Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


A few blocks from the San Diego Convention Center, where Republicans plan more “family values” rhetoric at their August convention, stands Pleasureland Adult Book and Video Center, one of the few downtown porn palaces. But don’t expect any GOP finger-wagging at the shop: Its landlord is convention chair Jack Ford.

Ford, middle son of President Gerald Ford and executive director of the convention host committee, owns the lot with business partner George Gorton, former consultant to Gov. Pete Wilson and onetime Nixon aide.

They bought the Gaslamp District building in 1980, when the area was run-down. For a time, they collected rent from Reuben Sturman, described later by the Department of Justice as the top world distributor of hard-core porn, with alleged mafia ties.

In 1984, City Councilman Uvaldo Martinez stumped outside the shop, vowing to shut it down if re-elected. Later he was embarrassed when local media reported that the Pleasureland building was owned by Martinez’s political consultants, Ford and Gorton, whose offices were then upstairs from the shop.

Beverly Schroeder, senior planner of San Diego’s Centre City Development, says an adult business couldn’t move into the newly upscale Gaslamp District today, adding that 11 X-rated stores have been evicted in the last decade.

So how come Pleasureland has stayed? Schroeder insists it has nothing to do with Ford and Gorton’s relationship with Republican Mayor Susan Golding (Gorton is Golding’s ex-boyfriend and managed most of her political campaigns. And Gorton, Ford, and Golding ran a newspaper, the Del Mar News, in the late 1970s).

“The city doesn’t feel compelled to intervene into Pleasureland’s business,” she says, though adds that Ford “could probably get [Pleasureland] out if he could find a tenant to pay higher rent.” Ford says only: “It is my personal preference that the tenant in question was not in our building.”

James Lambert, local director of the anti-porn group Enough is Enough, calls the Republicans’ stewardship of Pleasureland “totally hypocritical,” and says he plans, somehow, to get a message to former President Ford during the convention. “I just want to tell him what his son is up to.”

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate