Columns

New: EATS, SHOOTS 'N" LEAVES: Berkeley Landlord Bankrolls Anti-Obama Ads

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday January 31, 2012 - 11:17:00 PM

UC Berkeley students who live in the Gaia Building, the Fine Arts Building, or any of the other properties that make Sam Zell the city’s largest private landlord may be happy to learn that some pennies of their rent checks are going to Karl Rove. 

Yep, Zell, who owns Equity Residential, the corporate owner of the Berkeley apartments, as well as the newspaper publishing Tribune Company, gave Rove’s American Crossroads super PAC a cool hundred grand last year, according to two reporters from one of Rove’s own papers, the Los Angeles Times

And that doesn’t include whatever else he might have given its nonprofit affiliate Crossroads GPS, which doesn’t even have to report any of its funding sources, write Melanie Mason and Tom Hamburger. 

More from the Washington Post‘s Dan Eggen and T.W. Farnam: 

American Crossroads, a fundraising juggernaut founded with the help of GOP political guru Karl Rove, reported raising $51 million in 2011 for its super PAC and nonprofit arms, with a goal of raising about $200 million more by November
As the Post reporters note, “American Crossroads has spent $10 million on television ads against the president.” 

But Berkeley renters should be getting used to Zell bankrolling election campaigns off their rent checks. After all, he spent a cool twenty-five grand on one Berkeley election less than two years ago, as the Berkeley Daily Planet reported at the time. 


Richard Brenneman is a former Berkeley Daily Planet staff reporter. His blog can be found at richardbrenneman.wordpress.com