New Williamson campaign manager was once accused of swindling fellow Democrats for concert tickets

Marianne Williamson's longshot presidential campaign has been plagued by staff turnover and internal dysfunction. The person she's turned to to stabilize the ship has some issues of her own.

Williamson’s new campaign manager, Roza Calderon, was accused of financial fraud by a local Democratic party group in 2017, according to local reporting and an interview with the head of a Democratic group in Placer County, California.

A police report filed by the group alleged that Calderon spent nearly $1,900 from the Placer Women Democrats’ bank account on a host of personal expenses. The group's then-treasurer, Sharleen Finn, filed the police complaint against Calderon. Finn then alleged that Calderon deleted internal financial documents to cover up her alleged fraud.

“I'm hoping that Roza has learned lessons, and she has a professional accounting firm and has learned the rules,” Kathleen Crawford, chair of the Placer County Democratic Central Committee, told POLITICO when informed that Calderon took the top job on Williamson’s presidential campaign.

Calderon declined to comment.

The Williamson campaign did not deny past allegations against Calderon. Instead, the campaign said the issue had “been set aside and dismissed by the Superior Court of Placer County" and called questions about it “an apparent political ‘hit’ piece.”

“These on-going attacks on the Marianne Williamson campaign are again an effort to diminish the significance of her second run for President and now, the corporate media establishment is waging war on campaign staffers,” the campaign said in a statement. "We’re confident in the leadership abilities of Roza Calderon and happy to have her on board to lead this campaign to victory.”

Calderon had been a volunteer treasurer for the local Democratic Party county group and still had access to the group’s “online accounting ledger” and credit card, according to the Sacramento News & Review. She was accused of using the organization’s credit card for personal expenses, including gasoline, movie downloads and BottleRock music festival tickets.

“When she was confronted about it, [her response] first sort of went into denial. And then later when the proof was coming out in terms of receipts and things that people had gathered, she said she would pay it back,” said Crawford, who was active with the group at the time of the allegations.

The women's political group would typically raise just $5,000 to $10,000 for an entire election cycle, Crawford said. So any misuse of funds put a serious dent in the overall budget and “that’s why people were pretty hot about it."

Calderon, who was simultaneously mounting an ultimately unsuccessful run for the U.S. House in California's 4th district, returned $1,900 after being confronted, according to the Sacramento News & Review. She denied the allegations to the local press.

The complaint was settled in court in 2019, and Calderon was put on probation for three years. She was also ordered to write an apology letter to the Placer Women Democrats and was ordered not to take any positions “of trust” for elder or dependent adults, meaning she cannot be the primary or secondary person making financial decisions for such people.

When asked about the allegations against Calderon in an interview, Williamson’s former interim campaign manager, Peter Daou, said: “I don't speak about specific colleagues out of respect for their confidentiality, but everyone I hired at the campaign came well-recommended in their field.” Daou hired Calderon in April as a fundraiser for the Williamson campaign.

Calderon came to the campaign after a brief tenure at the progressive nonprofit Our Revolution. On LinkedIn, Calderon claims to have been the group’s director of development from December 2022 to April 2023. But an Our Revolution spokesperson said that she was a contract fundraiser.

“Ms. Calderon was never an employee of Our Revolution, nor was she authorized to represent herself as the organization's Development or Finance Director,” a spokesperson for Our Revolution, granted anonymity to weigh in on a personnel matter, said in a statement.

The Williamson campaign ended the first quarter with less than $250,000 cash on hand in the race for the Democratic nomination against President Joe Biden. It’s unclear whether Williamson will be able to keep pace with the financial demands of a national presidential campaign — even one of an underdog.

The next campaign finance report will not be publicly available until July 15.

Williamson's campaign has been battling internal issues since its launch, including mass staff departures. Daou left in May, and The Daily Beast reported at least 10 staffers have departed since the campaign launch about two months ago. POLITICO independently confirmed six of those departures.

Former staffers told The Daily Beast and POLITICO the departures were largely spurred by Williamson’s management style. Her employees have described it as abusive dating back to the 1990s, when she was an author and celebrity guru in Southern California.

In response to POLITICO’s reporting in March, Williamson said that allegations about her behavior were “slanderous” and “categorically untrue.” She also accused former staffers of trying to improve their status with the political establishment.

But months later, after the most recent allegations from staffers on the 2024 campaign team in The Daily Beast, a campaign spokesperson disputed that Williamson’s management style has anything to do with the turnover.

“Neither Williamson nor her campaign have anything to apologize for, and despite the attacks against her, false claims and media blackouts, her popularity is growing and she will continue to persevere,” the campaign spokesperson said.