Two social media influencers who filed an ethics complaint against Tom Steyer’s California gubernatorial campaign have submitted new complaints to the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission and the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, accusing Nithya Raman’s mayoral campaign of paying influencers without proper disclosure. Their complaints, it turns out, received a legal assist from the campaign of L.A. The metadata for a draft of their filings last week revealed that they had been created with the help of the law firm used by Bass’ election campaign.
Kaitlyn Hennessy, who filed the complaint with Beatrice Gomberg, acknowledged to The Times that the Bass campaign steered them to the Kaufman Legal Group, which helped prepare the complaint. Bass’ campaign said it is picking up the tab for the legal work but wasn’t paying Hennessy and Gomberg for their efforts. The complaint focused on posts by comedian and TV personality Adam Conover and influencer-turned-Raman staffer Eric Cheng, along with a host of so-called “meme” accounts, which repost content created by others, sometimes at the behest of political campaigns.
The Raman campaign said it has done nothing wrong and denied any wrongdoing on behalf of Cheng. Conover also denied any wrongdoing. The Bass campaign’s decision to cover legal costs for the complaints is unlikely to pose ethics issues, according to legal experts consulted by The Times, provided the payments are reported by the campaign in its disclosure reports, which the campaign said it intends to do.
Conover’s posts promoting Raman already attracted scrutiny in ethics complaints filed in May by former L.A. City Council candidate Dylan Kendall. The investigations into those complaints, to the FPPC and L.A.
Ethics Commission, are ongoing. Conover told The Times that payments made by the campaign to a company connected to him were not for his posts but for video work one of his staffers did for Raman’s campaign. They initially were described in Raman’s campaign filings as payments for online ads but later were amended to say they were for video production services.
A spokesperson for Raman’s campaign said Cheng is paid for work he does for the campaign, not for posts on his personal social media account, and that it had gotten guidance from L.A. Ethics Commission staff on Cheng’s disclosure requirements to ensure it was in compliance. The spokesperson added that Cheng voluntarily posted on his social media account that he would be joining the campaign before his employment began.
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