An ethics complaint is alleging that a pro-Matt Mahan PAC and his campaign illegally coordinated — with billionaire donors Michael Moritz and Rick Caruso reportedly appearing on calls for both the PAC and the campaign where strategy was discussed.

Let's be clear about what's at stake here: campaign finance law draws a hard line between independent expenditure committees and candidate campaigns for a reason. PACs can raise unlimited money, but only if they operate independently. The moment a PAC and a campaign start sharing strategy on the same calls with the same billionaire backers, that's not independence — that's a joint operation with extra steps.

Now, some important caveats. The complaint was filed by Albert Chow, a figure who carries his own credibility baggage. As one SF resident put it, "He tried blaming his store's arson on Prop K supporters with no evidence to the point that SFPD and SFFD had to make a statement." So the messenger here isn't exactly unimpeachable.

But the allegations themselves deserve scrutiny regardless of who filed them. If Moritz and Caruso were indeed on calls with both entities discussing strategy, that's a textbook coordination problem — and it doesn't matter whether you love or hate Mahan's politics.

The broader issue is one that should concern anyone who cares about transparent governance. Another local resident captured the growing frustration: "I feel like at this point anyone with two braincells knows that all these groups are just vehicles for billionaires to buy votes."

That's an overstatement — but not by much. The proliferation of dark-money-adjacent organizations in San Francisco politics has made it increasingly difficult for voters to know who's actually pulling the strings. And the cozy overlap between PAC strategy and campaign operations only deepens that cynicism.

Here's our take: we're not reflexively anti-PAC. Political speech costs money, and people should be free to spend it. But the rules exist to prevent exactly this kind of alleged coordination, and they should be enforced evenly. If the complaint has merit, there need to be consequences — not because Matt Mahan is uniquely bad, but because the integrity of the system matters more than any single candidate.

Investigate it. Follow the evidence. Let the chips fall.