If ever a campaign smelled fishy, it is the campaign of Mariela Ponce for the District 2 seat on Stockton’s City Council. Ponce is running what may be the darkest campaign in the history of Stockton.
She has made no public appearances of which I am aware. She’s given minimum interviews. She has no campaign page. She has not detailed her position on any issue. It’s not even clear who is running her campaign.
Ponce, “did not appear at forums, didn’t have a candidate page, and not much information could be found online about her,” a baffled Bay City News reported after the primary.
“No one I know has caught a glimpse of her,” her opponent, Wakar Rizvi, says in a telephone ad.
Yet ghosting the public worked for Ponce in the primary. She won with 38% of the vote against 24.7% for Rizvi. Rizvi campaigned in the sunshine and Ponce in the dark, and the dark won.
A campaign so lacking in transparency should not win the general election. No campaign like this should ever win.
The League of Women Voters invited Ponce and Rizvi to its candidate forum at Delta College in September. Rizvi accepted.
“If both of them were willing we would have done it for sure,” said Suzy Daveluy, the League’s Voter Services Committee chair. “But we received no response from Ponce.”
That not only denied voters a chance to learn who Ponce is and what she stands for, but Rizvi as well. If one candidate declines to participate, the League does not hold that district’s forum. Even though Rizvi was ready and willing.
Ponce, a health care worker at Community Medical Center (one of the few things known about her) did campaign — that is, her campaign has sent out at least two mailers, and she has lawn signs.
Those cost money. But Ponce’s campaign finance documents, the 460s, report no income and no expenditures from December 2023 when she formed her campaign committee right up through this month when she recorded her first and only donation.
Her mailers also appear to violate campaign law. The political Reform Act of 1974 requires candidates to add “disclaimers” which report who paid for campaign ads. The purpose, of course, is to enable you to see donors and possibly learn what they expect for their money.
The Fair Political Practices Commission gives two examples:
Paid for by Jones for Assembly 20XX
Paid for by Friends of Smith for Mayor 20XX
Ponce’s mailers bear no such disclaimers. Her campaign reeks of dark money.
Political insiders believe Sam Fant is running Ponce’s campaign–though no one is certain because Fant doesn’t hang a shingle out like most political consultants do. His involvement would explain a lot. Fant pleaded no contest to conspiracy and election fraud charges in 2017. Councilmember Brando Villapudua alleged Fant offered him a bribe. The district attorney declined to file charges.
Fant is the campaign manager who brought you Council Member Michele Padilla. Padilla falls somewhere between the council’s worst member and a natural disaster. She doesn’t get government and never will.
But she is a robotic vote for the 209 Times, the toxic disinformation site that supports her, and which was recently denounced by the San Joaquin County Civil Grand Jury.
In “City of Stockton: Crisis in Government,” the Grand Jury said the 209 Times’ allies on the council are “complicit in the deterioration of … ethical governing in Stockton.”
Ponce’s most recent mailer contained an insert: a campaign refrigerator magnet from mayoral candidate Christina Fugazi. This two-for-one campaign mailer speaks volumes about Fugazi’s allies.
I mentioned that Ponce recorded her first and only campaign contribution this month: it was $5,500 from Jason Lee. Lee is also a candidate for City Council, in his case District 6.
Last year Lee tried to do an end-run around the competitive bidding process and rake in $2 million of city money (later reduced to $1 million) for his nebulous youth program. When city officials channeled the proposal into the standard vetting process and examined it, they found it irresponsibly vague and rejected it.
A conscientious council majority prevailed in that instance. But the insistence on giving tax dollars to qualified recipients will not exist if the 209 Times allies gain a majority on the council.
The only other thing online about Ponce are court papers. Such as her lawsuit to appear on the ballot when the San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters declared her ineligible.
Ponce handled the suit “in pro per,” meaning she represented herself, though skeptics suspect someone legally qualified helped her file a Verified Petition for Writ of Mandamus.
Her court fee of $435 was paid for by Anthony R. Ussery of Lathrop. The check bounced.
Ponce won her case and with it the right to appear on the ballot.
In March 2022 a debt collector sued Ponce in San Joaquin Superior Court for failing to pay her Macy’s credit card bill of $3,452. Neither court records nor the debt collection firm Cavalry SPV I, LLC, which I contacted, have a record showing whether Ponce paid all or part of her debt. But there was a resolution, as the case was dismissed in September.
We’ve all had credit card debt. But someone who had to be dragged into court by debt collectors should not manage city finances.
Ponce was not at work the day I called her at Community Medical Center, and CMC declined to reach her with a message that I called.
“Just ethically we cannot contact her about this issue,” said Sara Taft, CMC’s communications director. “It doesn’t have to do with her as an employee.”
After days of searching, I managed to obtain an email for Ponce and sent her a list of questions. She did not respond until after the deadline: “I seen this email a bit late can I still send you my response?” she asked. I gave her more time. That was the last I heard from her.
Ponce finally did email some answers to The Record (she has, to my knowledge, never done an in-person interview). The answers are generic, lacking in specifics, and may not even be written by her. One answer, “On a basic human level, I plan to be accessible to my constituents,” managed to be ironic.
I have two theories about Ponce’s ghost campaign.
First, she’s hiding something. It’s tempting to add ‘duh.’
Second, her handlers are testing if they can use dark money to slip a candidate past voters who won’t say who she is and what she stands for. It’s up to District 2 voters to send a message that this sort of shady campaign is completely unacceptable.
Because if the Ponce wins, expect more ghost candidates who won’t answer to you, to the press or to anyone else — except to the people who want to buy City Hall with dark money.
Michael Fitzgerald’s column runs on Wednesdays. On Twitter and Instagram as Stocktonopolis. Email: mfitzgeraldstockton@gmail.com.