A school district board member resorted to an ad-hominem attack against State Senator Tony Strickland during a phone conversation with one of his staffers, according to a source close to the Republican legislator.

The staffer said the caller identified herself as Ventura Unified School District Board Member Mary Haffner, and she wanted Strickland to support Governor Brown's proposed five-year tax increase.

After hearing the senator's anti-tax increase position, Haffner apparently said, "We all know he isn't the sharpest tool in the shed and everyone in Ventura knows it."

Strickland staked out a high-profile position as a deficit hawk, serving as the co-chairman of the newly formed Taxpayers Caucus, the members of which pledged to oppose any tax increases without corresponding tax cuts.

The insult is fairly mild, but still--is denigrating an elected representative to one of his staffers the best way for a school board member to behave?

Haffner did not respond to an e-mail that requested confirmation of the exchange, and thus passed on an opportunity to set a good example by owning up to or disavowing the insult, if she did in fact say it. That would have been something positive I could report on, especially with the growing tension nationwide between public employee unions and Republicans, a tension that will soon hit California and Ventura County.

Amusingly, while I was looking up her contact information to ask her if she wanted to comment on this story, I noticed that the main website listed on her campaign's Facebook page is a blog about a porn magazine.

That's right, it takes you right to "The Playboy Blog," which features articles such as Playboy Goddesses, Playboy: Art or Pornography, and The Interesting History of the Playboy Bunny Costume. Interesting indeed!

Additionally, her Students for Mary Haffner group page also accidentally features a link to the same porn magazine blog.

Now, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed...

...but I wouldn't think elected officials would have something like that for all the public to see, especially on a page geared toward students, especially if said official was fond of questioning the intelligence of other public officials.

Obviously, Haffner didn't know about this or she would have changed it immediately. Her domain name probably expired and it was picked up by someone who has an extreme interest in Playboy Magazine. There's a good chance she's already fixed it by the time you read this.

But somehow, I don't think this sort of thing would happen to Senator Strickland, despite what union callers might say to his staffers about his intelligence.