What's at stake:
A company called Blue Horsehoe Agency gave Fresno Future Forward a loan for the exact amount the political action committee used for disparaging mailers it sent in the spring. Fresnoland could not find any trace of the company in city, county and state business records. However, the company shares the same northwest Fresno address with three companies run by Tavlian.
Fresno Future Forward, the political action committee responsible for sending out a disparaging mailer during a March special election, revealed its funding source in a new PAC filing.
A company called Blue Horsehoe (sic) Agency gave Fresno Future Forward a loan for the exact amount it spent on mailers — $4,439.51 — according to the filing.
Blue Horsehoe Agency’s listed address is the same as three separate companies run by Alex Tavlian, who, records show, is also identified in filings as the treasurer of the Fresno Future Forward PAC.
Blue Horsehoe Agency’s address, which is listed on the Fresno Future Forward PAC’s latest filing, is a post office box at a UPS store on Bullard Avenue in northwest Fresno.
According to state and county records, that same Bullard Avenue address has been used to register the following companies: Local Government Strategic Consulting LLC, Park West Associates and Valley Future Foundation, INC.
Tavlian is listed as either a manager or executive for all three of those companies, according to local and state business records.
Fresnoland was unable to find any record of Blue Horsehoe Agency in city, county and state public records as of Aug. 6.
“What it suggests is that this is one individual who owns, manages all these companies and is moving money between them,” said Thomas Holyoke, a Fresno State professor who researches American politics, lobbying and interest groups. “Whether it’s for the purpose of making it hard to track that money as it enters the political process — I couldn’t specifically say.”
Tavlian did not respond to Fresnoland’s requests for comment, including questions asking what exactly Blue Horsehoe Agency does as a business. He also did not respond to questions about why there’s no trace of the company locally or on the state level, or why the company gave a loan to his PAC.
He also did not explain the PAC’s plans for repaying the loan.
Tavlian and the Fresno Future Forward PAC are still being investigated by California’s Fair Political Practices Commission for potentially violating California’s Political Reform Act.
Holyoke told Fresnoland it’s not uncommon for candidates to take out a loan for their political campaigns. However, he said a political action committee doing the same thing is odd.
“My only thought is I’ve never heard of that before,” Holyoke told Fresnoland.
The newly released records add another layer to the controversy surrounding the Fresno Future Forward PAC and its contentious mailer.
So far, Tavlian has refused to say whether he was involved in the creation of Fresno Future Forward’s mailer. He hasn’t responded to several requests for comment, not just from Fresnoland.
However, the PAC identified Tavlian as its treasurer the month after the March special election ended. Out of the two frontrunners, Brandon Vang won and Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas lost.
She has repeatedly declined to comment on the mailer, and new details regarding it, after saying in March she had nothing to do with it or Fresno Future Forward. She declined to comment again Wednesday.
“I will gladly respond to media inquiries about my plans at Fresno Unified or in my job capacity,” Jonasson Rosas wrote via text. “The campaign is behind me.”
When Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz exposed Fresno Future Forward for not following city and state election laws, Tavlian paid the $1,000 fine via a business check from Park West Associates. Tavlian signed the check, too.
Now, it appears the company that loaned Fresno Future Forward money for disparaging mailers has the same business address as several Tavlian-run companies.
Holyoke told Fresnoland there’s nothing generally stopping a made-up business name from being listed on campaign finance forms or PAC filings.
“Generally speaking, no, I don’t think there is anything illegal about it, which may be taken as a weakness in the law,” Holyoke said. “I personally think it is a weakness in the law because it’s so easy to move money like that. I still presume that at some point there must be some kind of IRS filings, but it may be time before that happens.”
Holyoke added that, in general, if a new company is created to move political money, it can be hard to trace.
“The companies are probably easy to set up if there’s no physical company anyway,” Holyoke said. “It also may be easy to dissolve.”
Four companies, one address and a well-known political consultant
While Fresnoland didn’t find any trace of Blue Horsehoe Agency in public records, despite its Fresno address, the same can’t be said of the three other companies that are registered under the same address, according to public records.
Local Government Strategic Consulting is Tavlian’s government consulting company. It has contracted in the past twice with Mike Karbassi’s city council office. It has also contracted with Luis Chavez’s former city council office.
In total, the Tavlian-run Local Government Strategic Consulting has been awarded more than $350,000 in government contracts from Karbassi and Chavez’s council offices since 2022.
Tavlian’s Valley Future Foundation is a nonprofit organization, and is the parent company of Tavlian’s partisan website SJV Sun. The site has published articles about Fresno politics, and issues that involve Tavlian’s political clients.
Back in June 2024, Tavlian wrote an SJV Sun article, in which his political client Jordan Wamhoff made allegations about former Police Chief Paco Balderrama. The article listed no author and never mentioned Wamhoff by name — even though Wamhoff was and remains a sitting Madera County supervisor.
Wamhoff successfully ran for Madera County supervisor in 2022, and Tavlian was his political consultant. That political and financial relationship was never disclosed in the SJV Sun article.
The week after the SJV Sun article was published, the City of Fresno launched an investigation into Balderrama, and he resigned a few weeks later.
Just last month, Fresnoland published an investigation that traced what experts referred to as dark money in Fresno politics. A company called FrontPoint Partners, LLC, which has an Orange County address, has been represented by Tavlian as a lobbyist in the past.
FrontPoint Partners, LLC donated $10,000 to a newly formed PAC last year that sent out a separate set of misleading mailers attacking Sal Quintero, a political opponent of Luis Chavez. Fresnoland reached out to Chavez on Wednesday for comment, but he did not respond.
Earlier this year, FrontPoint Partners, LLC donated $5,000 to Jonasson Rosas’ campaign for city council in the March special election.
Chavez and Jonasson Rosas are married.
Vang, who has also faced his own controversy in his short time in office, has consistently declined to comment on the dark money issue since winning March’s special election. He was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.
