Lynda Hopkins addresses our Concerns; Part 2 -Eric Koenigshofer's Negative IEC

[Barry]

From Barry:

2) Eric the K's Negative IEC. This nearly knocked me off from supporting you. This has been highly distasteful, especially the bit about not attending coastal meetings. You need to disavow that accusation and the whole No-no-noreen campaign and it's website and messaging in general. Can you publicly say you didn't ask for it and don't want it's "help"?

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From Lynda Hopkins:

Let's talk about Independent Expenditure Committees, or IECs.

I learned to dislike IECs early on... when SEIU dumped $82,000 into the final three weeks of the primary election. The hit pieces they ran online and sent out to 5th District mailboxes definitely hurt us in the primary. I was proud, however, that we were still able to earn the most votes -- even with hits going out against us, and without any independent expenditures that favored us -- just by sticking to our positive, policy-based message and by working hard.

Then came the general election. As you all know, it has devolved into an all-out mailbox and media war. Those who don't listen to the radio or Pandora might not realize that tens of thousands of dollars have been spent on radio attack ads claiming that I'm going to pave over paradise -- complete with the sound of bulldozers and chainsaws. Coalition for a Better Sonoma County sent out a couple of mailbox hit pieces against me, and Noreen has as well. (To be clear, I don't consider fact-based discussions of campaign funding to be an attack. But when Noreen purposefully and willfully misrepresents my policies -- and she knows better, having sat through 20 candidate forums with me -- and purposefully and willfully misrepresents my campaign finances, that's a hit piece, period.)

And then, of course, there's the elephant in the room (or maybe it's more like a box of rabid lemmings): the anti-Noreen mailers that seem to come at a rate of one per day. I'd like to be very clear that I do not have anything to do with the Independent Expenditure Committee opposing Noreen. By law, I have no control over what they do. In fact, I can't even tell them to knock it off, because that would represent "collaboration" between my campaign and the IEC. So -- I'm not speaking to or communicating with anyone listed as a principal on the IEC paperwork.

Do I approve of these ads? No. Do I support them? No. All along, I've urged my supporters to maintain a positive, policy-based discussion. All along, I have strongly denounced negative campaigning. In fact, of the five entities involved in the Fifth District race -- my campaign, Noreen's campaign, SEIU PAC, Coalition for a Better Sonoma County PAC, and the Small Farmers PAC -- my campaign is the only one that has not gone negative. The closest we came was in the form of the bull$#*! video, in which I criticized Noreen for misleading people about who I am and twisting facts. I consider this self-defense, which became necessary because of the constant misleading attacks coming directly from her campaign.

To be perfectly honest, there are things about Noreen's record at State that bother me. Things that bothered me as a voter, back in the day, and things that bother me as someone running against her now. I could have put out factual compare-and-contrast pieces -- pieces consisting entirely of excerpted press coverage -- that would have cast me in a favorable light, and cast her in a negative light. But I didn't. And I haven't made these things an issue in the campaign because I fundamentally don't want you to vote against Noreen; fundamentally, I want you to vote for me.

Noreen's strategy has been very different. She went on the attack early on. She has taken every opportunity to undermine my credibility, to paint me as naive, beholden, manipulated, and poised to rape and pillage West County. She takes cheap shots at some of my policy ideas that she really should, philosophically speaking, agree with -- but she happily throws my ideas under the bus if doing so can make me look bad. (One example of intellectual inconsistency for political purposes was at the primary forum in Roseland, which La Prensa captured on video. There, I introduced the concept of a soda tax to fund early childhood education. Noreen immediately decried this proposal as a regressive sales tax -- which I'd admitted in my statement -- and pointed out that it disproportionately affects poor people. She then pivoted to describe her "pot for potholes" program, which will apparently also manage to fund Early Childhood Education... Ignoring the fact that a tax on cannabis is a sales tax that is assessed precisely the same way a soda tax is assessed. Which means it's also regressive. And frankly, I think that taxing diabetes-inducing soda makes more sense than taxing medicine... but that's another story.)

Anyway, I don't want to be the kind of leader who throws someone else under the bus for the sake of getting ahead. That's not who I am. And that's the main reason why the IECs are deeply frustrating. But you know what? I honestly think that the IECs against Noreen have hurt us. We have received numerous calls from people who voted for me in the primary who are sick of the attacks, and switching their votes. After painstakingly running a positive, policy-based campaign, it's very frustrating. But there just isn't anything I can do about it -- besides try to get elected, and get to work on campaign finance reform.

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[Lynda did not address the assertion by Eric's IEC that Noreen was negligent in her duties as part of the oversight committee for the California Coastal Conservancy. I have reached out to her for comment. ~ Barry ]

[Barry]

[Lynda did not address the assertion by Eric's IEC that Noreen was negligent in her duties as part of the oversight committee for the California Coastal Conservancy. I have reached out to her for comment. ~ Barry ]

From Lynda Hopkins:

In regards to the issue of Coastal Conservancy attendance, I don't think Noreen's lack of attendance should be a concern, given her limited advisory role. It is unfair to critique her for missing meetings she was not supposed to attend. It's misleading to use her lack of attendance to paint her as a do-nothing politician.

However, I do think it's fair to consider whether she has taken credit for local land use victories that she was not substantially involved in. If she did not attend meetings, and her role on the Coastal Conservancy was limited, she probably should not have repeatedly touted her experience on the Coastal Conservancy at candidate forums. More importantly, she should not have claimed the victories of the Coastal Conservancy as her own, when she was not an active part of the decision making process. She brought up her Coastal Conservancy experience regularly along the campaign trail until it was pointed out that she never attended meetings. Prior to that revelation, she never once mentioned that her role on the Conservancy was limited or advisory -- and she regularly emphasized West County projects that were funded by the Coastal Conservancy while she was on the board.

This is something I've seen in regards to other environmental initiatives as well. At candidate forums, she took credit for solving/winning the wastewater wars in Santa Rosa -- when in fact she voted against the Geysers pipeline, which is what solved the wastewater wars. She later passed a resolution in support of the project once she had moved on to the State, but she was on the wrong side of history to claim credit for solving the wastewater wars. ( See PD Article )

[Lisa Maldonado]

The first of many untruths here is that the SEIU independent expenditure was an 82k hit piece on Lynda Hopkins. I know because I was on that IE that It was used to pay for 4 PRO NOREEN EVANS MAILERS. One or two of which had a small comparison box (pasted below) stating who was supporting each candidate - THESE ARE FACTS-not a hit piece. And to compare them to nearly a half a million dollars in big business hate mail is breathtakingly disingenous. As is trying to characterize yourself as a progressive, pro-feminist 'positive campaigner' when you have men like Efren Carrillo, MIke Martini and Rudy Giuliani's republican buddy Dyson the big corporate winery owner hurling misogynistic epithets like "nasty woman" at your opponent on your behalf. Meanwhile you stand by without speaking up. If you can't find the spine to confront these lies and distortions and ugly behavior from your monied supporters now, how can we believe that you will grow a spine and speak up to them when they have spent half a million dollars to buy your way into office?

From Lynda Hopkins: Let's talk about Independent Expenditure Committees, or IECs

[Barry]

From Lynda Hopkins:

Eric Koenigshofer: Friend or Foe?

I don't support the negative campaign, and it does not reflect the type of campaign that we have been trying to run; in fact, it is drawing a lot of criticism from people who think that I am sending out the negative mailers when in fact I'm not.