Gifts Push Ethics Panel to Lift Fund-Raising Limit

Two groups, one with ties to a troubled East Los Angeles political organization, informed the City Ethics Commission on Friday that they were preparing to spend $77,000 to bolster Councilman Nick Pacheco’s reelection bid.

Commission officials said that, once they confirm the independent expenditures by the Laborers’ Local 300 and Mothers for Nick, they will lift the $330,000 spending limit imposed on Pacheco and his challengers -- former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and onetime Olympic gold medalist Paul Gonzales -- in the 14th District race.

The two independent expenditures come as Pacheco is nearing the spending cap with five weeks left in the race.

The group Mothers for Nick filed papers with the Ethics Commission disclosing that it planned to spend $27,000 to send out 50,000 fliers touting Pacheco’s accomplishments. The Eastside group, which is headed by one of Pacheco’s college friends, recently changed its name from La Colectiva.

La Colectiva was identified by the district attorney’s office as a player in a widely criticized event during the 2001 mayoral race: Near the end of that campaign, phone calls were placed to voters in which a woman impersonating County Supervisor Gloria Molina warned against supporting Villaraigosa.

Investigators later concluded that La Colectiva, run by Pacheco’s childhood friend Martin GutieRuiz, used a phone bank owned by Pacheco’s nonprofit group, CAL Inc., to send out the disparaging calls to voters. Both CAL Inc. and La Colectiva went out of business amid the fallout over the phone calls.

Esparanza Vielma, who went to UC Berkeley with Pacheco, said the organization is now composed mostly of Boyle Heights mothers who knew Pacheco as a child.

“As a home-grown product of our community, naturally it would mean a lot to us to retain Nick Pacheco as our councilman,” Vielma wrote in an appeal for funds sent to residents in the district, which includes parts of Boyle Heights, Highland Park, Mount Washington and Eagle Rock.

A spokesman for Laborers’ Local 300, which represents 7,000 construction workers and carpenters, said his group had contracted with a consultant to send out two mailings, spending at least $50,000.

“We are going to be talking about why we support Nick,” said Jim Hilfenhaus, a union spokesman.

“We have worked with him on an issue in the district, and you couldn’t get a better performance by a politician in defense of workers.”