October 14, 2004

Ethics committee accuses De La Rosa campaign of
unethical behavior

Candidate says accusation has no merit; accuses
committee of favoring Pyle

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

For 12 years, Sacramento political consultant Tab Berg has been imparting his sometimes satirical and always political commentary calling attention to campaign errors without any recourse.

Last month, however, his “Tab Fax” calling District 10 San Jose City Council candidate Nancy Pyle a liar after she said she was the only one who had pledged never to allow her political consultant to lobby her got primary front runner up Rich De La Rosa in trouble with a neighborhood ethics committee.

The committee, made up of Almaden Valley Community Association (AVCA) President Bob Boydston, AVCA Vice President Lee Dimmitt and Bob Aquino, the newsletter editor of the Vista Park Encore Parkview Community Association (VEP), found that De La Rosa’s campaign had violated terms of an ethics agreement requiring him to abide by principles of decency, honesty and fair play during the campaign.

It found De La Rosa’s campaign guilty of not presenting credible evidence to the charge that Pyle was lying, using inflammatory language, and not supplying the committee with a copy of the charging message at the time of distribution, as spelled out in the agreement.

Pyle said this week she was sorry De La Rosa’s campaign had stooped to “gutter levels to so viciously attack me.”
“After this reprimand, I hope we can now focus on the issues important to voters,” Pyle said.

De La Rosa said he was initially upset by the committee’s findings and disagreed with its allegations. “I don’t have any anger toward them (committee members). I just don’t think they were fair,” he added. “They wanted me to renounce it (Berg’s communication), but I said I wanted to discuss it and they wouldn’t let me. I wasn’t going to renounce it when certainly there was basis to what Tab had said.”

After the political feud between the candidates, De La Rosa said Pyle’s campaign is “bending over backwards to be nice.” But neither she nor he expects it to last long.

For his part, Berg said in a telephone interview that he didn’t give the committee’s findings any value as Pyle sits on the AVCA board of directors and Boydston and Dimmitt have publicly endorsed and given money to Pyle.

“Boydston and Dimmitt have given her money. Boydston is on the front of her campaign literature. I don’t know how objective their opinion is,” Berg said.

De La Rosa added: “Nancy is on their board. I was never given an opportunity to stand in front of their board and discuss what started this in the first place. They didn’t want to hear it or talk about other issues or statements she (Pyle) had made. They promised that I would see their e-mail before it went out so that I could have a chance to defend myself against it and discuss it further with them. They didn’t do that. Everybody had it before I did.

“I didn’t violate their agreement, they violated my rights,” he said.

Berg said De La Rosa asked him eight months ago to sign the no-lobby pledge and that Pyle made the statement “as a political stunt.”

“Since I’m the one who took that pledge and it could cost me a lot of money, I’m a little insulted by the way she’s manipulated this,” he added.

Berg is president of TAB Communications Inc., a political consulting and media firm based in Sacramento.

Boydston said the committee has been monitoring campaign ethics violations since 2000 when Vice Mayor Pat Dando ran against Pyle, issuing a violation against Pyle during that race for posting illegal signs. “This was started a long time ago because the community associations were concerned about fair and clean elections,” he said. “We had a number of violations, particularly on Sunday before Election Day—last-minute charges that couldn’t be answered.”

Boydston said he thought Berg’s communication was strident. “If we spot a violation, we can’t do anything, but advertise it. I knew Lee and I would be accused of bias. It looks that way because she’s a member of the AVCA, but we’re not.”

He said the picture of him, Dimmitt, his wife and other association members on Pyle’s campaign literature was taken at the beginning 2001 and had nothing to do with politics.