A Measure J proponent is concerned opponents’ advertisements are using “unfounded claims” – particularly the no side’s portrayal of a May editorial published in the Free Lance – while a vice president with the opposition’s ad agency contended the yes side has been misleading by largely focusing its message on fracking, one component of a broader initiative.
Measure J on the Nov. 4 ballot aims to ban fracking, cycling steaming and well acidizing throughout the county while barring all petroleum activities in rural residential zones surrounding the two cities.
Andy Hsia-Coron, one of the leaders from the Coalition to Protect San Benito group behind Measure J, has expressed frustration at opponents’ continued use in their advertisements of the May opinion piece – titled “Deception defines measure against fracking, petroleum” – in which the former Free Lance Editorial Board opposed the initiative. That editorial board’s members now partially make up the Community Insight Board, which opines independently from the newspaper and its staff on the Free Lance opinion page.
“We think it was a misunderstanding that led to the editorial,” Hsia-Coron said in an interview with the Free Lance.
He said the “biggest issue” in the editorial’s criticism was its contention that the measure would halt conventional oil activities throughout most of the county.
The editorial stated the following: “The organization’s members won’t admit it outright, because that would spoil their narrative, but they are pushing to effectively shut down all petroleum production in the county.” That editorial went on to say the measure would ban all petroleum activities throughout a “vast majority of the unincorporated county,” while the planning director later clarified to the Free Lance that the initiative’s provision banning conventional practices would affect less than 10 percent of the county.
“It was a misreading of what rural means in zoning,” Hsia-Coron said, referring to the planning designations where conventional extraction would be barred.
He said opponents in their ads “continue to recycle something unfounded.”
The vice president of communications for the ad agency handling the No on Measure J campaign, however, pointed to a provision in Section 2 of the initiative where it defines a “well stimulation treatment” – banned under the proposal – as “any treatment of a well designed to enhance oil and gas production or recovery by increasing the permeability of the formation.”
He said it underscores how Measure J is a “broadly written ban.”
“Measure J would prohibit and ban the use of any and all methods that petroleum companies have used in California for decades and any they might develop in the future to enhance the flow,” said Chuck Finnie with Whitehurst/Mosher Campaign Strategy and Media, which is managing the opposition’s campaign with support from local residents.
Finnie claimed the Yes on Measure J side has been misleading because it has focused its message on the notion of a fracking ban.
“The editorial’s message is, arm yourself voters with knowledge and learn for yourself because it’s deceptive,” Finnie said.
Hsia-Coron, though, underscored how the initiative would allow conventional practices throughout most of the county – contrary to the message in the May editorial used in recent ads for the opposition’s side.
“They’ve actually reprinted the editorial as a door hanger, as a handout, and it’s been repeated in the television commercial,” Hsia-Coron said, pointing to a recent TV ad where a couple is seated at a kitchen table looking at a newspaper while referencing the Free Lance editorial.
Hsia-Coron called that TV commercial “particularly reprehensible” and mentioned its dialogue linking concerns over ISIS terrorists with the Measure J issue and the broader debate over energy independence. The commercial ends with a prominent picture of the Free Lance logo, while the newspaper had no association with the ad.
“ISIS? Really?” Hsia-Coron said. “There are a lot of concerns. We might as well say Measure J is linked to Ebola, too.”
Finnie, however, said the Yes on Measure J side has been “making hysterical claims” of its own. He said the no side objects to “scare tactics and hysteria.”
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