Dark Money Invades Commerce City Council Race

Leonard Mendoza, who was just ousted as Mayor, got $7,500 in donations.

By Brian Hews

April 22, 2022~An examination of campaign donation forms related to the City of Commerce’s June 7, 2022 City Council race has revealed, similar to past Commerce elections HMG-CN has covered, dark money once again attempting to influence the race.

Candidate Leonard Mendoza, who famously got punched out at a Contract Cities Conference and was just removed for abusing his Mayoral office and sending out campaign promotions on City Stationery, took in a total of $7,000.

Asm. Cristina Garcia, ignoring Mendoza’s abuse of office, gave him $1,000.

Gardena-based Administrative Services Cooperative Inc. gave Mendoza $2,500. The company is listed as a taxi and limo services company owned by Martiros Manukyan. The company has a horrible 1.5 star rating on Yelp.

The infamous Gould and Orellano campaign consulting company in Long Beach has many political action committees listed at their address but no information can be found on the companies that donate to the political action committee. One of those, Blue Sky PAC, gave $1,000.

The donations were all over $1,000 and made within the FPPC’s sixty-day window for reporting: any donations over $1,000 must be reported within twenty-four hours.
The first reporting period ends tomorrow for all donations.