Jose Cerda, a local real estate agent who previously served on boards for the Chula Vista Democratic Club and the South Bay Irrigation District, filed the complaint on Oct. 3 with City Clerk Kerry Bigelow and the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
In the five-page document, Cerda asserts that McCann accepted “an illegal and excessive in-kind contribution in the form of deeply discounted personal services” from a private investigator tasked with surveilling his challenger, Ammar Campa-Najjar.
Republican candidate McCann announced in late September that he had hired The Special Investigations Unit, owned by former FBI agent Lawrence Hamilton, to find out whether Campa-Najjar, a Democrat, lives in Chula Vista.