The final days of a political campaign are much like an exorcism. Evil spirits fly out of the body politic at such a furious rate that it can make the head spin. Consider three lowlights of the projectile politicking in North County:
The Master Race Runs
Riot: As forecast months ago, Encinitas is producing the most varied menu of weeping, wailing and pulling of hair this election cycle.
Three incumbents (one of whom, James Bond, said he was calling it quits and then, at the last minute, reversed himself) are running against five active (and quite credible) challengers. To add to the witchy brew, the other two incumbents in the race – Jerome Stocks and Maggie Houlihan – are longtime ideological enemies who appear to tolerate each other through clenched teeth.
There's so much going on in this cage fight that it's hard to keep track.
Harry Eiler, a well-known Houlihan despiser, has filed a second complaint about her with the Fair Political Practices Commission, alleging once again that the councilwoman's ethics, political and financial, are, uh, situational. The latest rendition is pretty esoteric, something about Houlihan's husband taking money from Encinitas'sister city in Japan four years ago, but Eiler is hoping the suspicion sticks to the ribs of undecided voters.
As she did so adroitly in her last campaign, Houlihan called a news conference to decry the thuggish tactics of her scurrilous political enemies. (Houlihan is a virtuoso of the victim game.)
This time, however, Houlihan's ally among the challengers, Rachelle Collier, revealed her rookie status as a council candidate.
In condemning automated calls from opponents, Collier denied robo-called claims that she supported needle exchanges. After the news conference, however, she admitted she'd checked a box endorsing exchanges on a Democratic Party questionnaire.
Gaffe? As a certain Alaskan would say: You betcha.
Meanwhile, Stocks and his running companion, Doug Long, will be framed by Houlihan-Collier friends as the stooges of large donors. A flurry of regurgitations will repeat scary messages pitting cloven-hoofed Developers against the People. Meanwhile, the rest of the field clamors for airtime in the waning days.
To a political junkie, Encinitas offers up 100 percent pure dope in a dirty needle.
She's Got Them Right Where They Want Her: In the mud-splattered history of Oceanside politics, the 30-second TV and Internet ad depicting Councilwoman Esther Sanchez as a stick figure who has opposed gang injunctions, border checkpoints and business enterprise seems fairly tame.
Compared with the brutal attack launched by Oceanside military veterans against Chuck Lowery, a left-wing pacifist and philanthropist, the cartoon mocking Sanchez is beanbag.
The notorious ad, sponsored by the Oceanside Airport Association PAC, a group that's had a long-running battle with Sanchez, received a boost in audience ratings when Sanchez, an attorney, threatened to sue the PAC for slander. “You continue at your peril,” she wrote the PAC.
What a dumb move. Sanchez offered her opponents a golden opportunity to repeat the charges while framing her as thin-skinned or, in the PAC's attorney's words, “The Queen of Mean.”
The PAC may be playing hardball, but at least in my view, the PAC didn't fly into a mountain. The legal standards governing campaign discourse are astonishingly low, for obvious reasons.
If Sanchez is going to rebut the airport crew, she'll have to respond with her own version of the truth, not try to suppress political speech with vain threats.
Postscript: I'll gladly eat these words if Sanchez does file suit and collects damages from the PAC and its collaborators. I suspect, however, that once the votes are counted, this slander threat will die a quiet, and deserved, death.
Doing It on the Road: In what strikes many observers – all right, me – as an ugly and undignified expression of political hostility, San Marcos Councilman Mike Preston and his wife, Luanne Hulsizer, have been spending their weekends standing beside the street with signs attacking Councilwoman Rebecca Jones, who is up for re-election.
So what? Here's what:
Hulsizer has admitted distributing crude anonymous fliers comparing Jones to Pinocchio – i.e., a (presumably lying) puppet manipulated by a “middle-aged white man.”
At the very least, the hit piece should have been signed.
What a bunch of sour grapes this little family affair is.
It's as if Preston and his wife are determined to poison the council if, as appears likely, Jones is re-elected. How is Jones supposed to work amicably with a councilman who not only took the low road to unseat her but stood by the road to do it?
Instead of campaigning positively for challenger Dean Nelson, who vied for the appointment Jones won two years ago, Preston and Hulsizer are vomiting their contempt for Jones in public.
It's just bad form, and nothing good can come from it.
Logan Jenkins: (760) 737-7555; logan.jenkins@uniontrib.com
