Three quick updates regarding the state senate campaign.
1. Timm Herdt, Ventura County Star reporter, has a new story up that the Republican Party is giving up on the other contested state senate race and focusing on the 19th state senate district. Click here to read the whole story.
2. Tony Strickland and The Santa Barbara News Press keep going after Hannah-Beth Jackson for attending a meeting where assembly Democrats talked about holding up the state budget for tactical reasons in their budget negotiations. The meeting was accidentally sent out across the capitol building.
What the editorial and the Strickland campaign doesn't say is what, if anything, Hannah-Beth Jackson said at the meeting. Did she argue against delaying the budget? It would seem pretty odd to attack her for arguing against her own party.
I don't know what she said, but if the paper is going to make the charge, they should back it up.
Is the Santa Barbara News Press a right wing paper? They seem to be really against Hannah-Beth Jackson. Who else are they supporting this election season?
Click on continue reading to see the press release with the full article.
UPDATE:
3. A commenter, Marie Lakin, said that the Strickland campaign sent out a mailer but didn't include, as they said was required by law, to say who it was sent from. I have uploaded the mailer so you could see for yourself. Click on continue reading to see it. Thanks to another reader that scanned it and sent it in.
If you want to see your candidate's mailers or other advertisements on my blog, scan them and send them in.
The newspaper with the largest daily distribution in Santa Barbara County knows Hannah-Beth Jackson the best and this is what they had to say about her today...
Our Opinion: Can you trust Jackson in Sacramento?
October 15, 2008 8:07 AM
Hannah-Beth Jackson is trying to run away from much of her past. Ms. Jackson was known during her years in the statehouse as so extremely partisan and off-putting that even some fellow Democrats, locally and in Sacramento, wanted her out of politics.
But now, amazingly, Ms. Jackson is trying to portray herself as an independent in her run for the state Senate against Tony Strickland. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Ms. Jackson -- who earned the title of Taxin' Jackson -- also is attempting to revise history and suggest she didn't support one idea after the next to increase your taxes.
Now comes word that Ms. Jackson is trying to rewrite the circumstances regarding her participation in a scheme in 2003 to delay passage of the state budget for political gain.
Think back to that summer when Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson showed up at the county Board of Supervisors meeting to criticize the GOP's no-new-tax stand and, in her view, that party's partisanship at the expense of compromise.
It was just more grandstanding and hypocrisy from Ms. Jackson.
Days later, a broadcasting system in the Capitol building aired budget discussions by a group of 11 Democratic Assembly members that included Ms. Jackson. A staff member interrupted the legislators by saying: "Excuse me, guys, you can be heard outside."
A report in the San Francisco Chronicle stated: "Members of the Assembly Democrats' progressive caucus were heard making candid, if not intemperate, statements . . . that they may want to 'precipitate a crisis' over the budget this year." The L.A. Daily News noted that the Democrats "speculated that the continuing deadlock over the state budget could benefit their party politically by slowing the drive to recall Gov. Gray Davis."
At a recent candidates debate in Ventura, Ms. Jackson tried to distance herself from all this by saying there was no secret meeting, according to reports. The Strickland campaign notes: "Hannah-Beth Jackson thinks that when she says something, it's true. This time, her denials are more hollow than usual. Taxin' Jackson must have forgotten the news coverage of the now infamous 'Squawk Box' recording. In this meeting, Democrats inadvertently had microphones transmitting their secret plans to hold up the budget and to blame the Republicans in hope of gaining a political advantage."
On top of these apparent lies or distortions about her past, Ms. Jackson has further damaged her reputation by over-the-top mud-slinging against Mr. Strickland.
Voters must ask themselves: Do you have enough trust and confidence in Ms. Jackson to give her a job in Sacramento?
I've posted this on another entry and I will say it again. This paper is the only one I know of that has its own Wikipedia entry on its many controversies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Barbara_News-Press_controversy
It has little respect up there, has lost enormous circulation and has a rogue, right-wing editorial writer who pals around with a rogue right-wing radio talk show host and targets mostly women in his scathing editorials.
Everybody up there rolls their eyes over this paper.
So it doesn't surprise me that they would take a silly press release the Strickland folks generated, do no fact checking and run it as an "editorial."
Even funnier that they would go after Hannah-Beth for "negative" campaigning when Strickland has sent out the most negative, lie-filled pieces I have ever seen.
I received one today from the Strickland campaign that violated election laws. I am not kidding about this. Nowhere on the piece did it say who mailed it. It only had an address. The law states that the committee or candidate needs to have it printed clearly in at least 6 pt. type on the outside of the mailer who sent it. This piece did not.
Now I know it came from them only because the P.O. box was the same as the other mailers.
Marie,
Scan it and email it to me and I will post it.
Tony Strickland has been around campaigns for so long that it would be a surprise for his team to get that wrong.
Marie - I can verify the existance of the direct mail piece with no indication of who mailed it. I wonder if Hannah-Beth is going to generate a breathless press release about it.
I can also verify that the News Press is a mere shell of itself - the mass exodus of its reporters last year did it in. I believe a couple of the reporters now work at the Star. The decline of the News-Press has been going on for several years now. I think the owner has been at extreme odds with her management team.
Further evidence of how the poorly the News-Press is viewed by Santa Barbara residents:
http://craigsmithsblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/red-hot-race-gets-condensed-coverage.html
It looks like the Independent has replaced them in the race for serious news coverage. This blogger calls the owner of the News-Press "Citizen McCaw."
Sort of funny.
Oh, I've just stumbled on another site I did not know existed.
This one is truly amazing. It even has a place for people who have been skewered by op-ed writer Travis Armstrong to respond to his vitriolic and inaccurate editorials (Hannah-Beth, go for it!):
http://citizenmccaw.com/spotlight/
There is a DVD you can purchase on the trials and tribulations of the News-Press. It features Ben Bradlee, Editor Emeritus, Washington Post. It had a premiere in Santa Barbara that over 3,000 people attended.
This fits in well with the long line of dubious supporters of our Phony Tony. Just when I think things are silly, they get sillier every single time with this bunch.
Tony Strickland's supporters have sunk to a new low. Today while I was phone banking a very obnoxious and angry woman came to our office to throw insults and lies at us and distract us from phone banking. She tried to walk off with Obama buttons even though she said she can't stand Obama. The polite young man staffing the office told her that we are selling them and she did pay for them.
She was totally rude YELLING at me about Hannah-Beth and I told her to leave. I was afraid she was going to start a cat fight, she must be Joel Angeles mother, that would explain alot.