A group of former candidates for positions at the City of Fresno and Fresno County are suing Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz, claiming he made an incorrect legal analysis relating to campaign contributions.
Former Fresno County Board of Supervisors District 2 candidate Dion Bourdase is the only person named by Frenans Interested in Fair Elections (FIFE) as part of its group. FIFE said in the lawsuit that some of its members were candidates in the March primary for city and county offices.
Driving the news: FIFE claims Bourdase and others in the group were harmed by Janz because incumbent city councilmembers were allowed to use their position to raise money in the city council campaign accounts before actually filing to run for a position with the county.
- In Bourdase’s case, he ran against Fresno City Councilman Garry Bredefeld in the March primary. Bredefeld and fellow Councilmember Luis Chavez – who is running for the Board of Supervisors in District 3 – both transferred tens of thousands of dollars from their city campaign accounts to their county campaign accounts.
- Fresno County filed a lawsuit against the pair seeking to limit their transfers to $30,000 each, which would have complied with an ordinance that the county passed in 2020. But last year a Fresno County judge ruled that the county’s ordinance was unconstitutional. Fresno County ultimately spent over $200,000 on the unsuccessful lawsuit.
The big picture: FIFE claims Janz was incorrect when he issued a public memorandum in October 2023, stating that candidates are not limited to a specific window of time for fundraising.
- Janz said the city does not enforce campaigning windows based on the U.S. Fifth Circuit’s decision in Zimmerman v. City of Austin in 2019.
- Janz wrote that the Zimmerman ruling meant the city would not enforce its Charter Section 309 limits on campaign contribution windows.
- But FIFE contends that another case from 2011, Thalmheimer v. City of San Diego – which upheld certain restrictions on incumbents accepting campaign contributions – directly contradicts Janz’s legal analysis.
- FIFE also takes issue with Janz’s analysis in light of 2018’s Measure O, which would have repealed Section 309, which itself was enacted after voters passed Measure E in March 1993. Voters rejected Measure O in 2018, leaving Section 309 intact.
Flashback: Before the March primary, Bourdase and other candidates had their campaign signs confiscated by the city for violating Fresno municipal code by placing them on public property.
- In February, attended a Fresno City Council meeting with dozens of signs in hand. The signs still had metal stakes attached, as he had just picked them up from the code enforcement office, according to a report from GV Wire at the time. Bourdase was cited by the police and removed from the meeting for disrupting the meeting.
