Don Sebastiani donated $650,000 to abortion-notification proposition

August Sebastiani captured attention in Sonoma with his suggestion on Nov. 8, the day after he was elected to city council, that he’d like to bring a Christmas nativity scene back to the plaza.
But the 26-year-old city councilman isn’t the only member of his well-known winemaking family to express religious beliefs via politics.
On the same day, his father, Don Sebastiani, was already thinking about the next steps for Prop. 85. The measure, which the state’s voters rejected by a 54 percent to 46 percent margin, would have required a girl under 18 to notify a parent or guardian before having an abortion.
“It’ll be back,” Don Sebastiani recently told the Sun.
Sebastiani, a staunch Catholic, donated $650,000 to Prop. 85 – second only to the $2.7 million donated by James Holman, publisher of the San Diego Reader, an alternative weekly newspaper.
In 2005, Sebastiani donated $250,000 to a similar measure, Prop. 73, which failed by a 53 percent to 47 percent margin. Other major contributors then were Holman and Tom Monaghan, the owner of Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Domino’s Pizza and a large contributor to Catholic causes.
After donating a total of $900,000 to campaigns for California abortion-notification propositions, Sebastiani predicts the third time will be the charm:
“Parents ought to have some sort of involvement, at least notification,” he said. “It’s passed now in 35 states…. This is something that will be passed in 50 states.”
Sebastiani figures that Prop. 85 ran into trouble because opposition to the Iraq War — which Sebastiani himself opposes – brought out an electorate that was more liberal than usual.
“This year, it (faced) a pretty stiff wind,” he said. “Politics is like football, it’s a game of inches.”
Likewise, Prop. 72 was on the ballot alongside a number of unpopular propositions backed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“It flew into that hurricane,” Sebastiani said.
Other faith-inspired campaign donations Sebastiani has made include being a major contributor along with Holman in 2004 to the campaign against Prop. 71, the measure to sell bonds to fund stem-cell research in California.
Locally, Sebastiani donates to Presentation School, a Catholic school that this year opened a new campus on Broadway, south of Sonoma’s city limits. He often leads the rosary at daily mass at St. Francis Solano Catholic Church.
Sebastiani was a three-term state Republican state assemblyman who represented Sonoma. The former CEO of Sebastiani Vineyards, he now runs Don Sebastiani and Sons with his sons Donny and August.