Fact check: Dawn Addis questions Jordan Cunningham’s attendance. Here’s what we found
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Fact checks on the Cunningham-Addis Assembly race
Tribune reporter Matt Fountain fact-checked three claims made in the race for San Luis Obispo County’s state Assembly seat.
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The race between Republican incumbent Jordan Cunningham and Democratic challenger Dawn Addis for the 35th Assembly District seat is the most contentious in San Luis Obispo County this year.
Cunningham, who is seeking a third term representing San Luis Obispo and northern Santa Barbara counties in Sacramento, has claimed Addis refuses to debate him to hide that she supports record tax hikes.
Addis, a Morro Bay city councilwoman, has fired back with accusations that Cunningham’s attendance record is among the worst in the Assembly, and that he’s also skipped out on debates that wouldn’t be before a necessarily friendly crowd for a conservative candidate.
The two candidates have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars inundating voters with campaign mailers, radio and social media ads, and robocalls driving home negative claims against each other. The Cunningham campaign, for example, spent more than $430,000 between July and mid-September, and Addis spent even more — almost $466,000 — in the same period.
This is the second in a three-part fact-check series examining the claims made in the 35th Assembly District race. The first examined Cunningham’s assertion that Addis supports huge tax increases.
Cunningham’s voting record
Claim: Addis’ campaign has criticized Cunningham’s attendance record in the Assembly. Addis claims that Cunningham “missed 64 days since being elected,” or an average of 21 days per legislative session. In fact, she says he has the highest absences this session. Additionally, she said the assemblyman has abstained from or missed over 850 votes.
A campaign spokesman later clarified Oct. 7 that Cunningham was the “single most absent member of his party’s caucus in 2019.”
Rating: Misleading/unsubstantiated
Details: Addis campaign spokesman Michael Soneff provided The Tribune with a list of 66 days in which, according to Addis’ campaign, Cunningham did not arrive for roll call on the Assembly floor on days the body was in session. The dates — which range from March 1, 2017, through June 1, 2020 — include seven absences due to “illness,” 14 days listed as “legislative business,” and 45 days of “personal waiving per diem.”
Soneff wrote in an email that while he’s “sure there are good reasons for some of these — life happens,” those numbers show that Cunningham was “the single most absent member of his party’s caucus in 2019.”
“While he’s been in Sacramento, Jordan has maintained a very successful law practice which is more profitable for him than his work in the State Assembly,” Soneff wrote. “Either he’s busy with his law practice or he just doesn’t like showing up to work.”
In response, Mirman, Cunningham’s campaign spokesman, said that Addis’ “attacks via mail are both fabrications and really misleading,” saying that Cunningham has taken eight sick days over his four years in the Legislature.
“She’s counting days against Jordan when he was in-district working for and meeting with constituents, and days where he was in D.C. meeting with officials in Congress, the Department of the Interior, and the Pentagon about offshore wind in Morro Bay,” Mirman wrote in an email. “They’re also counting when he didn’t come to Sacramento for ‘check-in sessions,’ where there is nothing going on in Sacramento but members can show up, ‘check-in,’ and collect a per diem (a predetermined reimbursement rate for expenses that include travel, lodging and meals).”
That per diem rate is currently $135 for lodging, according to the U.S. General Services Administration.
Mirman provided The Tribune specific dates when Cunningham was dealing with district business but was counted absent from the Assembly floor.
“People don’t want an elected official who just stays in Sacramento — Jordan’s trips back to the Central Coast make him a better representative,” Mirman said.
Mirman also provided a spreadsheet containing his office’s internal record of votes dating back to the 2017-18 legislative session that shows a floor voting record of 95.6%, or 6,517 “AYE” or “NAY” votes out of 6,819 vote opportunities, as of Oct. 7.
Of the 4.4% of votes he didn’t cast, Mirman said Cunningham “refuses, by rule, to cast votes on incomplete bills in the committee process, which drives up abstentions since legislators bring unfinished bills to committee in order to meet deadlines. But not voting on incomplete policy is the prudent thing to do.”
The Tribune was not able to verify through the Assembly’s Daily Journals, when including days legislators waived their presence and per diem, how Cunningham’s absences ranked compared with his Republican colleagues.
Check out our Voter Guide
Still deciding how to vote on this race? In The Tribune’s Voter Guide, we’ve compiled information about both candidates as well as their responses on a number of key issues. You can also compare candidates for your local city council, community service district or school board.
Find The Tribune Voter Guide at sanluisobispo.com/voter-guide.
This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
