Who wrote the checks to elected officials weighing approval?
No one is registered to vote at the run-down house on 223rd Street. The living room window has been broken for months. A grit-covered pickup sits in the dirt front yard with a flat tire.
Yet dozens of donations to local politicians — totaling more than $40,000 — have come from four of the people who have lived there over the last eight years.
Victor Blanco, a repairman originally from El Salvador, gave the most: 22 donations totaling $20,300 since 2008, according to contribution reports. More than half that money went to U.S. Rep. Janice Hahn (D-Los Angeles) while she was pursuing local, state and federal office, according to contribution reports.
Asked about those donations, Blanco could not explain why he gave Hahn so much money.
“I do not remember,” he said, standing in the driveway of the home, located in West Carson.
Blanco is among more than 100 campaign contributors with a direct or indirect connection to Samuel Leung, a Torrance-based developer who was lobbying public officials to approve a 352-unit apartment complex, a Times investigation has found.
Those donors gave more than $600,000 to support Hahn, Mayor Eric Garcetti and other L.A.-area politicians between 2008 and 2015, as Leung was seeking city approval for the $72-million development in L.A.’s Harbor Gateway neighborhood, north of the Port of Los Angeles, The Times found.
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