Just days before Pat Kolstad won re-election to the Santa Clara City Council last fall, he used campaign funds to enter a raffle put on by the nonprofit Mission City Community Fund. Just about everything since then has gone wrong.

Sacramento’s most notorious lobbyist and San Jose’s shadiest council member each got slapped with fines by the state political watchdog.

A complaint filed against Sam Liccardo’s mayoral campaign alleges the San Jose council member broke election law by failing to report an in-kind contribution for the second time. But according to Vice Mayor Madison Nguyen, who provided Liccardo with an email list, it's all a simple mixup.

State regulators fired off warning letters to a San Jose council member-elect, the city's firefighters PAC and a local community college district for failing to file timely campaign disclosure forms.

It’s a shame this isn’t a re-election endorsement, because Magdalena Carrasco deserved to win San Jose's District 5 City Council seat four years ago.

Complaints allege that Sam Liccardo solicited donations before he could legally start fundraising and failed to record in-kind contributions.

The Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee (DCC) finalized its endorsements for the June primary, giving three sole and two dual endorsements in San Jose’s five City Council races.

Almost all of the laws that govern contribution and spending limits are unconstitutional. But everybody should have to play by the same wrong rules.

The South Bay political machine knows how to orchestrate high strategy better than just about anybody, but fallout from the San Jose mayor’s race could lead to one awkward encounter next year.

After losing an appeal over ballot measure language, Mayor Chuck Reed decided to drop his state pension reform campaign and delay it to 2016.

Assemblyman Paul Fong (D-San Jose) has owed a Sacramento lobbyist $100,000 since 2008. He refuses to talk about it, but consultants running his San Jose City Council campaign say the amount is "in dispute."

As if San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos needed any more inquiries into his shoddy past campaign filings—the guy’s already being investigated by the District Attorney’s office and the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).

The staff churn in Speaker pro Tem Nora Campos’ office is the talk of Sacramento, raising questions about the assemblymember’s ability to advocate for constituents who’ve been shortchanged by ineffective leadership.

The Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee is on the fast track to endorse its preferred mayoral hopeful, Dave Cortese. But there are growing concerns that the group’s backing will give that candidate the unfair advantage of bypassing campaign finance laws that apply to individual candidates. Campaign staff of Councilman Sam Liccardo, the fundraising frontrunner in the mayor’s race, challenged the DCC in emails to abide by the same rules governing candidates that prevent unlimited spending in an election.

Last month Fly delved into the litigious world of John Mlnarik, a local attorney and former candidate for a seat on the Santa Clara City Council. Mlnarik had open lawsuits against three four separate parties connected to his abysmal 2012 campaign, and an interesting countersuit coming back his way. Elena Rivkin Franz, a former employee of Mlnarik’s, accused him of using staff and resources from his law firm—The Mlnarik Law Group—to assist his campaign under the table. Fly did a little digging and found that the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) has had an open investigation since September into the campaign of Mlnarik, who is currently the president-elect of the Santa Clara County Bar Association.

The Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) confirmed Thursday that it has expanded its investigation into San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos’ 2010 campaign. Earlier this week, San Jose Inside reported that Campos and incarcerated former county Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. created fictitious business filings with the county Recorder’s office under identical names as their campaigns. The unconventional finance practice could have allowed the two men to funnel campaign contributions into secret bank accounts.