to obscure the fact that Mak is the neighborhood candidate in the District 4 race, with the Chronicle’s downtown and corporate allies backing quintessential insider Doug Chan.

Last Friday, the Mak campaign appeared to have the “smoking gun” to prove Chan’s dependency on downtown money. The campaign sent a press release to the San Francisco media, including Chronicle reporters and a city editor, detailing the donations. But the story of BOMA, the Realtors, PG&E, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and other institutions contributing heavily to Chan’s campaign has not appeared in the Chronicle.

No need to wonder why. Having tarred Mak as the “political insider,” the Chronicle is not about to let District 4 voters know that the city’s true insiders are backing Chan.

The Chronicle never explains how donations from Mak’s family and friends could cause her to vote against her district’s interests if elected Supervisor. But it is obvious how the downtown and corporate money backing Chan has its own agenda, which very well could diverge from that of Sunset residents.

Unfortunately, the Chronicle’s treatment of campaign donations in the Mak-Chan race is not unusual. The paper spent more time in 2006 challenging donors to Phil Angelides than to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, despite the latter’s huge fundraising edge.

Remember how Cruz Bustamonte was actually ahead of Schwarzenegger in the polls for the recall election in 2003 until the media destroyed him for accepting large contributions from Native American tribes? While the media had a feeding frenzy over Native American contributions, it paid little attention to the massive corporate, real estate, oil industry and other special interest donations given to Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And while the Chronicle and other media labeled former Governor Gray Davis “pay to play” for his ongoing fundraising, it has imposed no such epithet on the even more egregious fundraising abuses of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Chronicle last week came out against Prop 89, which would stop the type of special interest, big money donations that the Chronicle claims to oppose. The Hearst Corporation that owns the Chronicle depends on the advertising dollars of those making these contributions, and is not about to bite the hand that feeds it.

One reason that Prop 89 is likely to lose is that its big money opponents rely on the Chronicle and other media to create public cynicism about campaign finance reform. The defeat of Prop 89 and its predecessors then allows pundits to argue that voter “prefer” the current system, providing moral justification for corporate and big money influence over American politics.

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