This past week an article was published in your paper that said my two biggest campaign contributors are non-profit leaders. This is factually incorrect. My largest campaign contributor is in fact a nonprofit leader who is also friend of twenty years. The next two highest contributions came from other old family friends as well, but neither of them is a nonprofit leader. One is a teacher and school counselor in San Diego Unified School district, and the other is an attorney. We’ve know both these individuals since 2005. We are lucky to have amazing friends who have supported us in a variety of ways through the years. My donor information is publicly available on my most recent and would have been easily researched.Â
I support looking into who donates to candidates’ campaigns. I had one opponent who raised at least double what I did and another who suggested I could wait until after the filing deadline to report my contributions if avoiding scrutiny was something I wanted to do. I obviously didn’t do that and have tried very hard to be transparent. I would have liked the public to read in your paper who donated to each of these candidates for obvious reasons. But the interesting choice (that also created a narrative that seemed purposeful) was made to only list my contributors and to report one of them incorrectly.
Shawnee Barton Merriman is running for a school board seat in the Nov. 5 elections.
Editor’s Note: The information reflected in the story was accurate at the time that the first filing forms were submitted, but failed to be updated after the most recent filing. The error has been corrected.
