September 30, 2004

District 10 City Council candidates snarl over negative campaigning

De La Rosa says Pyle is misleading voters, deplores fundraiser
hosted by seven San Jose council members

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

A fundraiser last week hosted by seven of 10 San Jose council members for District 10 candidate Nancy Pyle has her opponent crying foul and accusing his Democratic contender of misleading voters.

The Sept. 22 fundraiser at attorney Chris Schumb’s downtown office was also the subject of a San Jose Mercury News editorial headlined, “There’s always a party going on—for developers who donate. In San Jose, you pay to play; that culture needs to be restricted.”

Exactly, said District 10 candidate Rich De La Rosa, applauding the editorial and expressing concern about the invitational letter sent to 40 developers, builders and business owners to participate in the $250 a head political junket making it clear they could benefit from attending and discussing important land issues such as the development of the Coyote Valley, the Almaden Reserve, downtown and the Evergreen Visioning Project.

“I have serious concerns about these areas being mentioned in a letter sent out to developers,” De La Rosa said.

“It’s a real conflict when you have council members being allowed to discuss in a private party these issues. To mention the Almaden Reserve was way out of line.

“They (fundraiser attendees) were pressured by sitting council members to donate to their candidate and that’s wrong. It’s not like one or two council members were throwing a fundraiser for her, it was more than a quorum.

You have to be concerned about that,” he said.

De La Rosa lamented that council members seem to recklessly handle themselves with special interest groups even after they unanimously passed a strict lobbyist ordinance to help the public evaluate their influence by revealing their campaign contributions and other activities quarterly.

“I don’t think they care about the perception they’re sending to the public. They know what they’re doing. I find it really distasteful that two of the people on the ethics task force were at that party. It doesn’t mean the fundraiser was illegal, it was just not ethical,” he said.

San Jose District 2 Councilman Forrest W. Williams was one of the seven officials who signed the letter. He said he was exercising his choice to support Pyle. “It wasn’t work related. It was a community member supporting a candidate. This happened to me when I ran, many elected officials got together to support me. It’s the same thing,” said Williams.

Williams said he arrived late at the party and that most of his fellow council members were gone. He reiterated: “This is a democracy and I can exercise my right to support her. It wasn’t a meeting to discuss city land use issues. It wouldn’t be right to talk about that. I wasn’t attending the party to discuss that. Nothing precludes us from supporting this candidate.”

For her part, Pyle defended herself saying there was no difference between her fundraiser and De La Rosa’s fundraiser hosted by Vice Mayor Pat Dando, former Councilman John Diquisto, San Jose businessman Sal Rubino, the San Jose Firefighters Local 230 and the Association of Retired San Jose Police Officers and Firefighters on Sept. 9.

De La Rosa said his fundraiser didn’t have Vice Mayor Pat Dando in attendance and only sitting San Jose District 4 Councilman Chuck Reed attended, never discussing city issues with him. “We weren’t talking about Almaden Valley,” he said. “We weren’t talking about the development of the reserve. We weren’t talking about the development of Coyote Valley. They’re trying to pin it as if they did nothing wrong. Bologna.”

Responding to the charge, Pyle said: “This (controversy) is the Mercury News’ spin. It’s not based on reality. No accusations were made (in the editorial). I did nothing wrong. There have been a lot of responses asking, ‘What was the point of the editorial?’ It’s a tempest in a teapot.”

De La Rosa also accuses Pyle of misleading voters when she said she’s the only candidate who’s pledged never to allow her political consultant to lobby her, to open her office calendar to the public for scrutiny and to not accept contributions from registered lobbyists.

He said he’s made the same pledge, has also promised openness with voters and is not accepting contributions from lobbyists.

“She’s not telling the truth,” he said, lamenting he didn’t have an opportunity to rebut her assertions during a Sept. 15 debate hosted by the Almaden Valley Community Association.

De La Rosa said it was he, in fact, who first had his paid campaign consultant, Tab Aaron Berg of Sacramento-based Tab Communications, Inc. sign a no-lobby pledge before he and Pyle met with the Mercury News the afternoon of Feb. 10 seeking endorsement.

De La Rosa’s “no-lobby pledge,” was the subject of a Feb. 27 Mercury News editorial in which the newspaper wrote,
“it would be nice if others followed suit…”

“She was in the room and was asked by the editorial board if she had one. She didn’t. It’s truly a false statement,” De La Rosa said.

Pyle said there’s a difference in De La Rosa’s campaign consultant signing the no-lobby pledge and her saying she will not allow her campaign consultant to lobby her.

”That’s ridiculous,” said De La Rosa. “They’re playing with semantics. It’s pretty simple to me. He’s not to lobby me.”

Ana Maria Rosato, Pyle’s campaign manager, said a large percentage of De La Rosa’s supporters come from the development community and Pyle said his campaign disclosure reports show he’s received more money than she has from the same people. “It’s pretty hypocritical,” said Rosato.

Pyle also said De La Rosa has lobbyists in his campaign under investigation by the San Jose Ethics Commission.

“He has been out raising money for him,” claims Pyle. “I don’t have lobbyists under ethics investigations raising money for me.” De La Rosa said it’s not true.

“I raked the full amount during the primary and she had to put in $20,000 of her own money,” De La Rosa said.

“Have I raised more money? Absolutely.”

De La Rosa also takes Pyle to task for saying she’s a businesswoman, that her political affiliation is an independent and listing her name on a Republican slate, when she’s a registered Democrat.

Pyle said she and her husband, Roger, owned a small business for five years called “Electronic Chemical Control Systems,” a western franchise they bought from a British company that provided recycling of chemicals for the printing industry.

About her political affiliation, Pyle said she’s a registered Democrat, but is “independent” in her thinking. “I’m a business Democrat with a social conscious,” she said.

About her name appearing on a Republican slate, Pyle said she agreed to it because it was a nonpartisan race.
De La Rosa said he wants Pyle to “behave ethically.”

Rosato, said, “We wanted to run a clean race and we wish that he would go with his pledge to do so. Until the moment that she stated that she was the only one to do these things for voters, he hadn’t declared such a thing.

If he had, it must have been in private and she’s done it in public, which is a great thing. That’s what we want in America, openness with public officials and that’s exactly what we will get in District 10 on Nov. 2 with Nancy Pyle.”

An upset Pyle also accused De La Rosa of trying to “impugn my character.”

“Isn’t it interesting that he didn’t have a word to say until a week later when his Sacramento spin doctor sends out an attack against me. Doesn’t it speak volumes that he didn’t have any objections during our debate, but instead he had to wait for his political operative to attack me?”

The candidates are also accusing each other of behaving against conditions set forth in a code of fair campaign practices agreement they signed and created by the AVCA and the Vista Park Encore Parkview Community Association (VEPCA) community groups, which require them to abide by principles of decency, honesty and fair play.

AVCA President Bob Boydston said he received a fax accusing Pyle of lying “through a third party” and that the associations’ ethics committee is “trying to quickly document any ethics violations” and that it expects to issue a statement in the future.

De La Rosa said Boydston, chairman of the AVCA and VEPCA ethics committee, is also getting caught in a semantics game by asking him if he’s pledged never to allow his political consultant to lobby him. In an e-mail Boydston sent to De La Rosa, he asks, “Is there more to this than what the (Feb. 27 Mercury News) editorial says?

It contains no pledge from you to not allow your campaign team to lobby you if elected, which is Nancy’s point. Did you make such a pledge and may we see proof?

De La Rosa wrote Boydston: “If I required a no-lobby pledge from my team, why would I need to sign a pledge?

Nancy is being very disingenuous to mislead voters about an issue we addressed seven months ago. I addressed the issue from the source of potential lobbying. I see no difference in the end result. Do you? For her to imply that I would permit lobbying by my team is deceptive.”

The Republican candidate, who finished ahead of Pyle during the March primary election, said he has even returned a $250 check given to him by lobbyist Jerry Strangis because he was registered lobbyist.

In the meantime, a distressed Pyle complained about a fax communication from Tab Communications, Inc., in which she said her character was attacked.

The fax, sent to the Almaden Times Weekly in an e-mail, began with the question, “Why do politicians lie?”
It then proceeded to say that Pyle should publicly apologize for “deceiving” voters at the AVCA forum.

“At the forum, which did not allow rebuttal, perennial candidate Nancy Pyle outrageously proclaimed: ‘I am the only candidate who required my political consultant to sign a no-lobby pledge!’

“In the simplest terms, Nancy lied. And we are calling her on it.”

The statement, signed by De La Rosa’s campaign consultant, again reiterated their candidate required his political staff to take the “no-lobby pledge” more than seven months ago and that Pyle knew about it.

“Is Nancy ’s campaign so devoid of their own ideas they must stoop to making stuff up? Are they so desperate they’ll resort to fabrications to manufacture a veneer of independence? Is this a forewarning of the kind of campaign she’s going to run? We expected better from Nancy, especially after she upgraded her staff. Politicians lie because people let them get away with it. Not this time,” said the fax.

After learning about Berg’s attack, Pyle wrote a letter to De La Rosa in which she said she was “flabbergasted that you would stoop to such gutter levels to so viciously attack me in such a personal way.”

Pyle said the flier had been dropped in many voters’ doorsteps and was also faxed to undisclosed recipients. “His tactics are unbelievably dishonest. He can’t compete with me on the issues, so he attacks. He can’t compete with me because I’m independent, so he attacks. He can’t compete with me on experience, so he attacks,” said Pyle in a written statement.

“Rich, your campaign has chosen unjustly to defame my character and personally attack me. I am asking you to personally and immediately take action to rectify this situation by publicly repudiating both the statement and your Sacramento-based political consultant who made them.”

De La Rosa said he had nothing to do with the flier and was entirely Berg’s creation. He said his campaign volunteers did not distribute the flier to anyone in the community.