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Yeager says no to pledge by issuing opponent a challenge
Says he won't sign until Cunningham retracts statements
By Kate Carter
District 6 city council candidate Ken Yeager responded last week to opponent Kris Cunningham's challenge to sign a pledge to refuse campaign assistance by outside sources with a challenge of his own: that she adhere to her earlier pledge to not misrepresent his record and his character.
Yeager said that he would sign the pledge if Cunningham would publicly retract misstatements about his record and experience. He wrote in a response to Cunningham that she has not honored the city's Code of Fair Campaign Practices that both signed at the beginning of the campaign. Specifically, he wrote that she has violated her agreement to not engage in "character defamation, whispering campaigns, libel, slander, or scurrilous attacks on any candidate or his or her personal or family life" or to "repudiate support" from anyone else who engages in that behavior.
Cunningham proposed the pledge to refuse soft money and independent expenditures at an Oct. 17 candidates' forum at the Rosegarden Library. At that time, Yeager said he needed to review the pledge before he could sign it.
Yeager wrote in his letter to Cunningham that she was wrong when she said he did not do significant work on the Airport Master Plan or in opposing the Caltrain Lenzen Maintenance Yard. In so doing, Yeager wrote, she broke her campaign pledge.
Yeager told The Resident, "She has handed out information that was false and misleading about my positions on many issues, but in particular the airport and the Caltrain maintenance yard. I want to make sure she lives up to the pledge she's already signed."
Cunningham denied Yeager's accusations and challenged him to provide her with evidence of his work.
"I have kept this campaign well above-board, and I have always been truthful," she said. "I have not misrepresented; he just doesn't have a very good record. You are supposed to be bringing out the truth. That is also in the campaign pledge."
In his response, Yeager also said that Cunningham waffled in her position on the Children's Health-Care Initiative, to use money from the tobacco settlement to pay for health insurance for the county's children, and that she supported moving City Hall.
Cunningham denied Yeager's assertions, saying that she has been very clear about her positions on these issues: She couldn't support the health-care initiative until she had more information about it, and now she supports it, and that she was on the task force for the new City Hall because it was approved by the voters. She said she no longer supports the move because the task force was left out of the later stages in the decision-making process.
Cunningham said she also thinks that Yeager is avoiding signing the pledge.
"I consider his letter an evasion of the issue of soft money," she said. "What he's saying is, he won't sign it."
Cunningham said that she would sign the pledge with or without Yeager's signature.
Cunningham said that she has been approached by organizations that want to spend their own money in support of her election and that has turned down all offers.
"I've told them that I don't want them doing expenditures on my behalf," she said.
Yeager said that he doesn't know and wouldn't know if other organizations plan to spend their money for his election.
"It's totally unknown to me who spends money," he said. "I have no idea either way."
He said soft money and independent expenditures are only legal if they are made without a campaign's knowledge. He said that he understood asking his endorsing organizations to not spend money independently of his campaign, but they would not have to abide by a pledge that he would sign as he has nothing to do those expenditures.
Soft money and independent expenditures are two different ways that organizations unaffiliated with a candidate or political campaign can contribute to an election, said Tom Saggau, campaign manager for District 23 state Assembly candidate Tony West, who lost the Democratic primary to District 5 city Councilman Manny Diaz in March. He said that this additional funding is not limited by the voluntary spending caps on city council elections.
Saggau said that soft money is money contributed to a political party that is used for party-building activities. Independent expenditures are money used by people or an organization independent of a campaign to support that campaign.
Saggau said soft money is not used to endorse a particular candidate, but that party-building activities can refer to specific individuals in conjunction with touting the party. Typical uses of soft money include phone banking and precinct walking, he said.
"If it's directly towards a candidate, that's an independent expenditure," he said. "It gets real close to the line but doesn't cross it."
Saggau said that independent expenditures are often negative pieces that a campaign wouldn't be able to sponsor without losing its credibility. The source of the piece does not have to be revealed to the state's Secretary of State until after the election is over and, by then, it's too late.
"I think that voters would be damned interested to know that (before they voted)," he said.
West was targeted in two independent expenditure mailings sent to voters before the primary election by two members of the Latino caucus and some Native American tribes, Saggau said. He said that those had an impact on the campaign and contributed to West's defeat by Diaz.
Rich Robinson, a South Bay lawyer and political consultant, said that the problem with soft money and independent expenditures is that these have taken the place of candidate-controlled entities in spreading information in a campaign.
"Campaign contribution laws have tried to silence free speech," he said. "Candidates cannot collect enough money to get their message out."
Instead, Robinson said, independent expenditures allow candidates and their supporters to get away with negative campaigning, because they are not accountable for pieces done without their knowledge but on their behalf.
Robinson agreed with Yeager that the pledge to refuse soft money and independent expenditures is unenforceable because the contributors aren't parties to the agreement.
Robinson said that the best way to achieve campaign finance reform is to require candidates to immediately post their contributions on their websites, because you can't stop money from going into campaigns.
Steve Preminger, chair of the county's Democratic Party, said that his organization is working with the South Bay Labor Council to support Yeager and other Democratic candidates it has endorsed by coordinating volunteers to staff phone banks and go door to door in local neighborhoods. He also said that they plan to send out mailings in support of candidates and ballot measures before the election, but he could not specify which ones for fear that would cross the line.
"The work we do is independent of any of the campaigns," Preminger said. "It's inappropriate for the candidates to know."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
