For a prominent California consumer group and savvy political consultants, documents reveal a close financial relationship

If there’s a clear mantra for Consumer Watchdog, one of California’s most visible and vocal advocacy groups, it’s that hidden financial relationships shouldn’t shape politics and public policy. Its official motto is “expose, confront, change.” “We are loud, and we speak more of a populist truth than the way people usually talk to each other in Sacramento,” said Jamie Court, Consumer Watchdog’s president. Between 2012 and 2015, Consumer Watchdog accepted $260,000 in donations from Lehane’s group, a nonprofit called Main Street American Values. Lehane said in an email to The Times that he’s known Court and others “for a long while” and that he has “been in the foxhole with them on various consumer-related projects over the years.” In 2015, Consumer Watchdog joined Airbnb, then a Lehane client, in a successful effort to kill legislation in the state Capitol that would have imposed new rules on the home-sharing industry. But she said Tides sometimes makes grants that are “recommended by our donor partners.” Lehane said in an email that his nonprofit gave money to Tides because it supported “the kind of progressive policy efforts was leading on.” Said Court: “We don’t take money with strings.” For example, Court said, “there were no specific conditions” applied to the $90,000 donation Main Street American Values made in 2013, just days after he testified in Sacramento in support of drug testing for doctors.