Hit or Miss: Mystery Group Targets College Board Candidate

By Ann K. Williams
Staff Writer

October 20 -- The usually ho-hum College Board race has heated up weeks before the election as flyers attacking College Trustee candidate Tom Donner were sent to absentee ballot holders by an organization that seems to have no members.

The mailer calling the former Santa Monica College Interim President and Chief Financial Officer “fiscally irresponsible and reckless with taxpayer money” indicated it was “paid for by Friends of Santa Monica College.”

But the organization’s Burbank address is that of Durkee and Associates, an accounting firm that handles political campaign finances, and its “Statement of Organization” on file with the City Clerk’s office shows only one name, that of Kinde Durkee, Treasurer.

Though the Santa Monica College Faculty Association has given thousands of dollars to the campaign, association President Lantz Simpson distanced his organization from the group he said was formed “for the purpose of opposing Donner.”

“Friends of Santa Monica College is not a committee of the faculty association…(we’re) not involved in any way, (we have) nothing to do with it,” Simpson said.

But in September, association member and Faculty Senate President Richard Tahlvidaran-Jesswein moved that the union, which is backing a slate of four faculty-friendly candidates for the College Board, donate $15,000 to Friends of Santa Monica College, a motion that passed unanimously.

“(W)e have a unique opportunity to elect a new majority to the SMC Board of Trustees,” the Association’s website declares. “Our goal is to elect these 4 candidates and to keep Candidate #5 off the board. Candidate #5 is SMC’s recently-retired Chief Financial Officer, Tom Donner.”

And Tahlvidaran-Jesswein was paid $109.37 by the Friends of Santa Monica College for expenses he incurred throwing a fundraiser for the group, according to its form 460 on file with the City Clerk’s office

Still, neither Tahlvidaran-Jesswein nor Simpson would say who belonged to the Friends of Santa Monica College and Durkee and Associates failed to answer to phone calls made Thursday afternoon and Friday morning.

Speaking only as a faculty and union member, Tahvildaran-Jesswein said the mailer “certainly isn’t a hit piece.” Rather, it reflects “a real and true and honest reflection of Donner’s record.”

But some College Board members and Donner supporters disagree.

A letter entitled “Response to a ‘hit piece’ defaming Tom Donner” called the mailer a “complete distortion of Tom’s service to the College.

“Contrary to the ‘hit piece,’ Tom Donner has been a most trustworthy administrator at Santa Monica College,” wrote Board members Carole Currey, Dorothy Ehrhart-Morrison, Herbert Roney, Margaret R. Quinones, former Board member Nancy Cattell and Samuel and Irene Zivi.

For his part, in a letter he sent to the Burbank address Donner put the Friends of Santa Monica College “on notice” that “the statements contained in the mailer were… so untrue that it was reckless for them to republish these statements.”

Citing “First Amendment law,” Simpson said he was not worried about literature pointing out what he saw as Donner’s manipulation of the College’s budget during the past years’ contract negotiations.

“Tom has trouble handling criticism,” he said.

But Donner noted that since last week, his campaign contributions have taken a sudden upswing. When asked what he would do if more mailers like last week’s are sent out, he joked, “It depends on how much money this generates for me in campaign contributions.”