Nelly Bly Investigations
ELECTION 2024: IT'S TIME TO TALK ABOUT THAT GUY
Burbank politics used to consist of campaigns for City Council by longtime residents – people who had lived in Burbank most if not all of their lives and were mostly retired professionals, young realtors, a few gadflies thrown in – and it was all small-town handshaking during the campaign and ribbon cutting when they won. There were good things and bad things about all this and most of the time the worst thing that happened was that a mediocre person kept getting reelected to Council. But that all changed starting in 2020.
That year a crop of younger candidates who were not lifetime or even longtime residents showed up and won big. Bigger than anyone ever before. One of them had lived in Burbank a total of about 2 months before he filed to run for City Council. In 2022 the two that were elected to Council in 2020 were joined there by a third from the same “club” and formed a majority. Those two winners from 2020 immediately began running for higher office. One of them is now in a runoff for Assembly that he will win, the other was crushed in a hopeless run for County Supervisor and is trying to remain on Council.
What has become clear is that there is a group of people who have collaborated and targeted Burbank as a place to take control and use our city as a springboard for higher office in a way that is unprecedented. But even worse, they are not content with doing this for the past 4 years and then moving on once they have achieved that goal, they want to keep funneling a pipeline of candidates onto Council to ensure that they keep control of the city.
People who have been closely watching over the past four years can say who the ringleader is of this effort (and if you read our site you know who she is by now). But there is someone behind the scenes who is the one doing the work to make all this happen. And he has made a great deal of money doing all this.
Meet Blake Dellinger.
Oh wait, that’s an old picture, here is a current one where he grew a beard to look older than his current age of 32 years old.
Let’s take a look at his track record:
Campaign Manager for Laura Friedman for Assembly
Director of Communications for Laura Friedman
Field Representative for Laura Friedman
Campaign Manager for Nick Schultz for City Council
Campaign Manager for Nick Schultz for Assembly
Campaign Manager for Nikki Perez for City Council
Campaign Manager for Eddy Polon for City Council (aka THE BAKER)
Plus: Long time officer of Burbank Democratic Club and he has run their endorsement elections for years
Like many young men growing up in the Valley, Blake started out wanting to make movies. He went to Los Angeles Film School and graduated in 2013 with an AA degree. Here is a highlight reel of his work that he wrote and directed. We can wonder who financed all this.
He worked as a production intern for a bit and that apparently didn’t work out so he began a career behind the scenes in politics in 2015. He began working for political consultant Vincent Roncone who, as indicated by Friedman’s recent campaign filings, is currently a consultant working on her Congressional campaign.
Friedman’s Assembly filings show that Blake was involved in her first campaign for Assembly back in 2016 which she won handily.
He was paid a total of $10,827.53 that year by the campaign for “consulting” after working in politics for only a year.
For her 2018 campaign, he was mostly paid for reimbursement of offices expenses by Friedman:
But hey – somehow in 2020 this young lad suddenly became extremely knowledgeable about … something. So much so that the Friedman campaign paid him over $27,000 in consulting fees.
That knowledge must have become very valuable as in 2022 (just two years later and the year his girlfriend Nikki Perez ran for City Council) Mr. Dellinger was paid by Friedman’s campaign a total of $80,750.
Remember, Friedman ran virtually unopposed for Assembly in 2022 but she still paid a lot of money to other consultants that year for her election (all this is documented in her 2022 Assembly race filings):
Bertolina & Barnato – $60,000
Dem Consulting Inc – $23,000
Blake received more than these two veteran consulting firms from the Friedman for Assembly campaign and almost as much as the two other firms put together.
What is also interesting is that in Perez’s 460 filings for the 2022 election, Blake was paid for his work by that campaign a grant total of … $1083.
Here is some more interesting information about that 2022 Council election. Look how many ballots that were received that did not vote for three candidates despite three openings on Council. Out of 36,281 ballots, 13,633 were “partially voted” meaning less than three votes were cast. So over a third of the ballots fell into this category.
Now, this can happen for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons that it could have happened is this:
Again, ballot harvesting is legal as long as certain rules are followed.
Now, your Aunt Nelly knows very little about campaign finance laws so we are not sure if using one campaign’s funds for something for a different, separate campaign and paid directly to a shared campaign manager would be kosher. Oh wait, we can’t and won’t say that is what actually happened, right? But if someone did do that, we are sure it would be just fine.
Aunt Nelly would never say that someone is doing something uncouth without proof. This site is based on facts that are public record. Just like Burbank Voice would never repeat the rumors about the relationship between Ms. Perez and Mr. Dellinger, even if we are told that Ms. Perez herself started those rumors. This is not TMZ, people.
Let’ s move on to the current City Council race and THE BAKER.
THE BAKER seems like a nice guy and has lived in Burbank for several decades. He certainly is more qualified for Council than most of the current candidates. But a bit of investigation shows that he didn’t get involved in the City workings until he applied for and was appointed to the Transportation Commission in 2022.
His daughter Maya works as a senior strategist for a political communications firm in Sacramento. She has an active twitter account – let’s take a look at some of the more interesting things she has said publicly on twitter that directly connect THE BAKER to Laura Friedman, Nick Schultz and Blake Dellinger:
“Friedman’s pick” for the Burbank Transportation Commission. Think about that choice of wording.
Here is that Schultz for Assembly ad referred to that prominently features THE BAKER:
It’s pretty clear that Polon is part of the “club” and they have already ensured that he received the BDC endorsement for this election. Looking at his website, his listed endorsements are all from the “club” members and Dem party politicians that his daughter has worked for such as Anthony Rendon. You don’t see many if any people from Burbank at large. So who will THE BAKER listen to if he is elected – Friedman/Schultz or you?
Here is Blake working with THE BAKER on his campaign in July – we will wait to see with the filing at the end of September how much Blake charges this campaign for his hard work.
Just curious – what has Schultz paid Blake for his Assembly campaign through the last filing?
Over $62,000.
And over this same time period, 2023-24, what has Blake been paid by Friedman for Congress?
Over $31,000.
Nice work if you can get it, especially if you are only 32 years old.
But sadly our young lad is now showing his lack of experience and, well, maturity. Here is a recent public temper tantrum.
Now, a more seasoned, mature professional would have had an off line, private conversation about this with the folks at My Burbank who 1) have certainly been around the block and 2) three days prior posted a similar podcast interview with Blake’s client THE BAKER. So how could Blake not know or pretend to not know how this works and why would he do this?
Perhaps young Blake is feeling more pressure than he anticipated and knows how to handle. He did post this at midnight, maybe he needed some sleep. Maybe this is starting to get beyond his control. Maybe he is the one who now needs a consultant.
Maybe what he needs is the money. He pushed this crypto account in March 2022 and said buy early!
So how is DEVIL crypto doing these days?
Clicked the link for the website and got this …
Clicked the link to the Reddit and got this …
Oops.
The thing is, dear Blake, even if people don’t know you, they have deduced what you and the others are doing to Burbank. And this letter shows that they are FED UP.
This election just got a whole lot more interesting, don’t you think?
Anyway – be sure to vote!
