#jude barry

[mmckenzieport]

By Melissa McKenzie & Carolyn Schuk

In 2005, a CNN article called Related lobbyist Jude Barry one of five political consultants to watch and likened him to Karl Rove, the political strategist famous for his plan to achieve a permanent party majority in government by sowing division, systematic gerrymandering and framing the debate by planting messages in the news media.

A 2007 Atlantic Monthly article called George W. Bush’s administration the “Rove Presidency.” Rove, wrote Joshua Green, “cast himself …as someone … with the wherewithal not just to exploit the political landscape but to reshape it.”

Barry has not achieved Rove’s national reach, but he has demonstrated similar ambition and expertise in Rove’s strategies. The Santa Clara equivalent of Rove’s permanent majority is City government dominance by Mayor Lisa Gillmor and her allies.

Gillmor achieved a solid four-vote majority when Council Member Kathy Watanabe was appointed to fill the Council seat that opened after Gillmor was appointed Mayor. Vicious negative campaigning in the 2016 election solidified that majority and created enduring partisan acrimony that Gillmor has relentlessly manipulated for political advantage.

With her four-vote block as the bulldozer, Gillmor transformed City Hall into a compliant operation to execute her political will and herself into an executive mayor in all but name.

The Weekly has detailed much of Barry’s activity in local politics, including his ascendency in San José politics as staff aide to former Mayor Ron Gonzales and a member of Mayor Sam Liccardo’s “kitchen cabinet.” These roles showed Barry’s adeptness in the role of trusted advisor to city officials on a broad spectrum of matters.

But in San José Barry is just one of many political players. Santa Clara has proven a better fit for Barry. So good a fit that some call him Santa Clara’s 8th Council Member.

The picture emerges from many small details.

Meetings Unrelated to Clients

Barry regularly meets with Santa Clara City Council Members, which wouldn’t be surprising except that many of those meetings do not pertain to Related’s City Place. Since the first public calendars were published in March 2016, Barry has had 15 meetings with current and former City officials unrelated to his client.

Barry’s first recorded non-Related meeting with Mayor Lisa Gillmor was on March 24, 2017 when the Mayor and Council Member Debi Davis met with Barry about the “Project for Public Spaces event at SCU.”

They met again on March 25, 2017 when Barry took part in a “Tri-Village visioning dinner” to discuss the Winchester/Stevens Creek Boulevard area. The meeting also included Hosam Haggag, Kirk Vartan and representatives from the CORE Companies, among others.

On July 6 of this year Barry and Gillmor met with Cupertino Mayor Darcy Paul and Hyperloop Transportation Technologies CEO Dirk Ahlborn, to discuss “Hyperloop opportunities.”

Vice Mayor Kathy Watanabe notched her first meeting unrelated to Related with Barry just last month when the pair had lunch to discuss “transportation issues,” a topic frequently listed on Council Calendars.

Council Member Pat Kolstad also had a meeting with the lobbyist. The lunch, listed as “social” with “no City discussion” occurred on Mar. 31, 2017.

City Council Member Teresa O’Neill and Barry met on March 20, 2016 to discuss VTA issues, March 30, 2017 about transportation (Barry was listed as a land-use consultant for that meeting), April 28, 2017 about transportation issues at El Camino Real and Scott (again Barry was listed as a land-use consultant), Aug. 18, 2017 again about transportation, Sept. 29, 2017 to discuss “Bay Area transportation issues,” and March 7, 2018 to talk about “transportation plans and initiatives.”

Barry and O’Neill also met on July 5, 2016 to talk about Santa Clara elections, July 12, 2017 about the stadium audit (Barry was formerly employed by the San Francisco 49ers) and most recently on Aug. 7, 2018 for lunch to talk about “Thomas Aquinas’ Theory of Just War and interpretations of the Beatitudes.”

The Weekly has verified from multiple commissioners, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, that Barry tried to meet with them privately. Lobbyist laws do not apply to Commissioners and their calendars are not required to be public.

Barry’s most strikingly unusual involvement in Santa Clara’s public business goes beyond conversations with Council Members.

City records show that Barry was hired in 2017 by City sub-contractor Tulchin Research to devise convincing campaign statements for a ballot measure intended to get voter approval for hundreds of millions in bonds for a new aquatics and community center.

Later that year, Barry appeared on the timesheet of Peter Hillan, a City PR consultant, discussing Gillmor’s then-upcoming interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board about a confidential Stadium Authority performance audit report.

Close Ties To Those In Control

Barry’s relationship with Gillmor goes back at least to 2010 when the two worked on the Measure J campaign to build Levi’s Stadium, which Gillmor spearheaded.

O’Neill has an evidently long and friendly relationship with Barry — his most frequently reported meetings are with her, as are most of the ones that are unrelated to his lobbying client

In 2016, Barry and Gillmor arrived together at a Christmas party at O’Neill’s that Davis and Watanabe also attended. This social event was not reported on any calendar, despite the Council’s stated desire for transparency.

Friends and Moneymaking Find Homes in Santa Clara

After Barry surfaced in Santa Clara, so did his subscription software businesses, former clients, and business and political partners and their political methods.

In 2016 the Santa Clara Police Officers Association PAC ran a money funneling operation that channeled money from developers into independent expenditures for Gillmor’s slate of candidates.

This was the same tactic used in Magdalena Carrasco’s 2014 San José City Council campaign, run by Barry’s political and business partner John Shallman. In that campaign $100,000 in “gray money” — partly from a developer front organization, the Neighborhood Empowerment Committee — was funneled through the Fraternal Order of Police PAC for independent expenditures.

Shallman is a lobbyist, and Barry a former lobbyist, for the California Apartment Association, whose PAC donated $10,000 to the 2016 Santa Clara POA PAC’s independent expenditure operation — more than it ever donated in a Santa Clara election.

Shallman himself was never employed in Santa Clara. But Barry’s longtime business political associate Stephen Churchwell was and still is.

Churchwell was hired to defend the City in the recent California Voting Rights (CVRA) lawsuit. He was hired despite having no experience litigating a CVRA case and when the City already had an experienced CVRA litigator on contract. Churchwell is also directing the City’s appeal of the unfavorable decision.

In May 2017 the Silicon Valley Organization, or SVO, (formerly the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce) began meeting with Santa Clara public officials.

In 2012 Barry ran a charter schools PAC with former SVO executive and former San José employee Jay Rosenthal to run a negative campaign against County Board of Education Trustee Anna Song. Barry was also a lobbyist for SVO in 2015.

Barry operates four online election-related businesses — AllPoint Pen, VeraFirma, VoterPros, VoxLoca — which first appeared in Santa Clara in 2016.

That year police chief candidate Patrick Nikolai paid $10,000 for Barry’s VoterPros campaign-in-a-box service. Reportedly, Barry also tried to sell the service to other candidates but they weren’t buying.

In 2016 Davis and Silva’s campaign websites used a service that solicited cell phone numbers for opt-in text message updates. In January 2018 Barry’s robo-text service VoxLoca made its public debut, and was used in June by the police union PAC for a push poll on June’s Measure A — an unreported expenditure to date.

Don’t Just Report the News, Fake The News

Barry is an old hand at using the press to promote his clients and denigrate opponents. But political consultants are starting to skip the middleman and run their own “news” operations.

Fake news has been seen before in Santa Clara.

During the 2002 campaign the “Mission City News” appeared in mailboxes the weekend before the election. Published by longtime political operator Christopher Stampolis, this “newspaper” contained campaign ads as well as misleading “news” that a candidate for Mayor had been found in violation of California’s campaign laws.*

Fast forward 14 years: In 2016 Barry became a trusted advisor for the contemporary digital equivalent of the Mission City News.

During the 2016 election a blog appeared calling itself an alternate “news” source for Santa Clara. Its founder, fired Weekly sports writer Robert Haugh wrote on Oct. 20, 2016 that the blog was spurred by his belief that “Santa Clara deserves better: better news coverage, better ethics in campaigning and better transparency.”

Despite Haugh’s stated intention of increasing transparency in the Mission City, he failed to make the most important disclosure of all: that Mayor Gillmor and Council Member O’Neill were behind starting the blog — something that would explain Haugh’s consistently flattering coverage of the Mayor and her slate during the 2016 election.

Messages in the Weekly’s possession portray Gillmor and O’Neill as actively interested in helping Haugh to start his blog — including finding financing for it — and show Barry in the role of a confidant and an advisor.

In a meeting not reported on Gillmor’s or O’Neill’s calendar, Haugh had lunch with the duo on Sept. 1, 2016. The meeting discussed “news in Santa Clara and ideas on how there could be another news medium there digital based [sic],” according to messages obtained by the Weekly.

In these messages Haugh says, while Gillmor couldn’t directly finance the operation because of Council, “she’ll send me the contact info.” Gillmor provided Barry’s name as someone who could find the funding to start a newspaper. The two had conversations, according to the messages the Weekly has seen.

They discussed the ins and outs of news and strategized on how a news outlet would be possible. In several messages, Barry’s interest was confirmed.

“[Barry] is interested, I didn’t know he started San Jos einside [sic],” said one message.**

In other messages Haugh said, “He wasn’t as worried on start up costs, as opposed to income for me and staff,” and “Working on the $$$ to get going.”

In these messages Haugh claims Barry does not direct anything Haugh publishes, but that the lobbyist has “given some good tips.” Reporters from other Bay Area news outlets have privately described turning down Barry’s attempts at story placement only to see his pitch in Haugh’s blog soon after.

Since the blog began, the City appears to have allied itself with Haugh; giving him privileged City Hall access via unnamed “sources,” trying to interfere with real news organizations’ ability to report on City Hall, and discrediting news sources that don’t follow the Gillmor party line. Haugh, for his part, regularly bashes local newspapers and reporters.

Operating Behind the Curtain

After Barry’s arrival, City 2016 elections reverted to the toxic negative campaigning that the City’s campaign ethics programs were supposed to eliminate. That campaign established a new low.

Previous elections have been heated, but no one running for police chief has ever, to anyone’s knowledge, suggested that his opponent was a dirty cop.

In 2016 the police union PAC funded hit pieces suggesting that the incumbent police chief was dishonest — amplified by Gillmor’s battle cry of “rot and stink” that would be cleaned up by her candidate, Nikolai.

Local attorney, and 2012 Council candidate, John Mlnarik set out to prove Barry was the mastermind behind the campaigns of Debi Davis, O’Neill, Watanabe, Tino Silva and the shadowy political group Stand Up for Santa Clara, filing FPPC complaints against all of them.

“Davis has informed numerous members of the public that Jude Barry is providing professional campaign advice to her and her campaign,” Mlnarik stated in his allegations, on Oct. 14, 2016. (Mlnarik has his resentments, too: Barry planted a hit piece about him in the Metro in 2013.)

“Yet there is no report of Davis paying for Barry’s services on Davis’ Form 460. If Barry is not being paid for his consulting services, an in-kind contribution from Related Companies would be required as Barry is being paid to act as a political operative in Santa Clara.

“The vote to approve the Related Companies development project being advocated for was taken on June 28, 2016,” he continued, “two days before the pre-election reporting period began.”

Likewise, Mlnarik said Barry conducted Silva’s, Watanabe’s and O’Neill’s campaigns, noting that Silva spoke in favor of the Related development at a June 2016 City Council meeting. In October 2016, Silva received $3,000 in donations from individual Related executives in New York and Southern California.

Mlnarik further alleged that Barry was, “acting as the political consultant for Stand Up for Santa Clara.”

Stand Up for Santa is a Clara pro-Gillmor and anti-stadium agitprop website started and run by Santa Clara Youth League (SCYSL) officials and employees Silva, Steve Robertson and Gabe Foo, according to their own public statements. The site does not identify itself as a business, political or non-profit entity.

The FPPC dismissed Mlnarik’s complaint, saying that there was “insufficient evidence.” But the FPPC fined Davis, Silva and Watanabe for filing financial reports late (Jan. 2017) showing $4,000 expenditures in July 2016 for political consulting from Foo Robertson Consulting, incorporated Dec. 29, 2016 — after the election — and whose principal is SCYSL president Gabe Foo.

Foo Robertson Marketing has no Santa Clara business license and no website. But it does have one important client: Mayor Gillmor, according to her September 2018 campaign filing.

Independent sources have told the Weekly that developer donations to the police union PAC were solicited by a committee run by Lisa Gillmor, and that Barry was one of four making the calls, which suggested that it would be a good idea for developers to “participate.”

Every Picture Tells a Story

Perhaps Barry is simply at the right place at the right time to find his name attached to so much that is happening in Santa Clara. A mountain of coincidences could be just that, except for a Silva 2016 post-election party photo in the Weekly’s possession, along with a chain of email messages beginning with the party invitation.

“Thank you,” Davis replied to the invitation from Silva, the party was “on my calendar,” and she told Silva the party was his 2018 campaign “kickoff” — something that was derailed by the Superior Court’s order that Santa Clara must elect its Council from six single-member districts and the court’s ruling about election sequencing.

Barry posed for a party photograph with Silva’s campaign committee. The image was distributed to the guest list — which included Gillmor, O’Neill, Watanabe and Davis as well as the soccer league’s Foo and Field, and Charter Review Committee Members and Measure A advocates Hassam Haggag, Beverly Silva and Saskia Feain.

Describing it as an “awesome group,” Foo asked recipients not to post the photo on social media.

It is said every picture tells a story. The story this picture suggests is about a lobbyist who has inserted himself deeply into Santa Clara City Hall to the point of being an all-but-in-name council member, supporting an all-but-in-name executive mayor.

Referring back to the example of Karl Rove, some might even be prompted to call the Gillmor administration the Barry administration.

* Stampolis was indicted for failing to report this as a campaign mailer, but a judge dismissed it with the logic that newspapers can go out of business after one or two issues.

**Although Barry wrote frequently on San José Inside, the Weekly found no evidence that he was among its founders.

[mmckenzieport]

By Melissa McKenzie & Carolyn Schuk

As a lobbyist for Related Companies’ City Place Santa Clara project, political consultant Jude Barry appears to be more active managing press relations to advance the political interests of the Santa Clara public officials he lobbies than he does those of his employer.

Barry has long been acknowledged for his skill in setting up political smear stories.

In 1998 the Silicon Valley Metro credited Barry with being the man behind former San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales’ political rise. As such, Barry “quickly developed a reputation for being both brilliant and cunning,” wrote reporter Will Harper.

“Media-savvy and reporter-friendly — he originally wanted to be a journalist before going into politics — he would be fingered by his peers as the source anytime embarrassing stories appeared in the newspaper about Gonzales’ foes”

Barry was one of the original writers at SanJoseInside.com, which was founded by former San Jose Mayor Tom McEnery and is now a subsidiary of the Metro. In the early days Barry wrote a substantial amount of political commentary.

Measure J Builds Barry’s Political and Press Base

When the San Francisco 49ers were campaigning in 2010 to build a stadium in Santa Clara, it was Barry who was called upon to get press attention to carry Measure J across the goal line.

Working for the 49ers as a consultant involved actively building public support for Measure J — where his relationship with Yes on J Chair Lisa Gillmor began — and getting favorable press for the stadium proposal.

He also developed a close relationship with a former Santa Clara Weekly sports writer, 49ers fan Robert Haugh, who often took calls from Barry while at the Weekly and was in close contact with Barry throughout the Measure J campaign, according to those who worked beside him.

Haugh wrote about 30 articles on the proposed stadium between September 2009 and June 2010, the last of which describes Measure J’s passage as a “landslide” and “one of the biggest Touchdowns” in the history of the “fabled five-time Super Bowl Champions.”

After Measure J, Barry was dropped from the 49ers PR roster, but he stayed on the scene in Santa Clara, going to work as a lobbyist for Related. But this didn’t mean Barry was staying on the sidelines.

Sultan of Smear Moves Into Santa Clara

In 2012 Barry ran a charter school PAC campaign attacking County Board of Education Member Anna Song, who was running for re-election representing Santa Clara.

Barry also designed ads for a negative campaign against the controversial former Santa Clara Unified Board Member Christopher Stampolis — although he didn’t run the campaign. The ads were so ham-fisted they may have had a boomerang effect and helped elect Stampolis.*

The ads may not have helped Stampolis’ opponents, but they did get press attention. The Mercury News’ Scott Herhold’s column called it “an extraordinary attempt” and “more than a little unusual” in school board elections, which were typically “slumber fests.”

In 2014 Herhold slammed City Council candidate Dominic Caserta’s campaign money raising and reprised an oft-reported story about Caserta’s questionable 2007 phone bills.

Then-Council Member Lisa Gillmor, who backed Caserta’s opponent Roseann LaCoursiere in the race, shopped these stories to the Weekly — insisting to a reporter “you need to write about this.”

The next year Barry drove a San Jose Inside story about the accusation that local attorney John Mlnarik broke campaign laws when he ran for City Council in 2012 against Bill Collins and eventual winner Teresa O’Neill — endorsed by Gillmor who indicated privately that she regarded Mlnarik as something of an interloper.

On Nov. 26 Barry sent an email to blogger and political researcher and consultant James Rowen. The email reads:

“Keep confidential.

“I finally got a reporter to request the Elena Franz lawsuit today. Josh Koen [sic] did. Lots of good stuff in it including claims that he kept track and paid employees to walk precincts and make contributions.

“We should see something in print in a week. Stay tuned.

JB”

A week later the Metro’s “The Fly,” written by former Metro Editor Josh Koehn, published a report on the Mlnarik lawsuit. The case, which was filed on Jan. 25, 2013 — nearly 11 months prior to the report — was dismissed on May 1, 2014.

Reporters from other Bay Area newspapers have privately described turning down attempts by Barry to dictate a story line that they said would soon after appear in Haugh’s blog.

Don’t Just Make the News — Deliver It Already Written

As time went by, Barry got more direct in his approach, proposing in 2014 that the Weekly publish a series of articles written by him and by-lined by Haugh.

When Weekly Editor-in-Chief Angie Tolliver refused to allow the paper to be used as Barry’s personal news outlet and shut down further attempts at story placement, Barry complained to Publisher Miles Barber.

Casting A Shadow On the 2016 City Council Campaign

The 2016 Santa Clara City Council election saw an unprecedented level of negative campaign expertise brought to bear for Gillmor’s slate of candidates: Debi Davis, Teresa O’Neill, Tino Silva and Kathy Watanabe. But no one with that kind of political expertise appeared on campaign reports. At the time there was talk that Barry was managing the campaigns of Gillmor’s slate, although a Fair Political Practices Commission complaint made by Mlnarik was dismissed.

It is on the record that Barry met with Gillmor the summer of 2016 to talk about the “Santa Clara elections,” according to City Hall calendars.

Earlier that year San Jose Inside began attacking the Weekly, suggesting that its reporting on Levi’s Stadium was written by the 49ers. This accusation came shortly after a Weekly piece that challenged Gillmor’s narrative about the stadium rent reset dispute. Haugh’s blog also retailed that same accusation.

In August, San Jose Inside published a hit piece against Patricia Mahan — who was running against Gillmor ally Tino Silva — alleging that she was a lobbyist and had broken the law because Mahan had been a legal advisor to a billboard company with a City contract and was not registered as a lobbyist. A City investigation of the charge found no wrongdoing.

That year’s election saw independent expenditures that were exponentially higher than ever, with $85,000 in developer donations — called “participation” when they were solicited by Gillmor and a few close associates including Barry, according to Weekly sources with first hand knowledge of the operation — funneled through the police union PAC.

The campaign was characterized by vicious, defamatory attacks on opponents, some introduced and publicized in the San Francisco Chronicle and the Mercury News.

In striking ways it was similar to Barry’s special interest PAC campaign against County School Board Member Song.

City Hall Ghostwriter?

In December 2016, Barry sent Council Member Teresa O’Neill an email whose contents show Barry moving from lobbying the Council to operating like the Council’s political aide.

The body of the email, dated Dec. 2, contains a draft of an op-ed Barry authored to be submitted to the San Jose Mercury and a request that the Council Member call him to discuss it.

The email — which was sent to O’Neill’s personal Gmail account and not her City email despite being related to City business — consistently uses “we” in reference to Santa Clara officials.

The op-ed was to be submitted by O’Neill or other Council Members in response to a Nov. 19, 2016 Mercury News editorial about the City Place project. There is no record that it was ever published.

Read the email here: DRAFT Op-ed (Please call me)

Even when other PR specialists are on the job, Barry has managed to put himself in a position to sway local media on behalf of Santa Clara’s elected officials. For example, he was part of a May 2017 phone call between Banner Public Affairs’ Peter Hillan and Gillmor as the trio discussed an upcoming San Francisco Chronicle editorial board meeting, according to Hillan’s timecard.

The combination of timely hit pieces against Gillmor’s political opponents and Barry’s proven expertise in this arena could simply be a coincidence. However, the Santa Clara Weekly has obtained text conversations and emails that open a window into Barry’s cozy relationship with Mayor Lisa Gillmor and her Council allies.

The second part of this story will shine a spotlight on the extent of Barry’s efforts to shape Santa Clara news.

*Similar to the possible effect BLUPAC’s clumsy and tasteless negative campaign may have had on the 2016 City Council election.

Related Articles:

Influence at City Hall: Jude Barry Lobbies Through Santa Clara

Related Lobbyist Jude Barry’s Businesses is Politics — And He’s Selling in Santa Clara

Related Lobbyist Jude Barry’s Former Business Partner is Santa Clara’s Lawyer in Voting Rights Lawsuit

[mmckenzieport]

By Melissa McKenzie & Carolyn Schuk

For Related Companies’ lobbyist Jude Barry politics is business — from selling campaign consulting and lobbying to selling software. But the fact that his business partners and campaign software products have been showing up in Santa Clara with increasing frequency in recent years raises questions.

His closeness to Mayor Lisa Gillmor is well known. They worked together on the campaign to build Levi’s Stadium in 2010 — his first known involvement in Santa Clara politics. Although his name hasn’t appeared on any Santa Clara campaign report, his companies have and accusations were made in 2016 that he was running campaigns. Added to the connections he has with people hired by the City and those lobbying the City, the evidence suggests that his activity at City Hall and in City politics goes beyond lobbying for his client, Related.

Selling Political Savvy

Barry’s first known company is his lobbying and political consulting firm, Catapult Strategies, formed in 2001 with former Mercury News sports writer Peter Allen and John Neece, the former CEO of Santa Clara and San Benito Building and Construction Trades Council.

Catapult also earned $3,000 for “blog advertising” from 2007’s Obama for America PAC, which Barry founded with national politico Joe Trippi and attorney lobbyist Steven Churchwell — who, despite having no experience in California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) litigation, would go on to defend Santa Clara in the voting rights case it just lost.

At one time or another, Barry has been the lobbyist and consultant for many high profile politicians, companies and major projects.

According to state records, Barry grossed $350,000 from state campaigns between 2005 and 2008.

Locally, his clients have included former San José Mayor Ron Gonzalez, disgraced former County Supervisor George Shirakawa, Board of Supervisors candidate Teresa Alvarado, Walmart, Santa Clara’s 2010 Measure J, Related Companies and American Medical Response (AMR), the private ambulance company running county operations.

In 2012 Barry was involved in a negative campaign against former Santa Clara Unified School Board Trustee Christopher Stampolis.

That same year Barry also ran a campaign that collected almost $300,000 to attack Stampolis’ then-wife, Anna Song, who was running for re-election to the County Board of Education. Its address was Barry’s San José office, which is next door to the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce — which has also been a Barry client, according to the Catapult website. *

The PAC was created and funded by charter schools and charter advocacy groups and it paid Barry and his co-chair, political consultant Jay Rosenthal (JMR Strategic), at least $10,000 each according to FPPC filings.** Rosenthal is also a former Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce VP of Public Policy and, like Barry, a former member of San José Mayor Gonzalez’ staff.

The PAC operation was strikingly similar to the independent expenditure operation run by the Santa Clara Peace Officers’ Association (POA) in 2016, where big donations were funneled through the PAC and reported late in the election cycle — called by one online observer a “stealth PAC.”

Selling Software

For Barry, elections aren’t just an opportunity to sell political know-how, they’re also product sales opportunities. Since 2007, he has made a steady stream of product introductions timed to major elections.

Around 2007, he founded Verafirma, an online petition signing company with partners Michael Marubio, Michael Ni and Santa Clara future CVRA defense attorney Churchwell.

Verafirma was used by Ni to sign a petition for a marijuana ballot measure in 2010, but his signature was rejected. Ni filed a lawsuit against the San Mateo Registrar of Voters, which he lost. Churchwell, as well as being a company co-founder, was also Verafirma’s attorney in the case.

Around that time, Barry was blacklisted by labor organizations after allegedly doing business with the anti-labor campaign, the Paycheck Protection Act, which required unions to get members’ approval before dues could be spent on political campaigns. Labor saw it as part of the nationwide movement to disrupt the unions’ political power.

Four years following Verafirma, Barry, Marubio and Jonathan Padilla founded AllPoint Voter Services, an online voter registration company. Padilla was a 2015 candidate for San José City Council, but never ran after the County refused to accept the electronic signatures he gathered. After his failed attempt at a San José Council run, Padilla became a board member of the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce.

AllPoint was paid $95,000 to run the North Carolina 2012 Obama voter registration campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

In Santa Clara, Barry’s businesses also made sales, specifically with at least one of Mayor Gillmor’s preferred 2016 candidates and with the recent Gillmor-endorsed Measure A.

Barry’s VoterPros, a campaign-in-a-box service with integration to the NationBuilder web platform and social media data-scraping tools, was founded with Marubio, Chris Weiss, Morty Shallman and Ro Khanna campaign advisor John Shallman.

The company first came on scene in 2016 and was paid $10,215 by Santa Clara Police Chief candidate Pat Nikolai. The WEEKLY has knowledge that Barry approached at least one additional 2016 candidate who declined to use Barry’s software.

A New Product for a New Election

In 2016, Nikolai was the president of the Santa Clara POA. Although he no longer sits at the helm, in May the Santa Clara POA PAC ran push polls using the services of another Barry business, Voxloca, a text messaging robocall service Barry founded in 2017 with software engineer Ryan Buckley. The two met working on the Garamendi campaign in Sacramento.

According to Buckley’s blog, the company received $3,000 for the service, which was used for two slanted push polls, the first about Measure A and the second about Council Member Patricia Mahan. Neither of these polls appeared to be related to the public safety agency that conducted the poll.

While no record of this expenditure has been filed as of this writing, the Santa Clara firefighters union and police union PACs each reported independent expenditures totaling slightly more than $3,000 in the June 5 election for legal services from an election law attorney closely tied to Santa Clara County Democratic party and local labor politics, Bianca Pirayou. The POA PAC paid $2,400 for “law services prior to 1/8/18,” and the Firefighter’s PAC paid $643.50 for “law services.”

More Money-Making Connections, This Time in L.A.

Barry has other connections to Bianca Pirayou and her husband, also an attorney, Ash Pirayou — the campaign treasurer for Barry’s former employer San José Mayor Ron Gonzalez. San Fernando politician Bob Hertzenberg paid Catapult $48,000 for consulting in Hertzenberg’s unsuccessful 2005 primary run for Mayor of Los Angeles. The Pirayous each donated $1,000 to Hertzenberg’s campaign.

Ash Pirayou is also a registered lobbyist in Santa Clara and San José, meeting with Mayor Gillmor in 2016 and 2017 about redevelopment property, and in March 2018 about “city matters.”

What Does it Mean?

Given Barry’s experience and reported closeness to Mayor Gillmor it’s surprising that his consulting services don’t appear on any City campaign reports. Some at City Hall have dubbed him “the eighth Council Member,” evidenced by the number of reported meetings he has had at City Hall that appear to have nothing to do with his official business in Santa Clara as a lobbyist for Related Companies.

An FPPC complaint was filed in 2016 alleging that Barry was providing unpaid campaign consulting to three of Mayor Lisa Gillmor’s slate of City Council candidates, although the complaint didn’t result in any FPPC action. The same three campaigns filed amended reports at the end of January 2017 showing payments to a new campaign consulting firm — Foo Robertson Marketing, which doesn’t have a Santa Clara business license or a website — formed by former Santa Clara Youth Soccer League president Gabe Foo at the end of December 2016, well after the election for which he was said to have provided services.

The more that’s known about Barry’s connections, the more questions are raised about his influence at Santa Clara City Hall. Was he involved in Measure A? Was he involved in the City hiring a defense attorney without experience in voting rights litigation? What role did he have in the 2016 campaign or the proposed aquatics center project?

As Barry has been on Related’s payroll since 2012, all of this raises questions about Related’s aims in the City. Related executives individually made eleventh hour donations to the 2016 campaign of Gillmor ally Tino Silva (another soccer league former president). Silva was running against Planning Commissioner Raj Chahal, whose ideas about developing the City’s 240-acre golf course differ from Related’s City Place plan. Related Chairman Steven Ross might have been so inspired by candidate Silva that he wrote a check. But it’s more likely he did so at the direct or indirect behest of his paid lobbyist, one with many political irons in many fires.

*The SV/SJCoC took a $200,000 donation from the billionaire Arnold family’s Action Now dark money 501(c)(4), made at the request of former Mayor Chuck Reed. Various Arnold organizations funded Santa Clara’s Measure A, both directly — via their dark money Action Now Initiative LLC — and indirectly — via donations to Maryland-based FairVote by the Arnolds’ 501(c)(3) Foundation.

**Another vendor hired by the Schools PAC was San Francisco-based public opinion pollster Tulchin Research, which, along with Barry (at $325 an hour) was hired as a sub-contractor to Project Finance Advisory LLC (PFAL), the company hired last year by the City Council to find a strategy for getting voter approval for an unfunded $200 million Aquatics and Community Center.

Correction: In our Aug. 1 story, “Related’s Consultant Jude Barry’s Business is Politics,” we incorrectly said that Barry worked on Magdalena Carrasco’s San José City Council campaign. He worked on Teresa Alvarado’s 2010 campaign for county supervisor.  

Related articles:

https://www.svvoice.com/sources-say-yes-on-a-says-yes-to-dark-money-related-consultant-jude-barrys-new-company-running-measure-a-survey/

https://www.svvoice.com/influence-at-city-hall-jude-barry-lobbies-through-santa-clara/

https://www.svvoice.com/citys-lawyer-in-voting-rights-lawsuit-has-business-and-political-ties-to-controversial-lobbyist/

Banner:

https://www.svvoice.com/citys-pr-company-performs-work-prior-to-contract-signing-raises-questions/

FPPC:

https://www.svvoice.com/two-of-three-members-of-council-ethics-committee-charter-review-committee-chair-likely-to-face-fppc-fines-for-campaign-reporting-failures/

Soccer Park:

https://www.svvoice.com/current-santa-clara-council-war-49ers-started-soccer-fields-part-iv-city-staff-political-opponents-press-become-targets-soccer-leagues-war/

Milestones:

https://www.svvoice.com/milestones-12/

Calenders:

https://www.svvoice.com/curious-city-council-and-staff-findings-on-june-calendars/

https://www.svvoice.com/politics-and-business-make-an-interesting-mix-at-city-hall/

https://www.svvoice.com/minimal-lobbyist-developer-meetings-on-may-council-calendars-2/

https://www.svvoice.com/too-many-council-members-attend-yet-another-event-in-april-developers-and-labor-lobby/

https://www.svvoice.com/the-core-companies-dominate-march-council-calendars/

https://www.svvoice.com/october-council-calendars-and-whats-missing/

[mmckenzieport]

By Melissa McKenzie & Carolyn Schuk

Although the name of Related’s lobbyist, Jude Barry, has been scarce on Santa Clara City Council Member calendars of late, it doesn’t necessarily mean Barry is completely off the books. He has a long history of situating himself in the middle of South Bay politics, and particularly, the political landscape of Santa Clara for nearly a decade.

Democratic Party Politico

Barry’s political history in the South Bay began in 1988, although he had previously worked on former-U.S. Senator Teddy Kennedy’s, Gary Hart’s and Richard Gephardt’s campaigns in Washington, D.C.

It was in that year, just two months before the primary, when Barry was called to San Jose to run Ron Gonzales’ successful mayoral campaign. Barry became Gonzales’s chief of staff and quickly made a name for himself in Silicon Valley.

In 2001, a year after Barry was blacklisted by the Executive Secretary-Treasurer and Chief Officer of the California Labor Federation—for promoting a ballot measure requiring member consent to donate union dues to political campaigns—Barry founded Catapult Strategies, Inc.

A public relations and marketing firm, Catapult has assisted with the local campaigns for Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, disgraced former County Supervisor George Shirakawa, County Supervisors Dave Cortese and Ken Yeager and former San Jose City Councilman Sam Liccardo, among others.

Barry does not stake claim to Liccardo’s victorious 2015 mayoral campaign. However, former Mercury News reporter Ramona Giwargis broke a story in late 2015 about Barry’s involvement in Liccardo’s “kitchen cabinet”—Liccardo’s trusted group of advisors with whom he discussed political strategies and the then-mayor-elect’s relationship with reporters. Soon after Liccardo ended his kitchen cabinet weekly calls, Barry became a more visible presence in City of Santa Clara politics.

Campaigns Are His Business

In addition to his Catapult consulting and lobbying business, Barry is partner and co-founder of four online businesses related to campaigns, voter registration and ballot measures: VoterPros, Allpoint Pen, Verafirma and the company that made its Santa Clara debut last week, the Voxloca text robo-polling service.

VoterPros is a political direct mail platform that integrates with NationBuilder, a platform for managing campaign websites, mailing lists and donations. Multiple candidates in the 2016 election cycle used VoterPros and NationBuilder, including most of Mayor Lisa Gillmor’s slate of candidates. In 2016 candidate for Police Chief Patrick Nicolai bought VoterPros service, paying Barry’s company $10,000.

Last month, the Santa Clara Police Officers Association bought Voxloca’s service for $3,000 and has subsequently run two push polls about Measure A and the 49ers.

Barry’s two other online ventures, Allpoint Voter Services and Verafirma market technology for digital signatures on voter registration forms and petitions on the web via touch screen devices.

Making Friends in the Neighborhood

Barry and Gillmor first become close when working on the San Francisco 49ers Measure J campaign, the June 2010 ballot measure that eventually brought the second most expensive stadium in the NFL to Santa Clara.

Barry, a hired lobbyist and consultant for the team, and Gillmor, the chair and spokesperson for the campaign, coordinated their efforts to engage the community, gather signatures and sway voters to support the building of the football team’s new home.

Although they could have simply worked on the campaign and parted ways, Barry has become part of Gillmor’s behind-the-scenes team in a way that invites comparisons with Liccardo’s Kitchen Cabinet.

Barry appeared on Council calendars with regard to the subject of “traffic on El Camino and Scott,” which wouldn’t seem to have any relation to his official client, Related.

When the City contracted with Banner Public Affairs, Barry popped up on Peter Hillan’s calendar.

Hillan, who served as the 49ers spokesperson throughout the Measure J campaign, and Barry had a 30-minute phone call with Gillmor on May 24 of last year to discuss a San Francisco Chronicle editorial board meeting the Mayor attended.

This phone call was never listed on Gillmor’s calendar and only surfaced when Hillan’s timesheets were made public. Yet another meeting with a City official that had nothing to do with Related.

That meeting resulted in a Chronicle opinion piece and video where the relationship between the 49ers and Santa Clara was described as “David and Goliath”—an analogy Santa Clarans have heard more than once in regard to City-49ers relations.

With Gillmor’s trusted team being two major players in bringing the stadium to Santa Clara, and Gillmor herself being one of the prime movers in that effort, that’s a curious statement. But the narrative devised by her two personal political and strategic communications consultants has resonated with residents.

There have been minimal efforts at Santa Clara City Hall to increase visibility into City officials’ activities. But although no meetings or calls with Barry show up on official calendars now—except those with O’Neill—and no email communications appear in records requests, there is nothing showing that his influence has declined.

This mountain of small coincidences leads to a picture of Barry as the man behind the Santa Clara curtain pulling the strings to better position himself and his client.

A 1998 Metro article profiling Barry’s involvement with Gonzales’ campaign said it best: “like any good political advisor, he gladly takes the heat for his boss. One board aide for another supervisor likens it to a good cop, bad cop routine. ‘The real question,’ the aide says, ‘is who is really the bad cop—Ron or Jude?’”

[mmckenzieport]

By Melissa McKenzie & Carolyn Schuk

In 2005 when Jude Barry was managing Steve Westly’s unsuccessful primary campaign for California governor, the Related Companies’ lobbyist was so well known nationally that CNN political commentator Carlos Watson dubbed him a candidate to be “the next Karl Rove.”

Since then Barry has been popping up as a paid advisor, consultant or strategist for Santa Clara’s biggest development projects.

His political history is long and storied, but it’s his ability to position himself as the guy who gets things done within the City that gives him the appearance of unusual sway over municipal politics.

One of his early introductions to Santa Clara City Hall came in 1990 when Barry was an aide to then County Supervisor Ron Gonzalez. Gonzalez was part of a regional team working to bring a baseball park to Santa Clara. The ballpark plan was championed by a young Santa Clara Parks and Recreation Commissioner Kevin Moore and meetings were held in Santa Clara. Voters turned down the baseball stadium when they were asked to approve a county tax to fund it.

Fast forward 17 years. Barry was hired as a lobbyist for the San Francisco 49ers. His assignment was running the successful Measure J campaign in 2010, which ultimately resulted in the state-of-the-art Levi’s Stadium off Tasman Drive.

During the Measure J campaign, Barry and Santa Clara Mayor Lisa Gillmor—who was not on Council at that time and chaired the Yes on J committee, Santa Clarans for Economic Progress (SCEP)—worked closely together on the sole goal of building a new home for the 49ers in the City.

The two, along with volunteers, sought signatures—and eventually gathered 6,000—to add Measure J to the June 8, 2010 ballot, at a cost of $390,000 taxpayer dollars. Only 25,133 of Santa Clara residents voted that June and the Measure passed with 58.2 percent of the vote.

Gillmor wasn’t the only Council Member to work closely with Barry in his work with SCEP and his role as a lobbyist. Current Vice Mayor Watanabe and Gillmor, along with current Council Member Debi Davis, appeared in TV ads for the measure.

June 2010 election night photos show Watanabe’s husband, West Valley Mission College Board of Trustees member Karl Watanabe and their daughter at the Measure J party. Watanabe is featured in photos of resident supporters at a Jan. 2012 Council meeting and the family was featured in an album of supporters on SCEP’s Facebook page in 2010.

Then-Council Member Moore was a champion of the stadium—he subsequently wrote a book about it—as was former Council Member Jerry Marsalli and former Mayor and current Council Member Patricia Mahan.

Soon after Measure J’s passing, Barry and the 49ers parted ways, but he was quickly picked up as a lobbyist for the 240 acre, $6.5 billion City Place project by the builder, Related Companies.

A Weekly reporter received an informal preview of the concept from Council Member Moore at the Gillmor Real Estate office in the summer of 2012, before the proposal’s subsequent public introduction. It appeared that the team that had won the stadium victory was reassembling to build a Santana Row-like entertainment and retail center across from Levi’s Stadium.

For the past six years, Barry has held meetings with Council Members—often being listed as consultant or with his company, Catapult Strategies, Inc.—to lobby for Related’s mixed use project near Levi’s Stadium. Developing relationships with the Santa Clara decision-makers, notably Gillmor and Council Member Teresa O’Neill, may have helped the developer persuade the Council to approve the project.

In 2017, Barry took a curious detour from his work for Related, which Barry still lists on his lobbyist report.

Barry teamed up with polling and strategic consulting firm Tulchin Research, at a rate of $325 an hour, to perform work on behalf of Project Finance Advisory Ltd. (PFAL), the firm charged with bringing the yet-to-be-funded $252 million Santa Clara International Swim Center project to fruition. This is documented in Council agenda reports about the exploratory project.

Barry also led community town halls that tested the persuasiveness of different statements for a potential parcel tax ballot measure to finance the new swim center.

Neither Tulchin nor PFAL are listed on Barry’s most recent lobbyist filing dated Jan. 16, 2018, which states Barry’s only client is Related.

In recent months, the website for Barry’s company, www.getcatapult.com, has been taken down, but is viewable as a Google site, https://sites.google.com/site/getcatapult/Home, and, although not mentioned on the website, Barry’s work lobbying and consulting Santa Clara Council continues.