Developer Helps Out Angelides

A Sacramento developer and his daughter reported Friday that they were spending $5 million on television advertising to promote Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides, a move that gives a lift to his cash-strapped campaign but opens the candidate to new questions about his close ties to the builder.

The spending by Angelo K. Tsakopoulos and Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis comes at a time when polls show Angelides, the state treasurer, has fallen behind his June primary rival, state Controller Steve Westly.

It also comes amid financial troubles for the Angelides campaign, due partly to his rapid spending in the early stages of the race, which left him short of the cash he needs now to compete with Westly in the crucial arena of television advertising.

While Westly has drawn on the millions of dollars he made as a dot-com executive to run a steady stream of television ads, Angelides has not had a spot on the air for the last three weeks.

Tsakopoulos has long been the No. 1 source of campaign money for Angelides, a former Sacramento developer who got his start in real estate working for Tsakopoulos.

Their deals have continued to produce income for Angelides during his seven years as treasurer. His tax returns show $488,000 in personal income from Tsakopoulos over that period.

California law caps donations to gubernatorial candidates at $22,300 in the primary, and the same amount in the general election, but there are no limits on spending by an independent committee that does not coordinate its activities with a candidate’s campaign.

Tsakopoulos and his daughter reported the expenditure at the end of the day Friday as an independent effort by a committee called Californians for a Better Government, a Coalition of Firefighters, Cops, Deputy Sheriffs, Home Builders and Developers.

The committee reported $3.75 million in donations from Tsakopoulos; $1.25 million from his daughter, who is president of her father’s real estate company, AKT Development Corp.; and a bit more than $11,000 from California Professional Firefighters.

Angelides said he learned from the news media that the committee had been formed to spend money on his behalf, but that it was not coordinating its effort with his campaign.

“If those firefighters and police officers, Mr. Tsakopoulos and others choose to do this, so be it,” he said in a telephone interview.

“That’s their decision. I can’t affect that.”

Garry South, Westly’s chief campaign strategist, questioned whether the effort was genuinely independent of the Angelides campaign.

“How could anybody in their right mind believe this is an independent expenditure?” South asked.

Tsakopoulos did not return a call to his office seeking comment.