Anonymous ‘BuyASupervisor’ website is latest dark money tactic in Imperial County

Efforts by "dark money" groups to influence rural Imperial County politics took a bizarre turn this week, with a new website called "BuyASupervisor.com" created by an anonymous organization, ironically named Transparent IV Project, which is promoting it on billboards across the county.

Nearly 1,300 county government employees also received an email in their publicly funded work accounts on Monday from the same organization with a link to the site, and requesting whistleblower tips about elected and appointed senior county officials.

At the heart of the polished-looking website, though, is already reported, publicly available information about campaign contributions to incumbent 4th District County Supervisor Ryan Kelley from "wealthy agricultural families, businesses, and related industries, including a lithium company." The website also contains a photo of him accepting a present, misleading claims that he received the most campaign donations in the March primaries, and unproven allegations about his "notable violations" of state campaign finance law.

Kelley called the website and statements "a common tactic of deflection" to distract people from stories in The Desert Sun about suspicious donations made by anonymous groups to support or oppose candidates in his and other races in the March primaries. The paper's reporting showed those groups have ties to current and past Imperial Irrigation Board presidents Alex Cardenas and Erik Ortega. The paper has also reported on an alleged half-million-dollar bribe offer to an opponent of Cardenas' sister, Martha Cardenas-Singh, not to run, which the opponent, Diahna Garcia-Ruiz, said she declined.

"This is strictly a hit piece on on Supervisor Ryan Kelley," former longtime county supervisor Wally Leimgruber said of the new anonymous website.

Leimgruber, who's now a development consultant, expressed concern that this and other recent "dark money" efforts, by which the original source of funding is kept secret, could drive away companies eyeing the long-destitute county for major investments. Given the area's rich natural resources, which have the potential to shape California's move to clean energy, solar, lithium and geothermal businesses have either built projects or are in the process of winning approvals to do so. But Leimbgruber worries about the effects of the anonymous donations and attacks.

"Any type of industry that wants to locate here ... you don't want to go to an area that has a cloud over it, where, well, maybe the political process is corrupt," he said.

Earlier coverage: A lithium hotspot, Imperial County sees ‘suspicious’ flow of dark money in primary race

Kelley laughed off the billboards, saying, "I guess they had some money left over" from earlier anonymous campaign donations. It is not clear the website or the billboards are linked to other groups that contributed heavily in the recent election. Kelley won his primary race and another four-year term, fending off four challengers despite heavy spending on negative fliers and attack ads against him by an anonymous political action committee called "Economic Prosperity for Imperial County, or EPIC.

The new "Transparency IV Project" website gives no contact information. The BuyASupervisor.com domain was created on April 13 by a Tempe, Arizona-based company, Domains By Proxy LLC, that allows people to make websites without revealing their identities.

"Someone spent 16 hours on it and downed a lot of Big Gulps, it looks like," joked Kelley about the website. "I guess I could get bothered by it, but I'm choosing not to, because I know what I did. And I feel like I've been very upfront and honest about everything that I reported. I don't have a problem with sharing that public information."

Kelley's donations mostly reported by name, but he has critics

In addition to substantial support from area farmers, Kelley received $5,200 from an Australian lithium company and $10,400 from individuals he said are linked to a South Korean lithium battery company. He also received what his disclosure forms list as 10 donations of $99 each from an "unknown person" or people residing in Brawley, his hometown. He said the donations came from family members and neighbors who did not want their names in print, and that he knows all of them. Any donations of $100 or more must be reported with a name.

Unlike several other opponents, Kelley received no independent political action committee funds, his finance reports show.

Asked if any of the large donations had or would influence him improperly, he said, "I haven't heard that claim ... the voters have already spoken in that regard. So I have more trust in the people than I do with innuendo or accusations."

But Kelley led the charge to increase per-acre rates paid by largescale solar companies last year, winning the wrath of some of them. He's also been criticized by environmental justice advocate Luis Olmedo, head of Comite Civico del Valle, who says he is too close to major geothermal and lithium companies. Two of his fellow supervisors tried unsuccessfully to quickly pass a measure in mid-March that would have imposed term limits on the county board. Kelley will start his fourth term in January.

But his popularity with votes was evident in the March primary — he received 2,198 votes of 3,194 ballots cast, and his closest opponent received just 497 votes.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission enforcement portal shows no active investigations of Kelley's March 2024 campaign reporting, or any sworn complaints, which require a named individual, requesting a review. An FPPC spokesman said he could not confirm or deny whether they'd received any such requests that aren't online yet. He noted they receive anonymous complaints from across California in every election cycle, but because of statutory quick response times on sworn complaints filed by a real person, anonymous complaints with no "ticking clock ... will take a back seat." He also said there are no laws that he knows of barring a group from contacting public employees, as the group behind BuyASupervisor.com did.

‘Without a shred of evidence’

But an Imperial County spokesperson said in a statement that an investigation into the origin of the website and the email to public employees is being conducted, and sharply criticized the email, adding, "our County will not be manipulated by this kind of spam misinformation.”

The email's subject line reads "All County Employees: Who is funding the Supervisors? + Call for whistleblowers," and the body says in part, "As stakeholders in Imperial Valley’s future, you should be aware of who helps get your bosses (the Board of Supervisors) elected to office. ... We accept tips from all sources about potential fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement in the County of Imperial’s programs and services. ... we appreciate your efforts to help us stamp out fraud, waste, and abuse."

It adds, "This is especially important as Lithium Valley gets off the ground in the coming years," saying companies may try to influence them and their departments and adding: "If anything a Supervisor, CEO, Deputy CEO, or anyone in a leadership position has asked you to do has made you uncomfortable or seems unethical, we encourage you to reach out."

The Desert Sun filed a public records request asking who has obtained Kelley's and other candidates' campaign finance forms. Imperial County Registrar of Voters Linsey Dale sent a list showing requests were filed with her office by journalists and a few others, and to the county attorney's office via an encrypted, untraceable email called transparencyiv@protonmail.com.

In an emailed statement in response to The Desert Sun's questions, an Imperial County spokesperson said, "the website in question “buyasupervisor.com” appears to reprint publicly available campaign contributions information, but implies without a shred of evidence that illegal or “unethical” activity such as “fraud, waste, or abuse” has occurred. Thus, it appears that the email and website are little more than a smear campaign designed to mislead and agitate employees and the general public."

Because the billboards advertising the site were rented from a private company and are on private land, they do not involve the county, the spokesperson said.

Seeing dollar signs

The BuyASupervisor website also states, "See who's been giving and how the money was spent. Let's start with the most expensive campaign: the Committee to Elect Ryan Kelley Imperial County Supervisor 2024."

The statement is misleading: Kelley's campaign received the most money in direct donations, but more was donated to support newly elected Third District Supervisor Peggy Price and Second District candidate Martha Cardenas-Singh, either directly or funneled though the other anonymously funded organization, EPIC.

The BuyASupervisor website says it omitted "independent expenditures" — that is, the dark money spent to support other candidates. Price did not respond to an earlier request for comment, and Cardenas-Singh said earlier she did not know who the individuals behind EPIC and the groups that funded it are.

Cardenas-Singh, a former El Centro mayor and councilmember who is also a longtime member of the board of trustees of the once-profitable but now financially struggling El Centro Regional Medical Center, is facing Garcia-Ruiz in the November elections after neither garnered more than 50% of the votes cast in the March primary.

Garcia-Ruiz has told The Desert Sun, Imperial County district attorney investigators and others that she was offered a $250,000 cashier's check and was told she would be paid up to $500,000 to not run. She declined both, but has refused to name who made her the offers, saying she does not want them to be harmed. It is unclear what else, if anything, authorities have done to probe the allegation, which if true is a crime under state law.

Former supervisor Leimgruber and several others have urged Garcia-Ruiz, who is the postmaster in Heber, to tell criminal investigators the name of who made the offer. "We're not interested in a bag person ... the person that knocked on her door and said, 'Hey, here's a half a million not to run.' We're interested in who gave the instructions to the bag person," he said.

Leimgruber said the latest escalation of so-called dark money tactics is disturbing, and antithetical to promoting economic prosperity in Imperial County, as EPIC's full name purports to support.

"I've seen very heated debates and and very heated elections in the past, but everybody has always put their name on it. They have been very clear of what their intentions were." he said. "What the residents of this county dislike is that this group and the EPIC group are hiding behind the curtain ... And people are extremely concerned about why would groups do something like this? They don't want this big cloud over hanging over our area. Because it doesn't do anybody any good."

Janet Wilson is senior environment reporter for The Desert Sun and co-authors USA Today Climate Point. She can be reached at jwilson@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: ‘BuyASupervisor’ website latest dark money tactic in Imperial County