Who Owns the Mayor of San Marcos?

According to her 2018 campaign disclosure statement, mayoral candidate Rebecca Jones received $50,965 in donations from 180 individuals. Only 53 have San Marcos addresses. Seven of ten of her cash supporters were, like me, not eligible to vote in the election.

Jones’s opponent, Chris Orlando, raised $29,000 in donations from 139 individuals, 94 of whom have San Marcos addresses.

I was disappointed to learn that our new home in San Marcos, although within city limits, is located in the San Diego County unincorporated area of Lake San Marcos. We cannot vote in city elections, even though we are functionally subservient to the city.

As the November election draws near, I’ve resolved not to vote for any county, state or national candidate before I follow the money to find out who gave them the cash to run their campaigns. Thanks to federal and state law requiring candidates to file public disclosure statements, you can find out who owns an elected official’s loyalty.

Here’s an example of how that works at the federal level. According to the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, Incoming first-term members of Congress are instructed to spend upwards of four hours per day raising money, which is time taken away from the legislative responsibilities of being an elected official.

Without a vote, but with the power of the pen, I’m following the money of San Marcos elected officials, beginning with Mayor Jones.

Addresses and occupations of donors are required on the California Fair Political Practices Commission Form 460. If a total of $100 or more is received from a single contributor during a calendar year, the name, street address, city, state and zip code of the contributor must be included. Self-employed donors must give the name of their businesses.

Missing from Mayor Jones’s disclosure statement, posted on the city’s website, were both the addresses of donors and the businesses or occupations of those listing “self-employed,” as required by law.

The city’s communications manager, Robin Rocker, told me the addresses had, in fact, been redacted by the city, which is allowed by California’s TITLE 9. POLITICAL REFORM  ACT of 2016, and which reads, in part: The data made available on the Internet shall not contain the street name and building number of the persons or entity representatives listed on the electronically filed forms...The local filing officer shall make a complete, unredacted copy of any statement…including any street names, building numbers…to any person upon request.

The act does not prohibit posting on the Internet a donor’s city of residence. Carlsbad, unlike San Marcos, lists each donor's city of residence.

The act also does not allow self-employed donors to withhold the names of their businesses.

San Marcos city officials have chosen to deny the public’s access on the Internet to find out where a candidate lives and what self-employed candidates do for a living.  

Upon my request, the communications manager gave me Mayor Jones’s and Candidate Orlando’s unredacted campaign statements that list the addresses of donors. But the occupations of the self-employed, as required by law, were withheld. I had to resort to Google searches to find that information.  

Here’s what I discovered from Jones’s unredacted campaign statements: John Franklin, a Vista resident, is President of Pacific Political, Inc. a company that provides “political consultation and management to Republican candidates across America.”

A total of $750 came from three donors, S E Triandafilidis, Stephen Triandafilidis and John Triandafilidis, each kicking in $250, the maximum allowed an individual. All three gave the same address, 3535 Princeton Drive NE Albuquerque, NM 87107. All say they are “self-employed,” with no businesses named.

A Google search of Corporation Wiki, a business directory site which aggregates business and employee information from the public record, reveals that Stephen Triandafilidis is Manager for Lvp Acquisitions, LLC, and has been associated with fifteen companies. John Triandafilidis is Manager of Bases Loaded LLC, associated with twenty-eight companies. I could find no information at all about S E Triandafilidis.

So, who owns the mayor of San Marcos? I’m guessing it’s not the 53 local residents who gave cash to her campaign.

My Do-It-Yourself Obituary

Early this morning, in a pause in our conversation, Karen turned to me and declared, “Today we are going to write our obituaries.”

“I feel fine,” I assured her, “But don’t you think you should call the body snatchers first?”

Five years ago, we joined BioGift Anatomical and Surgical Education Center, a firm in Portland, Oregon that accepts body donations for medical research. All expenses are covered, from transportation, to the return of cremated remains.

Here’s just a sample of the medical research BioGift supports:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease)
• Bipolar disorder
• Huntington’s disease
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Muscular Dystrophy
• Osteoporosis
• Parkinson’s disease
• Schizophrenia

Karen and I were inspired to do this upon the passing of a dear friend. In his final days, he told us he took comfort from being able to help others, while freeing his family from funeral expenses.

Upon signing up with BioGift, Karen and I were each issued an ID card, carrying the telephone number to call for a pick up if neither of us is there. Last year, Karen’s card went missing in packing our belongings for the move to our new home in this 55+ retirement community,. To my relief, her call today would be for a replacement card, not a pick up.

“But why write our obituaries today?” I asked my always-prepared love of my life.

“Well, I didn’t want you to have to do it for me. It will be too hard for you because you’ll be so sad.”

That made me feel a little guilty, since I hadn’t given a thought to her feelings if I’m the first to go. I agreed to write my obituary.

Where to begin? As a nonfiction writer, I did my research. I found a sample on the internet, providing this outline: death announcement, biographical information, list of survivors and predeceased family members, scheduled services, and memorials.    

The death announcement had to include my middle name, as well as the places and dates of my birth and death, with a photo optional. 

Our neighbor Ron is 102, plays the piano in our community dining hall at Sunday Champaign Brunches, attends the Chateau’s balance classes, and says his secret to a long life is to keep breathing. I figure my daily 24-Hour Fitness workouts, and following Ron’s advice, should keep me as healthy as he is. So, I’m listing my projected date with death as November 13, 2046.

As for the photo, I’ll choose one of the few that were taken when I had hair.

Karen is a novelist who doesn’t believe in outlines. Which explains the whimsy of her obit’s opening line: “Karen Truesdell Riehl has yet to die, but many of us are still hoping.”

My biographical information about education and jobs will be easy enough, as will the listing of my lifetime achievements. A pretty good athlete during my school years, I’ve discovered that when memory fails, the older I get, the better I was.

Things get a bit more complicated when it comes to listing my survivors. Today I’ll need to include Karen, my four children, and Karen’s four children, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren. By 2046 the list is likely to get a lot longer.

As for memorials, in recent years, my college alma mater has developed a special fondness for me. They send frequent reminders of the great education I had there and how I could help them stay great. Since I haven’t been a major contributor in this life, they’re hoping I’ll be more generous in the next.

As for funeral services, Karen says she’d prefer to have hers before she goes, so that she can hear some nice things said about her before she’s not around to hear them. That sounds good to me.

By noon we decided not to write our own obits, after all, just to look forward to receiving Karen’s BioGift replacement ID card and reaffirming our decisions to donate our bodies to medical science.    

They Called Her Dummy

Every time our fourth-grade teacher told us to open our books for the day’s history lesson, I braced myself. She would ask each student, one by one, up and down each row, to read a paragraph aloud. Every time Wanda (not her real name) was asked to read. Sister Ursula had to help her sound out each word. Whatever spark of interest had been kindled in me by history that day would be snuffed out by Wanda’s painstaking struggle with words.

Those of us who didn’t need the teacher’s help figured Wanda was not as smart as we were. We generally ignored her. When I once overheard one of my buddies tell her she was a dummy who smelled bad, I didn’t have the courage to speak up in her defense.

The only reason Wanda did not get bullied more openly and often is that we were in a Catholic school. We knew bad behavior would be met with the usual punishment: knuckles rapped by a nun, swinging a wooden ruler, followed by a one-hour sentence of kneeling in the hall on the hard linoleum floor to give us time to think about what we had done.

Fast forward 30 years to the day I met Karen. We were cast together in a community theater production of Angel Street, the stage version of the 1944 film, Gaslight. As I got to know her, I learned she could have been Wanda. Not the one I knew, but someone else who could not read before the age of 10. She was called a smelly dummy by Brucie, Michael, Jerry and John, her public school’s apostles of bullying.

In Karen’s case the name-calling grew to include forcing her to dodge pebbles thrown at her. At recess she sought protection from her tormentors by hiding behind a building. The playground was just another battleground for her.

Karen was lucky to have a mother who encouraged her, helping her with her spelling after school each day. But she also found comfort from her fantasy friend, Bette Davis.

From the earliest she could remember, Karen wanted to be a movie star. She often retreated to her bedroom to act out scenes from her best friend’s movies, waving an imaginary cigarette in grand gestures, the way her idol would do.

By the time Karen reached high school her difficulty in reading had been overcome by her talent on stage. Her success in leading roles in college led to a call back audition with Otto Preminger. But, even at that time, the damage she took to her self-esteem as a grade schooler robbed her of the self-confidence required for that all-important audition with the legendary director.

Preminger sat on a high stool, in a darkened room, peering down at the timid, aspiring actor before him. He asked Karen, “What have you done?” Forgetting the accolades showered on her previous leading roles, she could find only the words, “Oh… nothing.” Never again would she come as close to achieving her dream of movie stardom.

Karen told me, despite her experience in professional and community theater over the years, she has never been able to overcome a feeling of not being good enough, stemming from her lifelong struggle with reading.

When her daughter encountered the same problem in school, Karen sent her to a learning disability specialist, who diagnosed the problem as dyslexia, a word Karen had never heard.

She learned dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence, but only with the inability to automatically match the letters you see on a page with the sounds those letters and combinations of letters make.

It turns out Wanda and Karen were not dummies, after all.

Here’s what researchers at the Yale University Center for Dyslexia & Creativity  have discovered about dyslexia:

--Dyslexia is an unexpected difficulty in reading for an individual who has the intelligence to be a much better reader.

--While people with dyslexia are slow readers, they often are very fast and creative thinkers.

--Dyslexia cannot be cured, but with accommodations, it need not keep a person from excelling in whatever occupation they choose.

--Dyslexics do not see and write words and letters backwards. That’s an ongoing myth that can’t seem to die.

--One in five of the U.S. population has dyslexia. With about 140 residents in this senior living community, I’m guessing Karen’s not alone.

Here are some warning signs of dyslexia that show up in elementary school.

--Slow and awkward reading

--Trouble reading unfamiliar words, making wild guesses because they can’t sound out the word

--Avoidance of reading out loud

But here are some strengths of dyslexics as they reach adulthood.

--Excellent writing skills if the focus is on content, not spelling

--Exceptional empathy and warmth

--Success in areas not dependent on rote memory

--The ability to come up with original insights

--Inclination to think outside of the box and see the big picture

--Noticeably resilient and able to adapt

Karen chooses not to join Book-of-the-Month clubs because of the burden of her slow reading and the time she must set aside for writing her own books. But when her 2015 San Diego Book Awards Winner, Helga: Growing up in Hitler’s Germany, was chosen for discussion by our Château’s book club, she found the time to attend.

Although Otto Preminger dashed Karen’s dream of movie stardom, I can’t hold it against him. Had she been an Academy Awards winner, it’s unlikely this small-town boy would ever have met her.