Alameda Firefighters Close 2012 with Almost $30,000 in Political Warchest

The Alameda firefighters political committee spent over $42,000 in 2012.

The Firefighters Association committee spent over $42,000 in 2012, much of that in support of Stewart Chen, Marilyn Ashcraft and Jeff Cambra, who ran campaigns to get elected to Alameda City Council last November. Chen and Ashcraft succeeded while Cambra did not.

The over $42,000 figure does not include expenditures on behalf of the Alameda Firefighters Association to pass Measure C last year, a local sales tax increase that would have funded new equipment and new facilities for the Alameda Fire Department. The firefighters union contributed over $33,000 to the pro-Measure C committee, which was headed by Steve Menger, who also heads the Alameda Firefighters Association Political Action Committee, the general purpose political committee for the union.

The pro-Measure C group spent over $77,000 to try to pass the tax increase, but it failed at the ballot box in June of last year.

In 2012, the firefighters reported raising over $20,000 in contributions for its general purpose committee, a figure that was dwarfed by the almost $61,000 in contributions to the committee in 2010, the prior general election year.