The nasty business of campaigning
Although I do not do individual endorsements while I write my
column, I believe that local elections, including Assembly races,
should be contested with some restraint. When it’s over, we are
still going to be living here.
The nasty business of campaigning
Although I do not do individual endorsements while I write my column, I believe that local elections, including Assembly races, should be contested with some restraint. When it’s over, we are still going to be living here.
“Going negative” is OK, but only if the issues are honestly and fully engaged. I do object, however, to senseless nasty campaigning designed only to leave false impressions or hide the true source of the mumbo-jumbo.
One such flyer targeted San Benito County District 3 candidate Pat Loe, the incumbent. It was from the Local 521 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) representing more than two million workers nationally with several local chapters.
The document used an unflattering picture and a large newspaper headline about an armed robbery in Hollister that turned into a high-speed car chase and a fatality. What was missing was that the suspects were from Salinas and it took five police agencies working across two counties to apprehend them after a one-hour pursuit. What does that one incident have to do with the election? Nothing.
SEIU’s real issue is employment for its members. Loe would not rule out studying cutbacks and consolidation of public employee positions, so she’s on their hit list.
Attack flyers also come from nebulous organizations that claim to be independent committees. No doubt, they all meet the legal definition, but they are not. Political action committees often fund other PACs and so on; eventually you find out that the money originally came from the same sources. The abundance of names is designed to increase their spending power and, in some cases, allow attacks behind a front organization whose complexity and impenetrability would do the mafia proud.
SEIU is always aggressive, but sometimes – such as the attack on Assembly Candidate Janet Barnes – it doesn’t even want its name attached to the nastiness. Instead they use puppet PACs that know just what to do – wink, nod. This time it was the “Opportunity PAC” in Pasadena funded by organized labor, but you can just as well call it SEIU south. What’s the opportunity, a chance to imply, with a green-tinted mug shot cover, that Barnes doesn’t care about murders?
Meanwhile, the “independent” committee supporting Barnes was not standing idle either. A two-page flyer was sent out accusing Luis Alejo, her opponent, of failing to pay unspecified taxes and being in the pocket of big tobacco, big banks and big insurance companies. It has a picture of him on cigarettes. Tactic – find someone or something everyone hates and connect it to your opponent.
The flyer said that is was “not authorized by the candidate or candidate-controlled committee.” Instead it came from “Safe Neighborhoods and Better Schools coalition, Janet Barnes for Assembly 2010 funding by EdVoice Independent Expenditure Committee and California Farm Bureau Federation Fund to Protect the Family Farm (FARM PAC).” Not only do I not know who that is, I can hardly say it.
The professional campaign advisers on both sides must be laughing all the way to the bank.
Hey guys, have at it; it’s not as if the taxpayers have any real issues to discuss in detail. How about – unemployment, addiction, crime, failing schools and students, overcrowded and expensive prisons, a statewide $20 billion annual budget deficit, $59 billion in unfunded state pension liabilities, $62 billion in unfunded state retiree healthcare and non-pension benefits and people stuck with houses worth less than half what they paid for them? Meanwhile, some political jurisdictions continue to spend as if the printing presses will never run out of ink.
How’s that for a flyer with a negative tone?
