Ethics complaint filed in attorney general Democratic primary
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San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris is accusing one of her rivals of not playing fair as they compete to be the Democratic nominee in the race for attorney general. Her campaign says Chris Kelly, the wealthy former Facebook executive who has dumped millions of dollars into his primary effort, is in violation of state ethics laws. The campaign filed a complaint Tuesday with the state Fair Political Practices Commission.
The charge? Kelly is not properly disclosing where all his millions are coming from.
Because Facebook has not yet gone public, Kelly has been financing his campaign by selling stock options to a small private equity firm based in Delaware. He has declined to say how many shares he has sold or what he was paid for them. A Kelly spokeswoman would say only that the candidate got the same price anyone else with such stock options could fetch.
Harris strategist Ace Smith accused the former chief privacy officer at Facebook of making a ‘shady infusion of money into his campaign… clearly he is putting his Facebook privacy skills to work.’
The Kelly campaign issued a statement calling the complaint a ‘publicity stunt.’ It accused Harris of trying to distract voters from a law enforcement scandal in San Francisco involving a city crime lab.
-- Evan Halper in Sacramento
