Trashing nastiness of 2016 elections
It’s not quite official. Not all the punches to the kidneys have landed yet. But we can safely say that the election of 2016 bids to become one of the most vicious in Santa Clara County history.
Amid all the hysteria, it’s worth trying to set the record straight on a few of the nastier attacks. Here’s my analysis of four of them, with my award of garbage cans — one to four — to the smelly.
The War of Invective: “A bombshell accusation!” says one voice. “Internet espionage!’’ says another “Broke federal law,’’ intones a third.
A recent 30-second television ad from U.S. Rep. Mike Honda against challenger Ro Khanna was classic misdirection. Using charges from his own lawsuit against Khanna, the Honda ad selectively edited excerpts from television reports to accuse Khanna of breaking federal law.
In fact, there was no official finding of wrongdoing, though Khanna’s campaign manager, Brian Parvizshahi, stepped down after accusations from the Honda camp that he had peeked via computer at Honda donor lists.
The lawsuit was a Honda publicity stunt — though when I asked, Honda’s people refused to back off, saying that they had clear evidence that the Khanna campaign had been accessing confidential data.
A federal judge declined to order an injunction and instead brokered a compromise in which Khanna turned over some of his records to Honda.
On the heels of a racially tinged ad that had an Indian actor portraying Khanna as a smarmy buddy of Wall Street, the piece underscored just how desperate and dishonest the Honda campaign has become. The award: Four garbage cans.
The Crime Scene: In the 27th Assembly District race between Ash Kalra and Madison Nguyen, a piece funded by a group called Opportunity PAC showed a crime scene with a gun in the foreground. “Murders Doubled,’’ screamed the yellow headlines. Underneath it asked: “What was Madison Nguyen’s response?”
Inside, the piece said that
Nguyen had voted to cut 180 police and public safety jobs in 2011, a year in which the number of San Jose homicides doubled. (In 2010, there were 20. In 2011, there were 42, a number that included two homicides handled by university police.)
“Tell Madison Nguyen putting our neighborhoods at risk disqualifies her for a promotion to the State Assembly,’’ said the Opportunity PAC piece, funded by teachers and health care givers.
What the flier was missing was context: In 2011, facing an unprecedented recession-inspired budget shortage of $115 million, the City Council voted 7-4 to approve a spending plan that trimmed about 180 police department positions, most of which were unfilled. Ultimately, 66 cops were laid off, though a substantial number eventually were hired back.
Statisticians will tell you that it is hard to make a ready correlation between the number of police and the homicide rate. In 2015, for example, the number of department-handled homicides fell to 30, even though the number of officers was even lower than it was in 2011.
The telephone number listed for Opportunity PAC with the Secretary of State’s Office took me to a Sacramento law firm, which said it could not comment on the specifics of the ad. The award: Two garbage cans.
Kicking the Past: A YouTube video and a series of phone calls and text messages have landed in the Santa Clara City Council race against Tino Silva, who is running for the empty seat vacated by Jerry Marsalli. The YouTube video put out by BLUPAC, a shadowy organization that Mayor Lisa Gillmor has attempted to link with the San Francisco 49ers, is especially odious.
To swelling, suspenseful music, the video says that Silva, as president of the Santa Clara Youth Soccer League, hired a convicted criminal as a coach. That coach, the video said, went on to molest two girls. And Silva didn’t tell parents about the arrest. “When the Mercury News asked him why, Tino Silva had no comment,” the narrator says.
I couldn’t get an immediate comment from a BLUPAC spokesman, but the facts are otherwise: Silva was not president of the Santa Clara Youth Soccer League when the young man became a coach in 2005. He says he was not even on its board, which approves the coaches. Silva told me that the league was unaware of any previous criminal conviction — and that the young man was also a coach at Archbishop Mitty High School.
The coach was indeed arrested on suspicion of child molestation in early 2009, when Silva was president. After Silva learned of the arrest, he ordered the coach to stay away from games and practices. He says no kids were at risk. “It was an ongoing police investigation,” he said about his decision to delay telling parents for a couple of days. “I didn’t want to jump the gun.”
The award: Three garbage cans.
Keeping the books: A flier paid for by the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce PAC took on District 6 candidate Helen Chapman, accusing her of being responsible for “widespread mismanagement of taxpayer funds.’’
The attack was based on a 2006 city report that found that bookkeeping procedures should have been tighter in the city’s Park Trust Fund, a developer-funded account that pays for parks. The ChamberPac’s piece exaggerated the truth.
Relying on a 2006 Mercury News story, the piece said the report concluded that “Of the $13.3 million in unspent funds, $406,000 can’t be traced.” It added that “an additional $339,000 must be returned.” Those were out-of-context readings of the Mercury News story.
The $406,000 charge, for instance, made it sound as if the money was missing. The story actually said the money could not be traced to a developer and thus couldn’t be spent in a specific council district. The city report recommended it be used for citywide purposes. The $339,000 was money that hadn’t been spent within five years and had to be returned to homeowners.
While the bookkeeping could have been better, no money went missing. And it’s worth noting that the parks and recreation commission is an advisory body that did not handle finances day-to-day. A ChamberPAC spokesman declined comment. The award: One garbage can.