28th Assembly race could be marked by hit-mailers, influenced by
money
While voters of the 28th Assembly District may be elated that
the primary election
– and all its accompanying mud – has ended, they may want to
break out the slickers and galoshes for a long haul preceding the
general election in November.
28th Assembly race could be marked by hit-mailers, influenced by money
While voters of the 28th Assembly District may be elated that the primary election – and all its accompanying mud – has ended, they may want to break out the slickers and galoshes for a long haul preceding the general election in November.
It came as little surprise to local political watchers that Anna Caballero, Mayor and maverick attorney of Salinas, easily took the lead in the race from the moment the first returns came in on election night. Caballero’s opponent was Watsonville City Council member Ana Ventura Phares. The two attorneys came from such similar backgrounds that the race was dubbed “The Battle of the Two Annas.”
But Caballero had the edge in political experience, having been elected to the Salinas City Council in 1991 and becoming Mayor in 1998, winning reelection in 2004. She is highly respected in her community and credited for bringing all sides together over thorny issues. Ventura Phares, also greatly respected in her community, has been on the Watsonville City Council since 1998, winning reelection in 2002. She is now serving as Mayor of her city, a position that is not elected but rotated among council members.
Political expert Terry Christensen, a professor of political science at San Jose State University, believes Caballero is the frontrunner in the November election, mainly because of the majority Democrat registration in the 28th District and because he doesn’t think the Republican Party is going to throw money at her new Republican opponent, political rookie Ignacio Velazquez of Hollister.
“She’s in pretty good shape,” Christensen said.
Both “Anna” campaigns put out negative mailers on each other. But it seems that Caballero – and the public – may have to grapple with even nastier campaigning ahead from Velazquez. He astonished both Democratic camps when he qualified as a write-in candidate for the Democratic ballot and sent out mailers to Democratic households encouraging them to write-in his name for the primary.
He doesn’t know how many write-ins he got, but said it didn’t matter.
“It was just a way to get my message out,” Velazquez told The Pinnacle. “I had a choice to sit around and do nothing, but I started early.”
His bid to glean Democratic votes baffled many, including those of his own party.
“That was the first time I had ever heard of it and to be honest, as far as the methodology of the write-in,” said Jennifer Zapata, former President of San Benito’s Republican Central Committee. “I’ve never seen that done before. It shows a lack of true values. Running for a partisan race, you need to represent the principals of the party. That is wishy-washy what he’s doing.”
Throughout the primary he criticized Caballero for doing nothing about her city’s notorious gang and violence problems.
“Ignacio compares Salinas to Baghdad,” said Rick Rivas, Caballero’s campaign manager, as he pulled a Velazquez mailer from a file at Caballero’s Salinas headquarters. “It’s an insult to the people of Salinas. It’s misguided and wrong.”
Velazquez sticks to his guns on the issue.
“The insult is that she didn’t take care of the problem,” Velazquez said. “Now she wants to move ahead and get a pay raise and say everything is OK? Here you have a politician who has been in charge of the city 15 years, denying there’s a problem. She can change the stats all she wants, but it’s dangerous. That city is out of control and she can’t change facts. It’s a war zone. Jobs are moving out of Salinas.”
Caballero has never denied there is a gang problem in Salinas, as there is in any large city. Rivas said Caballero has been addressing the gang issue since she was first elected in the early 1990s, and created the organization “Partners for Peace,” a coalition of community groups that comprehensively deal with the problem, through family and youth programs.
“It’s unfortunate that Ignacio has decided to attack the people of Salinas,” Rivas said. “It’s also ironic that a man who has no experience in public service and has done little to improve the quality of life in Hollister is criticizing the mayor, who has made it her life’s work to improve public safety and the quality of life in her community.”
Velazquez, owner of the Vault restaurant and owner of contracting company American Electric, has never held elected office but seems to have no trouble raising money for his political campaigns. Though he faced no Republican opponent in this primary, Velazquez still spent $54,000 of mostly his own money on hit mailers against Caballero. For his money, Velazquez garnered 8,561 votes in the Republican primary throughout the four-county district this go-around.
He says a big difference between he and Caballero is that he is not “bought by special interest groups.” Rivas, of the Caballero camp, says special interests have nothing to do with her support; that, rather, she has a wide array of bipartisan contributors.
“Ignacio Velazquez is trying to buy his seat in the Assembly and the voters are going to say, ‘no, the seat is not up for sale,” Rivas said. For a voting public disenchanted with mainstream politics, Velazquez – though he’s running on the Republican ticket – may have an appeal unlike others more experienced. He touts a populace stance, billing himself as the anti-politician who knows what it’s like to have to earn money the old-fashioned way – not through the public dole. Fed-up voters from both sides of the political spectrum, and especially third partiers, who find his brand of politics refreshing, could turn the businessman into a darkhorse candidate in November.
“As long as we have leaders that are politicians, we aren’t going to be represented,” Velazquez said. “I think if you’re going to represent the people you should understand how hard it is to create jobs and keep jobs. If businesses are losing employees, they are having financials problems. It’s a spiraling effect. Politicians buy in to what the special interest groups tell them. And we, the people, have to pay for that; special interests write policy. That’s why we have the problems we have with development and sprawl, because special interests have written policy that allows them to, and elected officials don’t have the backbone to say ‘no.'”
Rivas said no matter how Velazquez frames his arguments, he isn’t going to fool voters who “know he has made a living off of misleading the City of Hollister and filing frivolous lawsuits.”
In 2004, Velazquez sued San Benito Supervisor Ruth Kesler and the rest of the board, as a co-plaintiff with now Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz, for $5 million. They claimed Kesler had hurled a racial epithet at De La Cruz during a board meeting, but recorded tapes of the session proved otherwise. They dropped the suit, but not after it had cost the county some $50,000 to defend against.
In 2002, Velazquez ran against businessman Clint Engler of Monterey for the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent Congressman Sam Farr for the 17th District. Velazquez spent $126,824, again, most of it his own money, while Engler spent only $1,532, but Engler still won the primary. Farr outspent all candidates with nearly $500,000, all of it contributed by political action committees and other donors.
Christensen believes Caballero is the frontrunner in the November election.
“It’s a strongly Democratic district,” said Christiansen. “It would take an awful lot of money to knock her out of the race. The Republican Party would have to dump a lot of money into it if they thought it was a viable race. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Caballero outspent rival Ventura Phares by some $46,000: Caballero’s campaign chest for the primary was $125,074, while Ventura Phares’ spent $78,731. Not all the late contributions have been filed yet, however, and Caballero’s campaign staff says she gleaned about $300,000 from both Republican and Democratic contributors.
Both coffers are comparatively small compared to the big bucks spent by the mainstream parties for this seat in 1998, when Republican incumbent Pete Frusetta battled Democrat challenger Alan Styles, another former mayor of Salinas. By the end of the general election that year, the Frusetta camp had spent about $1.5 million, and the Styles campaign about $800,000. A third candidate who ran on the Libertarian ticket had spent only $500.
Dollars per vote, with absentee ballots still being counted, Caballero spent $10.36 for each vote, Ventura Phares spent $10.38 and Velazquez spent $6.31 per vote in an uncontested race.
