California Common Cause Calls for FPPC to Investigate Lobbyist Sex Scandal

California Common Cause today called on the Fair Political Practices Commission to open an investigation into whether two lobbyists violated state law by engaging in affairs with former state legislator Mike Duvall.

"Voters need to know how widespread this practice is of lobbyists literally getting into bed with legislators, and since the legislature and Attorney General have both abandoned any investigation it is now incumbent upon the FPPC to take this on," said Derek Cressman, Western States Regional Director for Common Cause.

Click here to read Common Cause's complaint filed with the FPPC.

Click here to listen to Capitol Public Radio's interview with Derek Cressman.

Duvall resigned last month after being caught on videotape bragging to fellow Assemblymember Jeff Smith about the salacious details of sexual trysts he was having with lobbyists. Some newspapers have indentified one of the lobbyists as an employee of Sempra Energy.

Sempra Energy has donated more than $11,000 to Assembly Speaker Karen Bass in the past three years and gave over $10,000 to Jerry Brown’s campaign for Attorney General in 2006. Beyond that, Sempra gave more than $275,000 to the California Democratic Party in the past three years.

"Sempra gave big money to our elected officials and those officials then declined to investigate this matter regarding a Sempra lobbyist," noted Kathay Feng, Executive Director of California Common Cause. "That is precisely the sort of dynamic that makes Californian’s skeptical about our current campaign finance system and our current legislature."

Beyond a full investigation of this incident, Common Cause is calling for tighter lobbyist disclosure rules and a system of public financing of political campaigns so that legislators don’t need to raise funds from private interests like Sempra.

Click here to read the full press release.