Roundtable: Duncan Hunter's Expenses, US Senate Debate, San Onofre Deal Reopened

He spent campaign funds on personal items. In a lively debate, have us came under attack. Rescue of repairs as they reopen the multi-billion-dollar settlement. I'm Mark Sauer, The Roundtable starts now. Welcome to our discussion of the week top stories. I'm Mark Sauer. Joining me at our reporter Morgan Cook, member of the Tribune's watchdog team. Good to have you here today. Armita Sharma, investigative reporter . And Rick Young . Questions persist on how Congressman dunker -- Duncan has been using his campaign fund. He is running for reelection. We will get into the impact of what this might have as an election issue, Morgan, start with these expenditures. He self identified as personal are mistaken expenditures and reimbursed for their are about $12,000 and include oral surgery, new garage doors, things that you don't typically -- video games. Groceries, trips and you are not supposed to do that. We will get into the legal ramifications of that. The total is about $12,000 that he is reimbursed. How about the expenditures themselves, or do we know the extent of how many of these have been co-mingled in the campaign? We know the ones that he has self identified. We had to look at patterns, big picture, and a little bit of digging. We found more things that could easily be personal expenditures. They are so unlike the rest of the delegations. Stuff that a suburban family would be -- Trip after trip to Jack-in-the-Box, Albertsons, Chevron, things you don't expect to see on a congressional campaign. It's not a yard sign, it's things that look like suburban family expenses. What are the rules of this kind of expense spending? You cannot use your campaign money for the benefit of any single person. You can use it for purposes that would exist if they were not running the campaign. You will have to pay or water bill, regardless -- On your own. Even if it's running out of your house, your campaign, you cannot's bend your campaign money on pain your water bill. Routine expenses, he did reimburse, how does his office account for these expenditures? How does he say this happened over his son using the credit card? The story came to our attention, because the Federal elections commission questioned all of these. There were dozens of expenditures for video games. We asked about it, he said that his son had taken his credit card and used it to sign up for an online streaming video game. He had taken the wrong credit card, apparently it's blue and so are some of the other credit cards in his wallet. Video games, it's far beyond that. Does look like a pattern. They offered these explanations initially. There were allegedly was some fraud. They put the credit card in and then there were other charges that the sun did not put through. We've gotten these kind of explanations early on, more recently they have declined to explain. They spent more than $200 and a gift shop and Disneyland, they put it on their campaign forms, signed under penalty of perjury were food and batteries -- beverages. They only sell rice crispy treats and candy. It's unlikely that they spent $200 on those things. They won't explain that. There's a surf shop in Coronado that they spent $300 that. They say it was for an event, we don't know what the event was. The explanations have stopped coming. Presumably, they are answering to the FEC. I was just going to say that the disneyland purchase, it causes me more concern, there has also been an expenditure for food that turned out to be a jewelry store in Florence Italy. They also do not sell food. How much was the charge at the jewelry start? That was $217. Disneyland was $229. That's an awful lot of candy. Let's talk about the political implications. Duncan Hunter has served to several terms. His father has served many terms before that. This is a brand name in east County. That's a Republican district. His opponents have brought it up, voters in his district are alarmed. He won the huge percentage of the vote, the last time. Guests in the sent -- 70th percent. What sort of response are your stories getting from readers and comments? Normally, there is a fair amount of balance, universally people think these kind of expenses are questionable, at best. There have been calls for him to resign. Morgan, in her story, says he called donors to the campaign, the major stakeholders they all say they believe these are honest mistakes. Duncan is a good guy and he will take care of it. We should note, his wife Margaret, is involved in the operation of his campaign and management. Yes. She has been his campaign manager. There were only to holders of the campaign credit card during the time these expenditures took place. His campaign is a small shop. A couple of people, them and the treasurer. The personal use question is -- He made it publicly known that after the first stories broke, only one person held the credit card and that was him. He told the public he has taken the wife's credit card away and some people saw that as -- But it's not the wife's credit card. Her copy, some people saw that as throwing her under the bus. Are there criminal charges that are possible in this? Or do they just say, you shouldn't do that. Depends on whether or not it was knowing and willful. Was there the intent to embezzle campaign money? Was it some sort of series of mistakes? If the FEC thinks there was intent they may refer to the Department of Justice. Or the Department of Justice may have a look and suggest someone with subpoena power look at it. There was a campaign manager in Delaware? Christine O'Donnell. She had an issue where she was renting a townhouse. Her campaign was operating out of it. She was paying for utilities and that is, as we discussed, forbidden. Some of these can fall into a gray area. They are very explicit about the utilities. That may be his biggest problem. His water bill on his electric bill. We will be following up on this. We will move on. Comella Harris was under attack at the outset this week. She traded blows with four challengers. Here's an example. She has repeatedly shown that she will always side with her donors. Even if she's picking on people that are the most vulnerable. She's in the pocket of her donors. You moderated this, were you surprised how they came after her? If you want to compare the two, the Republican candidates went after Democratic Congresswoman Sanchez. In this one, they piled on attorney general Kamala Harris. Duf Sundheim accused the Atty. General. of being responsible for a 34% increase in crime. He is now saying he misread the press release. She responded in turn, and her opening statements by taking off a list of her accomplishments. How much money she brought into California through a settlement back in 2008. She had fought transnational gangs, drug smuggling and human trafficking. She talked about standing up for a woman's right to choose. Duf Sundheim came back and said, she took funding to remove guns from people who shouldn't have them. She came back and said people need to get their facts straight. She is responsible for taking guns from at least 10 million guns away from people. There was a piling on, she was able to fend all of the attacks off. From my vantage point, she very much was in command of the stage. She was clear and what she was saying. She seemed very unflappable. Minimum wage was an issue that came up. All of them have some interesting positions on minimum wage. Ron Unz is in favor of increasing minimum wage. Duf Sundheim, he's a Republican, he talks about quality a great deal. This is your California that is not reflective of the rest of the state. We have a soundbite. I absolutely support the $15 an hour minimum wage law. Federal minimum wages $7.25 per hour. Two thirds of minimum-wage workers are women. If she's a mom, trying to keep food on the table, she's probably holding down two jobs. She's not spending a lot of time with the children that she wants to spend more time with. We've got to change the system. She had quite a bit to say about that. Another issue was climate change, how did they come down on that? Was there a nonbeliever? There was a nonbeliever. He is a physicist, he is Ron Unz. He said that he is not convinced by the evidence on climate change. Our collie get KQED, said there were different research studies done. Scott Shafer pointed out that the researchers funded by the fossil fuel industry and conservative think tanks. Then you have well-respected scientists who were responsible for the other research. That's a bit of an anomaly. Ron Unz is a very smart guy. He's very thoughtful, very prefer that -- prolific writer. That's get out. Loretta Sanchez on climate change. I will say that I have 20 years in the Congress of defending the environmental rights of our citizens. 100% voting record on the environment. We need to fight greenhouse gas emissions. Some of the folks in the analysis that I have read, said this was an uneven performance. She speaking very oddly. I don't have any inside information on this. For those of us who watched the first debate, last month, Congresswoman Sanchez was extremely animated. She has a different speaking style. She says things off-the-cuff. She is a shoot from the hip type of person. I think her handlers, her image people said you might want to tone it down. I think she did, perhaps she went to the other extreme. At times it seems like she was talking to his school, like a second grade class, she made these gestures and spoke with clear enunciation. She was asked the question by our colleague Scott Shafer, about her 2005 vote to limit liability for gunmakers. She didn't really answer the question. She said she has great support from the Brady campaign, which is a anti-gun group. Her performance was all over the map. Kamala Harris is way ahead in the polls ? She is. This is her race to lose. It will be a runoff? It will be a runoff. The two top vote getters regardless will face off in November. It is likely, but highly likely that it will be Kamala Harris and Loretta Sanchez. Kamala Harris, pulled at 28% while Loretta Sanchez was that 19% the field poll showed that Kamala Harris was at 27% and Sanchez was at 14%. Still a lot of undecided. We have one more click Duf Sundheim hammering Kamala Harris. There's very serious charges raised by TPB see, talking about the public utility commission and possible criminal conduct. It was found by one of her at investigators. Since that person was politically connect did, the statute of limitations was allowed to pass. We are now left holding a $3 billion bill. I think he means K bcc -- I think he means KPBS. What was your question? How did she respond? She said she had not let the statute of limitations ran out. We did a story couple weeks ago, the statute of limitations for the most serious allegation that's outlined in the search warrant and her criminal investigation into the San Onofre agreement , is the obstruction of justice issue. That statute has run out. I'm sure we'll see more. Let's shift to San Onofre. After 18 months state regulators finally rejected -- reacted that is by opening the shut down. It stuck ratepayers with the costs. It was announced in 24 -- 2014, how to that breakdown? The $4.7 billion in cost for the premature shutdown, not the full decommissioning costs, just the cost of the failure. Customers of the utilities are on the hook to pay 3.3 billion of that. 70% of the cost. The bulk of that, that settlement was unanimously approved by the California Public Utilities Commission of the time. The rate here great turn through holy water. That was in November 2014. At the time this investigation was just starting. It wasn't really that well-known. In January 2015, Jeff McDonald of our staff, was covering a search warrant from that investigation. He noticed something that said RSG notes, which is respect -- replacement steam generator, we made a big deal about that. They had been under investigation, mostly focused around Pacific Gas & Electric and the deadly pipeline blast in San Bruno. This was the first indication that that same kind of scrutiny had been applied to San Onofre. Jeff made the connection, I'm not even sure the investigators knew what those notes were. It was a secret meeting, where they had the steel, even with the secret meeting and we've talked about that. The consumer advocates did sign off on the thing. This whole settlement is now going to be reopened, as we said. We're going to see new scrutiny. Scrap TURN TURN was a party to the settlement and stuck with it for a while. No revelations came out about secret meetings and Edison was forced to make a series of disclosures about meetings that they had. That other parties were not privy to, over time TURN came out against it and now finally -- Armita Sharma, what did consumer have to say? It was an illegitimate deal, because it was basically reached in secret. I'm not a good deal. No. It stuck ratepayers with a $3.3 billion bill. My question, is what your sense about the legitimacy of the PDC to reopen this? It has such a massive black mark against it. When it takes a step to reopen such a big issue, what kind of standing doesn't have an anyone's eyes? That's a good question. The PUC, has an interesting structure and a judge who was assigned to the case. Melanie darling, -- She is retired. They took her off the case and her retirement was at the same time. I don't know how much that was connected. They put someone new in the case. At the time, I thought are they going to take a fresh look at this? It looks like they have. A lot of people believe the PUC is still corrupt. I think Michael picker and his people will tell you they have made serious efforts at reform since he took over. This may be a sign of blossoming reform at the PUC. I think it will be a test of how much they are or are not still cozy with utilities. The utilities believe this is a reasonably fair deal and have said all along it should stay in place. Can they keep the deal if the major ratepayer groups well, TURN has withdrawn its support . What kind of settlement is it if you don't have the support? Once you are -- if you are in a land deal once it closes, it closes. Of six months later the parties decide they didn't like the deal, it's too late. For a long time and held together. Obviously, the withdrawing of support by these people created enough pressure to cause them to reopen the deal. There were a lot of statements made -- What is reopening it mean? Why do consumers have to be on the hook for so much? We might know this time, why they have to be on the hook instead of it being negotiated. At least now, they will get a chance -- When they say they're going to reopen it, what does that mean? Are they going to have hearings? They are supposed to make their decisions based on the public record. The fact that there were all these private meetings, makes it look like they didn't approve it with consideration of the record. At some point, it necessitates that they take another look. What will the outcome be, I don't know. Several of these groups who stood by the deal for months and months, said when we would ask them, you might want to reopen it, but it could end up being a worst -- were steel. We have run out of time. Inc. you. That does wrap up another week of stories at the KPBS roundtable. I'd like to think Morgan Cook, Armita Sharma and, Rick Young. All these stories are available on our website kpbs.org. I'm Mark Sauer. Thanks for joining us today on The Roundtable.