CV Councilman Misused Legal Defense Fund to Raise $90,000, Appears to Violate State & Local Laws
By Alberto Garcia
Chula Vista politician John McCann used a legal defense fund to recoup legal fees he owed from a 2014 defamation lawsuit he filed – and he appears to have violated state and local election laws by using a legal defense fund to file a lawsuit, not defend one.
McCann, a registered Republican, ran for election to the Chula Vista City Council in 2014 against former Mayor Steve Padilla, a Democrat. McCann won by only two votes in the November 2014 General Election.
Just weeks before that election, McCann filed a defamation lawsuit against a San Diego labor union claiming one of its campaign mailers was defamatory. McCann, as the plaintiff, named the union, its leader, and its campaign committee as defendants.
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South of Redding, residents formed the Cottonwood militia more than a decade ago when five local businesses in the town were robbed on five subsequent nights, according to one of the group’s founders and leaders, Woody Clendenen. It has since grown from 11 members to a sizeable political force, including Zapata, with an increasingly savvy media reach across Northern California and beyond.
Its members are well-known in the community, offering a scholarship each year, hosting a boys’ camp, and sometimes being called in lieu of the police, said Clendenen.
“It grew into almost kind of a political action committee,” said Clendenen, a Cottonwood barber and bit actor in Hollywood B-movies. Candidates for office would call and court militia members for support, he said. Before the pandemic, he said, “our fundraiser dinners, the sheriff and the supervisors come.”