Gov. Jerry Brown's campaign to raise taxes has raised more than $1.2 million in two weeks, according to the campaign's first financial filing with the California secretary of state's office.
The sum was raised from just nine donations, the largest of which, $500,000, came from an arm of the California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. The state building trades union donated $250,000 through its political action committee, Members' Voice of the State Building Trades.
The contributions are the first large donations following Brown's announcement this month of a ballot measure to temporarily raise the state sales tax and higher income taxes on California's highest-earners, raising about $7 billion annually for five years.
"Our interest is that there be a budget that, you know, is halfway balanced," Duane Dauner, president of the California Hospital Association, said this morning. "This is an overall effort to be supportive of balancing revenues and expenses so we can, in fact, get the state back on track."
He said Brown's initiative "gets you a good part of the way there."
Blue Shield of California donated $100,000 to the effort, and California gambling tribes combined to give more than $300,000.
In a separate report filed this week, The Bicycle Casino in Bell Gardens reported contributing $12,500 to Brown's re-election campaign. The Democratic governor has not yet said whether he will seek re-election in 2014, but his political adviser, Steve Glazer, has said he expects Brown to do so.
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