Disney and local hoteliers have long been the dominant special interest spending on Anaheim’s elections, but they’ve made it harder to see where and when they’re spending on city council candidates this year.
Those changes came after corruption investigations from both federal prosecutors and independent investigators, which found Disneyland Resort interests exert outsized influence on policymaking at city hall.
The machine at the heart of their operation was the Support Our Anaheim Resort political action committee (SOAR), which gathered donations from Disney and hoteliers around the resort district and would generally spend hundreds of thousands of dollars advertising their chosen candidates.
Most of SOAR’s money generally came from Disney.
Independent investigators wrote in their 2023 investigation report that one SOAR board member described the committee to them as a mechanism to “groom” resort-backed candidates and politicians.
A year after the report was publicly released in 2023, Disney and hoteliers shifted gears.
Instead of SOAR, the entertainment juggernaut and five-star hotel companies threw their money into several new political action committees (PACs) that were all specific to individual candidates, sharing the same root name of “Anaheim Residents, Small Businesses, and Public Safety Leaders.”
In 2024, Disney donated nearly $1 million to political action committees supporting Councilmembers Norma Campos Kurtz, Kristen Maahs, and Ryan Balius.
This year, instead of opening new committees and donating directly to them, Disney and the hotelier-funded committees rolled over their leftover money from the Balius and Maahs PACs into a committee supporting Kurtz, renaming it “Anaheim Residents, Small Businesses, and Public Safety Leaders.”
That gave the committee roughly $200,000 as of January, $180,000 of which was then transferred to individual PACs aimed at supporting the reelections of Mayor Ashleigh Aitken, Councilman Carlos Leon and Councilwoman Natalie Meeks.
The money moved to back Aitken came a little over two weeks before she publicly admitted to struggling with alcoholism in the wake of a bombshell claim filed against the city by her Chief of Staff Berenice Ballinas claiming the Mayor called her a “dirty Mexican” and constantly questioned her sexuality.
Aitken has denied allegations of being homophobic and hurling racist slurs at Ballinas.
Because the money was transferred through so many different entities, the only disclosures that any of that money came from Disney or other resort area interests lie in nearly two-year-old reports from committees that’re now largely defunct.
Disney spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Mayoral Spending Amid Drinking Scandal
Anaheim Residents, Small Businesses, and Public Safety Leaders – the committee using leftover Disney and hotelier money – contributed $80,000 to a committee backing Aitken called “Neighbors for a Strong Anaheim supporting Aitken for Mayor 2026.”
That group spent over $60,000 on mailers backing Aitken on Oct. 2 amidst her scandal.
Before the scandal, Aitken was running with backing from the Anaheim Police Association against two relatively unknown political newcomers – Dr. Imran Sharief, a physician, and Alfredo Rodriguez, a general manager of an environmental services company.
The police association’s PAC decided to suspend their backing of Aitken at the end of September in light of the allegations with the group’s leaders saying at the time the mayor is entitled to due process and a fair investigation into the accusations before conclusions are reached.
They instead reversed course.
The police union’s committee this month spent over $93,000 on polling and mailers against Aitken as of Friday, after getting $40,000 back from a PAC they sponsored supporting Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava’s campaign.
The Lincoln Club of Orange County, a conservative donor group, has spent around $40,000 on media buys opposing Aitken and about $1,500 on digital ads supporting Rodriguez.
Disney Resort Interests Spend on Unopposed Races
Anaheim Residents, Small Businesses, and Public Safety Leaders dished out about $100,000 to committees supporting Meeks and Leon, both of whom are running unopposed.
Half the money went to a committee called “Neighbors for a Strong Anaheim supporting Meeks for City Council 2026,” which spent $25,000 on mailers supporting the councilwoman’s reelection campaign, as of Wednesday.
The other half went to a committee called “Neighbors for a Strong Anaheim supporting Leon for City Council 2026,” which spent nearly $13,000 on mailers to support the councilman’s reelection campaign, as of Oct. 2.
Public Safety & Other Spending
While the police association PAC is against Aitken, they are spending heavily to support Rubalcava’s reelection campaign against Elia Renteria-Garcia, who lists herself as a nonprofit development director on her candidate statement.
The police union’s political action committee has donated nearly $90,000 to another spending group called “Anaheim Residents, Taxpayers, Public Safety Leaders, Small Businesses and Housing Advocates Supporting Natalie Rubalcava for City Council in 2026.”
That group has spent over $102,000 on mailers, digital ads and text messaging supporting Rubalcava as of Friday.
The firefighters union spent over $10,000 on digital ads and text messages, data and design to support the councilwoman’s reelection campaign, as of Oct. 13.
The union has also spent over $5,000 on text messages supporting Leon’s reelection campaign and more than $5,000 on texts supporting Meek’s campaign, as of Oct. 8
The firefighters association did not respond to questions Thursday on why they are spending on two unopposed races.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org.
