Guffanti Gibson hanky panky transfer of $5000 given by developer David Arnold

The following refers to what could be interpreted as an attempt to hide money donated by developer David Arnold to Jim Gibson and his slate candidate, Patty Anderson during the 2006 campaign. Had the community known that Gibson was taking money from a SECOND developer who wanted to stop the construction of our third high school at a second site after FIRST taking massive amounts of money in 2002 from those opposed to the cheap level Strawberry hill site, perhaps Gibson would not have been re-elected. This deal smells dirty. It looks dirty. I looks like an attempt to manipulate campaign finance laws. However the North County Times editor has refused to allow me to write any of this, so the following post had to be a bit 'cutesy' and a bit obtuse. I was not allowed to even ask in question form if this could be campaign money laundering.


Speaking of financial oddness, Guffanti do you remember in 2006 when you accepted a $5000 campaign gift from David Arnold the owner of the Melrose site of our new third high school? You do remember Mr. Arnold right? He was the guy who wanted to build houses at the site instead of a high school and filed an expensive lawsuits against the district to stop the third high school from being built.

Weird you would accept money from someone wasting VUSD resources. Weirder still, you were not running for re-election in 2006, but Jim Gibson was.


Then something really strange happened, do you remember some weeks later writing the Forum piece in this paper patting yourself on the back for giving $5000 to the Gibson campaign. If not you can re-read it here:

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2006/10/23/opinion/commentary/102206140413.txt


Quite a co-incidence that you gave exactly the same amount to Gibson that you got from Arnold. But puzzling that in your Forum piece you never mentioned that Arnold had given you $5000 a few weeks earlier. Since you were not running no one knew about Arnold's $5000 donation until January 2007--two months after Jim Gibson was re-elected.

Here is the North County Times article that made the community aware of the weird coincidence:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/02/06/news/inland/2_04_282_5_07.txt

How do you explain the coincidence of the $5000, Guffanti? Please do enlighten us.

Here are some quotes from the article above:

"Though he wasn't running in the election, Trustee Stephen Guffanti received $5,000 in September for his election committee from Hi Hope Ranch Ventures, a subsidiary of Hillcrest Homes, according to a campaign finance report filed recently with the county"

and another

"David Arnold, president of Tustin-based Hillcrest Homes, said Monday he didn't recall donating the money to Guffanti's war chest and didn't want to comment."

and one more

"Within weeks of Arnold's donation, Guffanti's committee contributed $5,000 to the campaigns of Gibson and first-time candidate Anderson, who were running for two open seats on the board."