Mailboxes filling with mud

An unprecedented amount of last-minute spending on Costa Mesa council campaigns is flooding mailboxes with negative mailers and filling the final days before the election with low-blow attacks.

And it all may be too late. Some voters say they simply throw the mailers away, and others have already cast absentee ballots.

Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor, in a tight race for one of two open council seats, this week decried two recent mailers that attacked him and supported candidate Mike Scheafer.

Mansoor’s main complaint is that the group that paid for the mailers, the Santa Ana-based Strengthening Our Lives political action committee, was partly funded by the Service Employees International Union. A filing with the city clerk’s office shows the committee spent $28,750 on “voter contact” to oppose Mansoor, a little more than $15,000 on voter contact to support Scheafer and a similar amount for candidate Mirna Burciaga.

“It shows that public employee unions from outside the city are trying to influence a Costa Mesa election,” Mansoor said. “We have to ask ourselves, what is it that they’re trying to influence in Costa Mesa?”

He also has said unions are opposing him now because of his support last year for Proposition 75, which would have required unions to get permission before spending member dues for political causes.

What might unions hope to gain by influencing who’s on Costa Mesa’s council?

“Unions clearly have their best interests at heart,” Mansoor said. “I’m trying to put the public’s interests first.”

“They probably want people who aren’t going to question anything that the union does. I ask questions.”

Mansoor, who works as an Orange County sheriff’s deputy, said he belongs to the deputies’ union.

He also criticized one mailer for making false claims about him, such as saying he supports higher taxes and fees for city residents. In fact, he has signed a written promise not to raise taxes, he said.

The mailers from Strengthening Our Lives were independent expenditures, which means they’re done without any involvement from candidates.

A last-minute hit against Scheafer and candidate Bruce Garlich, however, was paid for by the campaigns of Mansoor and running mate Wendy Leece.

That mailer shows somewhat grainy and unflattering photos of Garlich and Scheafer and says they “oppose the plan to identify and deport illegal aliens who commit major crimes.”

The two have said they oppose a plan to have city police trained for immigration enforcement, but they support a similar plan by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to have deputies perform immigration checks at the county jail.

Both Scheafer and Garlich took strong exception to the mailer, sending out statements Friday that denounced their opponents’ tactics and restated their positions on local immigration enforcement. Scheafer called it a “low blow,” considering Mansoor knows his history of involvement in the city.

“The flier doesn’t say Scheafer and Garlich oppose Costa Mesa’s plan, does it? It says Scheafer and Garlich oppose deporting illegal felons, and that just is not true,” Scheafer said.

Mansoor called the mailer fair.

“I’m open to a good public debate on that issue, and I think they should come forward on what their position is,” he said. “I see their position as not wanting to uphold our federal immigration laws locally. It’s clear distinction.”

Scheafer said he’s looking into whether the mailer is a case of copyright infringement, because it uses a photo of him he said could only have been obtained from his copyrighted website.

Regarding the union funding of local campaign materials, Scheafer said it’s no different than Mansoor accepting money from out-of-town donors. Campaign filing in October showed nearly 57% of Mansoor’s funding came from out-of-town sources.

The last-minute spending on campaigns may be the largest ever in Costa Mesa. A review of reports on file at the city clerk’s office showed few late expenditures in earlier elections. The biggest were apparently the $7,525 and $3,762 the Costa Mesa Firefighters Assn. spent in 2002 to support Linda Dixon and Gary Monahan, respectively.

While the mailers will undoubtedly leave hard feelings behind, they may not do much more.

“They just go in the trash,” said Jody Ingram, a Costa Mesa resident who was dropping an absentee ballot off at City Hall on Friday.

Brent Budge, a 25-year city resident, agreed.

“I don’t think they’re an influence at all,” he said.