Sources Say: FairVote Attorney Represented Santa Clara Soccer League in Suit Against the City

Santa Clara City CouncilSanta Clara City Council

Santa Clara’s California Voting Rights Act lawsuit now has provided employment for yet another lawyer.

FairVote — the Maryland-based ranked choice voting lobbying group that funded and staffed the Yes on Measure A campaign — is looking to impose Measure A by judicial fiat after the proposal failed at the ballot box. FairVote isn’t a party to the lawsuit.

Last week FairVote filed a 20-page “friend of the court” — amicus curiae — brief asking Judge Thomas Kuhnle to impose an at-large City Council election system with restricted voting in 2018 and single transferable vote/ranked choice (STV/RC) voting thereafter.

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FairVote’s attorney is San José attorney Gautam Dutta.

Dutta has written editorials about ranked choice voting and brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against California’s top-two primary system, with one of the plaintiffs in that lawsuit being another Measure A evangelist, Californians for Electoral Reform’s Steve Chessin.

But Dutta has a more direct connection to Santa Clara.

He represented the Santa Clara Youth Soccer League in a lawsuit against the City of Santa Clara in 2015 over NFL use of the soccer park during Super Bowl 50. The league, and Dutta, lost that case.

Tino Silva — Chair of the Charter Review Committee that proposed Measure A and a strong ally of Mayor Lisa Gillmor — was the soccer league’s president when the suit against the City was filed, according to the organization’s website.

Silva went on to run a losing campaign for City Council in 2016, benefitting from $65,000 in Santa Clara Police Officers Association PAC expenditures funded by developers and the California Apartment Association, and $3,000 in direct contributions from Related Companies executives, included its Chairman Steven Ross.

FairVote donated $40,000 directly in cash and services to Yes on A. Another $45,000 was poured into the campaign by FairVote financiers hedge fund billionaires John and Laura Arnold via their dark money LLC, Action Now Initiative.

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