Councilman Brandman Gave City-Owned Angels Baseball Tickets to a Former Business Client

Councilman Jordan Brandman gave city-owned Angels baseball tickets to a businessman who was a former client of his through a previous job.

By DUANE ROBERTS
Editor & Publisher

A Form 802 that Councilman Jordan Brandman recently filed states he gave Dave Sorem, owner of the Mike Bubalo Construction Company, two tickets valued at $410 for an Angels vs. Astros game on April 6th, ostensibly for the purpose of “attracting or rewarding volunteer public service.”

But The Anaheim Investigator has evidence Sorem was a former business client of his through a previous job. Between 2017 and 2018, the councilman worked for the Engineering Contractors’ Association, an Anaheim-based advocacy group where Sorem has been a longtime executive board member.

Brandman, however, wasn’t directly employed by the ECA, but through a firm they do business with called the Southern California Group, an entity controlled by Richard Lambros and Peter Mitchell, the latter of whom is also a registered lobbyist for the Anaheim Police Association.

According to a Form 700 Statement of Economic Interests filed on August 8, 2018, Brandman reported at that time he was “Vice-President” of the Southern California Group, earning “over $100,000” in salary from them. He listed their primary business activity as “strategic public affairs.”

The ECA describes its mission as serving the “infrastructure contractors of Southern California through project-based advocacy, labor-management relations, political action and fair public policy.” Most of its members are heavy construction companies that bid on public works projects.

Brandman‘s involvement with the ECA has been documented in their monthly publication. For example, a photograph of him with Sorem appears on page 19 of their October 2017 issue. He is also shown attending an open house at their Anaheim office on page 13 in the following issue.

Sorem and Brandman (both on the left) at an ECA event in 2017.

Last Wednesday, The Investigator sent out an email message to Brandman and Claudia Perez, his Senior Policy Aide, to request more information about the type of “volunteer public service” that Sorem has been involved in. So far neither of them have responded to our inquiry.

Brandman is a notorious peddler of city-owned tickets to lobbyists, campaign contributors, and friends. He has even been caught giving tickets to one of his former bosses at the Southern California Group–a transaction which earned him the scrutiny of the Orange County District Attorney’s Office last year.

But he isn’t the only one who does this. On June 1st, The Investigator reported that incoming Councilman Avelino Valencia III has already hijacked the city’s ticket system for selfish political purposes. And be rest assured, more articles about how these and other politicians abuse this system are forthcoming.