Attack ads target Bruce Gibson — and some are funded by DA Dan Dow. Here’s a fact check
Just as the fight for the District 2 seat on the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors heads into the home stretch, two independent political action committees — including one heavily funded by District Attorney Dan Dow — have jumped into the fray with a bevy of misleading attack ads targeting Bruce Gibson.
The incumbent supervisor is facing off against orthopedic surgeon Dr. Bruce Jones in the redrawn district that now runs from Cambria and Cayucos to Atascadero and San Miguel, after the two were the leading vote-getters in the June primary.
That kicked off a battle of the Bruces, with control of the board in the balance.
The waning days of the race have devolved into a bitter fight full of claims calling Gibson soft on crime and tying him to disgraced late Supervisor Adam Hill, who died by suicide after being accused of accepting bribes, while Gibson’s campaign has painted Jones as a MAGA candidate with meager public service experience and thin ties to the county.
“What they’re putting forward is falsehoods, insinuation, innuendo and outright lies,” Gibson said of Sacramento-based Back the Badge and locally run Safer San Luis Obispo County in an interview with the The Tribune on Friday. “The Jones campaign is so weak, they don’t have anything of substance to run on, in terms of experience or policy ideas or knowledge of county government.”
Gibson said he’s focused his campaign on addressing issues voters care about, like water, housing and homelessness.
“I’m running on my record, of which I’m proud,” he said. “How I’m going to bring my experiences, my knowledge of county government, the relationships I’ve developed, the fiscal responsibility I’ve demonstrated.”
As for his thoughts on the attack ads, Bruce Jones has refused to answer questions from The Tribune.
When a Tribune reporter called Jones about the campaign, he hung up the phone. When the reporter called him again moments later, Jones confirmed that he intended to end the call and refused to comment.
Supported by Dow, Back the Badge accuses Gibson of being ‘pro-crime’
The major theme of both PAC campaigns is that Gibson hasn’t supported law enforcement while in office, and SLO County’s top prosecutor has added his voice to that claim.
Dow, who went unchallenged in his June election, donated $25,000 from his Dan Dow for District Attorney 2022 campaign account to Back the Badge, which has labeled Gibson “pro-crime.” The PAC spent $30,000 on online advertisements during this election cycle, according to campaign finance documents.
“As the county’s top law enforcement official, I support the election of candidates who consistently make neighborhood safety the top priority of local government,” Dow wrote in an email to The Tribune when asked about the donation. “My campaign committee’s financial contribution to Back the Badge PAC was made for that same purpose.”
When asked follow-up questions about whether it was proper for a nonpartisan office like his to route money to a group producing misleading attack ads, he did not reply.
Gibson rejects the claim he doesn’t support law enforcement or is “pro-crime.”
“That’s absurd,” he told The Tribune on Tuesday. “Of course I’m not pro-criminal. Maintaining public safety is the No. 1 job of government, in particular local government.”
The advertisement makes several inflammatory claims, absent clarifying context or explanation.
First, it argues that Gibson “voted to cut the public safety budget by nearly $1 million,” referencing a June 2020 Board of Supervisors meeting at which Gibson joined a 3-1 vote to pass the 2020-21 budget. Supervisors Lynn Compton and John Peschong voted with Gibson for the budget cuts, Supervisor Debbie Arnold voted against the budget cuts and Supervisor Adam Hill was absent from the meeting.
That year, the county’s budget saw a $26 million reduction due to COVID-19 economic impacts, forcing all county departments to take a 4% general fund cut — save for those considered public safety.
In contrast, the Sheriff-Coroner’s Office, County Fire, Probation and the DA’s Office took only a 1% cut, with the sheriff still receiving about $52.2 million — the largest allocation of the county’s general fund that fiscal year, according to previous Tribune reporting.
Gibson said the ad takes his vote out of context and told The Tribune on Friday that Sheriff Ian Parkinson agreed to the budget cut, just as he did.
The ad, which has circulated widely on Facebook, also accuses Gibson of voting against adding officers to rural areas of the district, though it doesn’t share what department the officers belonged to or which part of the district the officers were meant to serve.
Gibson told The Tribune that while he did vote against a proposal to increase staffing at the Sheriff’s Office, it was after county staff shared budget concerns and recommended the board deny the new staffing — again, guidance the sheriff also concurred with.
“I never voted against something the sheriff really needed,” Gibson said.
Finally, the ad says Gibson “has shown no concern for public safety,” a charge he also disputes.
He pointed to his endorsements, which include two former police chiefs, two former county chief probation officers, a handful of judges and one retired deputy district attorney.
“I have always supported law enforcement,” Gibson said. “The sheriff and I have never been at odds in getting him the resources he needs to do his job.”
As evidence, he noted that he supported the Anti-Gang Coordinating Commission early in his career, which included the sheriff, the probation department and the DA “working together to prevent gang activity to intervene and arrest people when there is gang activity and then to work towards their reentry so that we break the cycle of multi-generational gang violence,” he said. He also recently voted to support a new dispatch center for the Sheriff’s Office and Cal Fire.
Second PAC labels Gibson a ‘puppetmaster’
Back the Badge isn’t alone in pouring negative advertising into the race against Gibson.
Safer San Luis Obispo County, a political action committee founded by Creston resident Greg Grewal, has joined in the attack ads by circulating a mailer that accuses Gibson of being “Adam Hill’s puppetmaster.”
Hill was originally elected to represent District 3 on the Board of Supervisors in 2008. He died by suicide while in office in August 2020 after being accused of taking payoffs from cannabis businessman Helios Dayspring. Dayspring later pleaded guilty to bribing Hill to vote in ways that benefited his business, the Natural Healing Center, The Tribune reported.
“It’s rather sick that they are campaigning on the image of the guy who took his life by suicide,” Gibson said, noting that he was not involved in Hill’s activity with Dayspring.
“We have a disgraced county supervisor, who is now deceased, who apparently accepted bribes,” Gibson said. “That is a dark stain on public service in our county and a great disappointment to me, but their assertion that I am somehow a puppetmaster is again another absurdity.”
Grewal did not respond to multiple Tribune requests for comment about his PAC.
The mailer also says that Gibson hired “the right-hand man of Helios Dayspring ... to help run his re-election campaign.”
Gibson said he assumes that is a reference to Nick Andre, a founding member of SLO County Progressives who was the chief operating officer of the Natural Healing Center in 2019, according to a previous Tribune article. He was never charged with any crimes in the bribery case.
Gibson’s campaign hired Andre to manage the registration of their website in 2018, Gibson said.
“Nick is a target of their conspiracy theories about Adam Hill,” Gibson said. “This is insinuation in its rawest form, that he worked for Dayspring and he did some work for our campaign four years ago, and somehow that is some kind of suggestion of corruption. But there’s nothing there.”
Finally, the mailer accuses Gibson of voting with Hill to oppose “an audit into a county official for embezzling $537,607 from taxpayers.”
Gibson said that he voted against the audit of the Integrated Waste Management Authority board because the district attorney was investigating the case, and they didn’t feel a need to duplicate his work.
Safer San Luis Obispo County spent $12,481 on mailers, and another $8,021 on radio advertisements opposing Gibson in October, according to campaign finance documents.
The PAC’s largest donor is Newport Beach-based business Frontpoint Partners LLC, who funneled $50,000 into the group in September, according to campaign finance documents. The Republican Party of Atascadero made the second largest donation of $5,000.
SLO County Republican official promised a ‘dirty fight’
The attack ads shouldn’t be a surprise, Gibson said, coming after SLO County Republican Party official Erik Gorham appeared on the Dave Congalton show in February to discuss the Board of Supervisor races and predicted just such tactics would be used in the District 2 campaign.
Gorham noted that Jones would have to fight hard to defeat Gibson.
“This has to be a dirty fight,” Gorham said on the show. “You don’t win against an incumbent without getting dirty. If you play a clean fight, you’re gonna lose.”
Gorham told The Tribune that by “dirty fight,” he meant attacking Gibson’s record, not his character.
According to Gorham, Jones’ policy priorities — including making county government more user-friendly and lowering fees — and Gibson’s voting record are what the Jones campaign is focused on.
It’s the political action committees that have spread misinformation, he said.
“Where’s the dirt? What have we been shoveling?” Gorham said. “Back the Badge — that has nothing to do with the campaign.”
Gorham acknowledged the PAC advertisements levied “some degree” of character assassination on Gibson, but he still maintains they’re more focused on policy.
He agreed that the Back the Badge ad excludes details about the Board of Supervisors vote to reduce the Sheriff’s Office budget, such as who else voted with Gibson.
“Is that fair? Not necessarily,” Gorham said. “It’s misleading, the fact that everybody voted on it.”
But Gorham also maintains that Gibson’s voting record shows he’s not supportive of law enforcement.
Additionally, Gorham said he thinks misleading political advertising comes with the political territory.
“It cuts both ways,” Gorham said, noting that he believes that Gibson’s political advertisements are misleading as well.
For example, he said, one of Gibson’s mailers shows a photo of Jones with a cardboard cutout of former President Donald Trump, saying that Jones is “demonstrating his loyalties.”
The statement suggests Jones is a Trump supporter, which Gorham said there is no proof of.
“He’s basically not brought any proof that Jones is a MAGA candidate. I haven’t seen one shred of evidence from The Tribune, from Gibson. They just say it and hope it sticks,” Gorham said.
For his part, Gibson has a different interpretation of Gorham’s statement about the need for a “dirty fight.”
“Throwing mud is about making stuff up,” Gibson told The Tribune on Tuesday. “They’re doing it because their candidate can’t compete on big issues. He can’t compete on experience, or track record.”
Gorham and Gibson agreed, at least, on one thing:
“This is one of the dirtier county elections that I’ve seen in a long time,” Gorham said.
Cal Poly political science professor Micheal Latner agreed to that point, and said he thinks the PAC advertisements attacking Gibson are nastier than Gibson’s campaign advertisements.
He said that the PAC’s attack advertisements are more character assassination, whereas Gibson is circulating “compare and contrast ads that are more issue based.”
Latner said he began to see the rise of negative political campaigning in local elections in about 2000, when the Republican Party began losing power in the state Legislature and started funneling money into local races.
Still, Latner said this is the dirtiest campaign he’s seen in SLO County so far.
“This is worse than what I’ve seen before because the (Republican) party is threatened,” Latner said. “We’re looking at the possibility of a progressive majority, so this is the one seat that they’re all gunning for. This sort of threat to the party organization brings out the worst in them.”
This story was originally published October 27, 2022 at 3:31 PM.
