Attack ads lead to retraction demands in congressional, Assembly races

As the Nov. 8 general election nears, campaign charges of “false” and “misleading” TV advertisements and mailers are leading to demands for retractions among candidates in the local races for both U.S. Congress and the state Assembly — and a TV station has threatened legal action over one of the controversies.

In the 24th District congressional race this week, Republican Justin Fareed, a self-described “third-generation rancher” and vice president of his parents’ Santa Barbara-based athletics company, aired a TV spot attacking Democrat Salud Carbajal, a two-term Santa Barbara County supervisor, for a comment Carbajal made at a regional government meeting earlier this month.

The two are competing to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara.

‘Armpit’ remark fuels legal fight

Carbajal, in an off-the-cuff joke to a friend at the meeting, referred to the city of Lompoc as the “armpit” of Santa Barbara County. That comment was overheard by others, leading to city residents protesting outside Carbajal’s campaign office and demanding an apology.

Carbajal’s campaign issued a statement, saying, “Mr. Carbajal apologizes for the offhand remark about Lompoc and is proud of the work he’s done for the city of Lompoc, including securing county and federal funding for the Lompoc Veterans Building for community use.”

On Wednesday, Fareed began airing a TV spot — titled “Elitist Insider” — that opens with footage from a KEYT-TV newscast about the incident. That same day, KEYT General Manager Mark Danielson sent the Fareed campaign a cease-and-desist letter, saying the footage is copyrighted and was used without the station’s permission. The letter demanded the campaign immediately stop using the footage in the ad or the station would “take appropriate legal action.”

“In addition to being a violation of the law, the use of KEYT’s news content and the voice and likeliness of its anchor also undermines the trust KEYT has built with its viewers,” the letter reads. “Maintaining the objectivity of its news operations is of the utmost importance to KEYT.”

Carbajal also criticized the TV spot.

“My opponent’s latest ad does a disservice to viewers by including only a small part of KEYT’s reporting without their permission and without context,” Carbajal said in a prepared statement.

Christiana Purves, Fareed’s campaign spokeswoman, told The Tribune on Thursday that the campaign believes it has the legal right to use the footage and has no intention of pulling the ad. The campaign doubled down on the video, sending it Thursday in an email to Fareed’s supporters.

Fareed’s attorney, Charles Bell, who also serves as general counsel for the California Republican Party, sent a letter to KEYT on Thursday claiming “fair use” of the footage. Bell also demanded that KEYT issue corrections related to its recent broadcast segment about the controversy.

“The use of a brief segment of your news report, which does not use KEYT’s trademark or logo, constitutes a ‘fair use’ of copyrighted material for political purposes expressly permitted by copyright law and case law,” Bell’s letter states. “The segment in no way states or implies that KEYT has endorsed any candidate in the 24th Congressional District race, and thus these claims are simply incorrect.”

Bell’s letter notes that federal law prohibits a broadcast station from censoring political ads for federal candidates.

The attorney also claims that a news story KEYT aired about Fareed’s ad falsely describes the ad as “illegal” and was worded in a way that implied Fareed was present when Carbajal’s “armpit” statement was made.

“Your claim that KEYT takes no position on the 24th Congressional District race is undermined by these two false and misleading claims that have injected KEYT into the midst of the political controversy on candidate Carbajal’s side,” Bell wrote.

Barb Solish, spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, wrote in a statement: “Republican Trump-supporter Justin Fareed is once again demonstrating he thinks the rules don’t apply to him. News flash, Fareed, misleading voters by cherry-picking statements out of context is unacceptable.”

As of Thursday evening, it was unclear how KEYT or the Fareed campaign would proceed.

Controversy in the Assembly race

A candidate in the 35th District Assembly race also is calling foul over campaign tactics.

Republican Jordan Cunningham, a Templeton-based attorney, is running against Democrat Dawn Ortiz-Legg, a solar energy consultant, in a district that covers San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties.

A slate mailer paid for by the California Democratic Party alleges that Cunningham — who has been practicing civil and criminal law since leaving the San Luis Obispo County District Attorney’s Office in 2013 — “makes his living as a slick criminal defense lawyer — defending drunk drivers, embezzlers, drug dealers, people who scam the elderly and men who assault women.”

“Jordan Cunningham will say anything to get elected,” the mailer stated. “He likes to call himself a ‘small businessman.’ But he is a criminal defense attorney. And he has represented hundreds of criminals.”

The mailer refers to two specific cases involving Cunningham client Dane James Bennett, 27, who was arrested in 2012 for choking his then-girlfriend. Bennett was arrested again in August 2015 with nine others in an alleged conspiracy to sell cocaine.

“Cunningham got (Bennett) a plea deal so he could get back on the street,” according to the mailer, which contains an image of a document crafted to look like a genuine criminal court complaint. “The man then got arrested in one of the largest cocaine busts in San Luis Obispo County.”

However, court records show that Cunningham didn’t represent Bennett in his 2012 assault case, which resulted in a conviction after Bennett pleaded no contest to a felony charge.

Cunningham is representing Bennett in the conspiracy case in which Bennett pleaded no contest to a single felony conspiracy charge in April. Bennett’s sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 7 — a day before the election.

On Thursday, Cunningham’s campaign released a statement condemning the mailer, which it said contained “numerous false statements and a fabricated court document,” referring to the image of the faux criminal complaint.

The campaign statement points out that Cunningham was still a prosecutor with the District Attorney’s Office in 2012.

Cunningham called on Ortiz-Legg’s campaign to publish a retraction and demanded the campaign also pull a TV spot that made similar claims regarding Bennett’s cases.

As a private attorney, court records show, Cunningham has represented many clients against mostly low-level criminal charges, with most ending in pretrial plea agreements. On Thursday, his campaign also criticized Ortiz-Legg’s attacks on his criminal defense work as “more than a little hypocritical” in light of the fact that she admitted during a radio debate that she was convicted of a misdemeanor DUI charge in 2001.

“As previously reported, Ortiz-Legg recently admitted during a radio debate that she had a DUI offense, but only after initially claiming that she had never been charged or convicted of a crime.”

Cunningham, who has been endorsed by nearly every high-ranking San Luis Obispo County law enforcement official and by nearly all of the state law enforcement associations, is campaigning on a message of public safety and taxpayer advocacy.

Andrew Acosta, Ortiz-Legg’s campaign spokesman, referred questions to the California Democratic Party, which sent the mailer. In an email to The Tribune, party Executive Director Chris Masami Myers acknowledged the mailer’s error and said it won’t be used anymore.

“We apologize if we did not include the correct dates for when Jordan Cunningham, as a criminal defense attorney, represented a man who attacked his girlfriend and threatened to kill her with a knife,” Masami Myers wrote. “He was certainly representing this brutal criminal by August 2015.

“Now that we’ve apologized, Jordan Cunningham owes the public an explanation and an apology for representing this criminal who is currently in jail after being arrested in one of the largest cocaine busts in San Luis Obispo County history. The Democratic Party regrets any error and will correct the record with voters.”

This story was originally published September 29, 2016 at 8:58 PM with the headline "Attack ads lead to retraction demands in congressional, Assembly races."