The road to redemption in San Diego's south bay is elusive

Corrupt politicians are like weeds.

Andrea Cardenas financed her victorious 2020 Chula Vista City Council campaign with $34,666.89 taken from $176,000 in Personal Paycheck Protection (PPP) funds that she stole with Jesus Cardenas, her older brother and campaign manager who owned the political consulting firm, Grassroots Resources.

On election day she thanked him “for everything he has done to lay down the groundwork for me.”

The siblings pleaded guilty for two felonies each of grand theft on February 28, 2024, nine days after Andrea resigned from the Chula Vista City Council.

Screenshot from social media

Previously, I wrote that Andrea and Jesus benefited from Chula Vista’s ambiguous campaign ordinance by illegally or at least in effect turning a $35,000 campaign debt into a campaign contribution that Andrea paid back from the stolen PPP funds.

Here’s how their “victory” plan went down six months later, according to District Attorney Summer Stephan in her Nov. 1 indictment:

On or about May 12, 2021, Jesus Cardenas, using the PPP funds, wrote a check (3109) to Andrea Cardenas in the amount of $35,000 from Grassroots Resources Wells Fargo Bank account ending 9328.

On or about May 13, 2021, Andrea Cardenas deposited check 3109 for $35,000 into her personal Wells Fargo account ending 3156.

On or about May 13, 2021, using the PPP funds, Andrea Cardenas wrote a check (check 593) made out to ‘Andrea Cardenas for CV City Council D4’ in the amount of $33,500 from her personal Wells Fargo account ending 3156 to her campaign account held at California Bank and Trust (account ending 7401).

On May 17, 2021, Andrea Cardenas deposited check 593 for $33,500 into her campaign account ending 7401.

On May 17, 2021, Andrea Cardenas’ campaign wrote a check (check 8064) from her campaign account ending 7401 to TMC Direct in the amount of $34,666.89.

Peaking before the fall. Photo: SCWW

Breaking ties to the past?

Throughout their political history, the Cardenas siblings presented themselves as progressives while also pandering to corporate special interests.

In the process, they stretched ethical and legal boundaries, advancing San Diego County Democratic Party (CDP) endorsed candidates and their own political careers.

Andrea and Jesus Cardenas were generally given a wide berth by the CDP in South Bay politics; even when they were bad, they seemed to be winners, until they were indicted.

But their relationship with the party that loved their winning record was shaky at times even before the Union-Tribune’s revelations of conflicts of interest and illegal consulting work.

Some party progressives disliked Jesus’ gay baiting, Andrea and Jesus’s cozying up to developers, and their’ attempts to influence party endorsements by creating and stacking local democratic party clubs (all of which I will subsequently get into more details about).

Internal acrimony in the CDP reached a boiling point in September, 2023.

Marcus Bush, a Party endorsed candidate for city council in National City, complained that Jesus and Andrea were secretly running racist attack ads against him while being paid by the Party to support him and other party-endorsed candidates.

Two invoices, published by La Prensa, showed that Grassroots Resources purchased over 16,000 mail records from Political Data Inc (PDI) for National City voters.

The transactions took place just before the attack ads were mailed by a PAC called Affordable Housing Coalition through a consortium owned by Grassroots’ business associate, TMC.

The complaint was aired at a meeting of the party’s South Area Caucus where Andrea, the incumbent, was eligible for a “Friendly Incumbent Endorsement” for reelection by consent.

Andrea denied the accusations and the caucus voted 38-15 to endorse her.

Party vice-chair Sara Ochoa told SCWW that she thought the evidence was inconclusive—until Jesus gave her an explanation that turned out to be false.

He told her that the invoices were for digital (Facebook) ads for a slate of candidates, not for the attack mailers sent to voter homes.

But Ochoa told Jesus that “the party had only done a [one] small Facebook campaign that I designed and placed…to support National City School Board candidates—not the entire slate.”

“I later learned that PDI has very different download formats, and that the two invoices in question in the Grassroots account were indeed for mail, not digital, as Jesus Cardenas assert to me,” she said by email.

The Party officially rescinded the endorsement by consent on Nov. 6, five days after the Cardenases were indicted.

On that occasion, Jesus passionately defended himself and his sister, referring to the charges as a witch hunt, according to sources who attended.

Knowledgeable sources also say that Jesus was sometimes arrogant, likening himself to Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone in The Godfather, and that he liked to fly “close to the sun”, taking his adoring sister with him.

He tended to blame criticism of his tactics on racism, they say.

But in one social media post Jesus alleged that a San Diego area mayor “once called me a cartel leader, folks have labeled me as ‘not one of us’ and continuously, openly, and without remorse spread false rumors about me and my family.”

Those false rumors, he said, exhausted him to the point that he wondered, “How do we trust what others say?”

(Story is continued below the illustrations)

Revenge?

Andrea gave up her city council seat on Feb 19 and pleaded guilty to the two felony charges against her on Feb 28. Andrea did not actively campaign for reelection but remained on the ballot.

Former supporter and Grassroots client Cesar Fernandez ran for her seat in the March, 2023, primary, which angered her remaining followers.

In all, her supporters spent over $24,000 on social media advertisements and mailers in support of her and in hate-laced opposition to Fernandez.

The money was spent as independent expenditures through the San Diego Leadership PAC, tied to former Grassroots employee and Cardenas associate Jehoan Espinoza, and Jesus. Espinoza’s phone number was listed as a contact on the advertising disclaimer, but he denied still being involved with the PAC.

The future

Currently, the democrats rule San Diego County, especially in the South Bay. By the consent of the governed they have the authority to make government work transparently and for the governed, at least in theory.

In an email communication last winter, Ochoa vaguely outlined some steps she had taken as a party leader to—one hopes—veer it away from its history of sometimes vicious factionalism, in part due to the Cardenases and their partners.

“Rather than casting aspersions or operating on rumors,” she wrote, “I have spent the last five years working to further democratize the Democratic Party and to expand the voting base of members within the party.”

She did that, she said, by taking advantage of leadership openings to recruit new party activists as voting members who will influence party endorsements in a positive way.

“I have regularly recruited Democrats who have demonstrated ability to further diversify our voices of influence,” she wrote.

Sara Ochoa (r). Photo by SCWW

What that means, if anything, in the real world of politics remains to be seen.

In the meantime, the Party’s current electoral dominance in the county can disappear a lot quicker than it came. Cardenas-like capers will be grist for the fascist MAGA mill.

As for personal redemption, it will take more than jail time or no jail time to help Jesus and Andrea Cardenas. It will have to come from within themselves.

Corrupt politicians grow like weeds forever coming back after removal of their predecessors. To minimize the presence of weeds, democrats (and republicans) must do more than replace the grass roots.

Andrea Cardenas will be sentenced this month.

This story is part of a series. Coming up more or less in this order: Sweetwater consultations; remorse and revenge; history, and more.