Jim Desmond Corruption & Ethics California

Jim Desmond Spent $249,470 in County Tax Money Advertising Himself While Running for Congress

Voice of San Diego found that Supervisor Jim Desmond's office spent $249,470 of public money in eight months on paid ads for his own videos, including TV spots on Hulu and HBO Max, while he runs for the House. Three of the other four supervisors spent nothing on ads, and the fourth spent about $11,300.

MAGA Report Cards · Oct 20, 2026

Jim Desmond Spent $249,470 in County Tax Money Advertising Himself While Running for Congress — Photo: John Gastaldo for Voice of San Diego

Jim Desmond is a San Diego County supervisor running for Congress in California's 48th District. This year, while he ran, his county office spent $249,470 of public money buying ads for videos of himself.

That is what Voice of San Diego found when it reviewed county records covering January through early September.

Where the money went

Each supervisor gets a budget of about $3.6 million a year to run their office. Supervisors usually spend it on things like office supplies, printing and event fees.

Desmond's office spent a quarter of a million dollars of it on advertising:

Paid promotion for hundreds of his videos across his official Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X accounts.
Paid ads on Hulu and HBO Max.
About $62,000 to Target River, a marketing agency in Salt Lake City. The rest went straight to Google, Meta, Disney and X.

Every invoice was billed to Desmond or to his supervisor-office communications director.

The videos look like campaign ads, with high-definition shots, slick editing and Desmond's supervisor logo at the end. As Voice of San Diego put it: "They have all the elements of an advertisement. They essentially are."

The rest of the board didn't do this

Desmond wasn't doing what everyone else does. Three of the other four supervisors spent nothing of their office money on advertising during those eight months. The fourth, Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer, spent about $11,300 on Facebook ads. Desmond spent more than 20 times that.

The money worked. His office didn't start paying for YouTube ads until late April. Before that, most of his videos got views in the hundreds. Nearly every video from the six months since got between 140,000 and almost 600,000 views.

Now he has 27,000 Instagram followers, 19,000 on Facebook and 21,000 on X. The supervisor with the next-biggest Instagram account has 3,500. His opponent, Democrat Marni von Wilpert, has 2,200 on her official Instagram and 20 YouTube subscribers.

Desmond is heading into the last weeks of one of the most consequential House races in the country with a big audience built with taxpayer dollars.

He attacks the county for spending your money on itself

One of Desmond's paid videos, viewed 352,000 times, attacks the county for using taxpayer money to run a poll about a proposed sales tax measure on the November ballot.

"Your own money was spent out to find the best way to reach deeper into your pockets," he says in it.

Its message is about not spending public money on politics, and it went up on an office account the public was paying to promote.

His office calls it "outreach"

Desmond's chief of staff didn't dispute the numbers. In a statement to Voice of San Diego, he said the office has "used every tool available" to keep North County residents informed and is "proud of our constituent outreach." The county's communications director said only that "public funds are expended in accordance with board policy and state law." She didn't say whether there are any limits on what supervisors can spend that money on.

He flies to campaign events in a plane he bought from donors

The ads aren't the only way Desmond's longtime political friends show up in his campaign. Times of San Diego reported that Desmond, a former airline pilot, flies himself to campaign events in a Cessna that he and his wife bought in 2024 from Steve Flynn and Kathleen Bell Flynn. The Flynns have donated to his campaigns since his first run for supervisor in 2018. In December, they each gave his congressional campaign the $3,500 maximum.

The paper found the $300,000 price was about the median for that model, and said the sale doesn't appear to break any campaign finance or ethics rules. Desmond's campaign didn't respond to its questions.

This isn't the first Republican on this site to use official money for publicity that looks like a campaign. Georgia's Mike Collins spent $400,000 of tax money on ads that look like his campaign's.

The bottom line

From January to early September, Jim Desmond's county office spent $249,470 in public money on paid ads for his own videos, including TV ads on Hulu and HBO Max, while he ran for Congress. Three of the other four supervisors spent nothing on advertising, and the fourth spent about $11,300. Desmond's office called it constituent outreach.