Smear of gay Republican: What will Dems say? Zip
March 25, 2013
By Chris Reed
The hypocrisy of the power-mad left of California’s Democratic Party has never been more on display than in the attempt to destroy the 2012 mayoral candidacy of San Diego gay libertarian Republican Carl DeMaio. The power play involved people from both parties, but the ultimate beneficiary was Democrat Bob Filner, who narrowly defeated DeMaio in November. This U-T San Diego report should sicken people on the left who really care about gay rights, as opposed to those who pretend to care when political advantage results:
“Some of the city’s biggest movers and shakers waged a clandestine campaign last year during the San Diego mayor’s race to gather and disseminate damaging information on candidate Carl DeMaio and his longtime partner, an effort that resides in the legal gray area of campaign disclosure.
“The group — financially backed by businessman Fred Maas — spent more than $33,000 to hire a true crime author to dig up dirt on DeMaio, which resulted in a 200-plus page dossier of court records and other documents that was distributed to nearly every local media outlet in early 2012 on the condition of anonymity.
“Those working on the project behind the scenes included a top aide to then-Mayor Jerry Sanders and at least three other people with ties to the mayoral campaign of Nathan Fletcher although Fletcher denies any involvement.
“The information dredged up went largely unreported because many in the media considered it old, irrelevant and an untoward attempt to draw attention to DeMaio’s homosexuality during the race. The records focused mainly on legal problems involving his partner — San Diego Gay & Lesbian News Publisher Johnathan Hale.
“Opposition research on high-profile candidates is commonplace in politics, but Maas and his cohorts may have run afoul of state and local campaign laws when they raised money for the project and failed to disclose its financial backers or spending activity. The group continued to resist subpoena attempts by local and state investigators for information throughout the mayor’s race as those involved tried to keep their roles in the project from being made public by saying it was a journalistic endeavor.”
Will gay Democrats complain about this?
Will John Perez, Christine Kehoe, Toni Atkins, Mark Leno, etc., say this reeks?
Don’t hold your breath.
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Yes, the smear campaign was wrong. There should be no place for this kind of thing in politics. However, Reed leaves out a couple of important points.
1. Would he be complaining so loudly if DeMaio had been a gay moderate or liberal? Don’t think so.
2. The people behind the campaign were supporting another Republican, Nathan Fletcher. Mayor Filner had nothing to do with it. Trying to blame it on the Democrats is absurd.
3. Reed has his panties in a bunch about this “clandestine campaign.” However, when a secret Arizona SuperPAC dropped more than $11 million on California last year to defeat Prop. 30 and pass Prop. 32, he never said a word.
I guess some clandestine campaigns are better than others.
The only fair way to deal with the hypocrisy is to reinstate punitive punishment for adultery. That would even the field. Win-Win for all sides.
Hey, Steve (Maviglio, probably) from Sacto:
I am a libertarian, not a social conservative. You will find zero history of gay bashing in my 22 years as a California journalist.
And I have also written for years calling for complete transparency on campaign financing.
And as for the alleged fact that Filner wasn’t part of the attempts to undercut DeMaio by reminding voters he was gay, that’s not true at all. Filner and his surrogates brought up indirectly and directly over and over and over again from June to November
One of the ugliest chapters in San Diego’s political history-and that’s saying ALOT in Enron -by-the- sea!
DeMaio got under their skin like no one since Mike Aguirre; he was perceived as a genuine threat to their sleazy bankrupt status quo, and out came the long knives. So now the public employee unions own the town lock, stock and barrel with Filner, they will get everything they want and more–and ironically it will be their undoing in a more profound sense than any of the reforms that DeMaio might have instituted. I believe that Filner, in his zeal to force feed more benefits to the MEA veal calves, will end up dissolving the entire benefit edifice at the molecular level. In other words, DeMaio, in the very long term, would have been best for the public employee union members, like their own private swiss banker….
Guess you don’t even read other stories on this blog, Chris. Richard Rider feebly attempted to “out” me some time ago. Steve Maviglio is a good guy, so don’t try to pin anything on him.
1. Glad you are not a gay-basher. I have a lot more in common with libertarians than I do with so-called “social conservatives”. I just wish that libertarians would speak out as strongly against them as you do against Democrats. The idea that government should be used to force the religious beliefs of some people onto the rest of us ought to be condemned by libertarians in the strongest possible terms. If government intrusion in the economy is wrong, it’s just as wrong in people’s bedrooms.
2. The fact is that Mayor Filner had nothing to do with the specific “clandestine” campaign you wrote about, which was first exposed by the UT. That’s what we were discussing, not other alleged examples of gay bashing.
3. Also happy to know you share my views on transparency in campaign finance. But what did you say specifically to condemn last year’s secret Arizona SuperPAC? If you condemned that PAC publicly, I apologize.