Supes contenders cry foul over Brown mailer

Since June 3, incumbent First District Supervisor Valerie Brown has been waiting to see who’ll face her in November’s runoff election – and now, she’s waiting to hear whether or not state officials think she broke electoral law.
On June 11, supervisorial hopefuls David Reber, Will Pier and Lawrence Wiesner ­filed a complaint with the state Fair Political Practices Commission alleging that a prescription discount card sent by Brown just before the election violated two sections of California’s 1974 Political Reform Act: sending a prohibited mass mailer, and doing so without identifying the sender.
Preliminary results show Brown with less than the 50 percent she needs to retain her county supervisor’s seat, which could mean a Nov. 4 runoff – most likely against Pier or Reber, who respectively garnered 22.5 and 20.4 percent. Final results were still being tabulated by Tuesday’s presstime.
A free “Sonoma County Rx” card was made available to county residents May 7 at public libraries, senior centers and county and city offices. Brown’s mailer included with the card a personalized form letter signed by the supervisor, bearing an official letterhead but without the county seal.
Although the envelope lists Brown’s Santa Rosa office as a return address, the bottom of the letter says “Paid for by Friends of Valerie Brown for Supervisor” and lists her campaign identification number. Brown said yesterday that she saw nothing wrong with the mailer, arguing that it was “not an election piece.”
“It wasn’t paid for by the county with public money,” she said. “Sending it to somebody didn’t seem like it was outside the realm of reason.”
But the complaint holds otherwise, saying that the card itself is offered through NACo “with membership paid annually by Sonoma County in the multiple thousands of dollars.” The card also bears the county seal.
An FPPC spokesman said yesterday that officials were looking into the allegations but had not yet made a ruling. No further comment was offered by presstime.
Reber said Monday that the card “distributed something of perceived value in an attempt to influence the electorate – that’s called cheating.”
Asked if the complaint could be perceived as last-minute campaigning on the part of the supervisorial hopefuls, Reber said, “It has everything to do with integrity and expecting public officials to behave in a certain way. From the very beginning, I’ve said the election is about good government and integrity.”
Wiesner had not commented by press time, but Pier said he was contacted by Reber’s campaign manager, Ed Davis, and gave the matter careful thought before signing.
“I was willing to file the complaint because I felt that Valerie Brown’s mailing of that prescription card had been done in a very misleading way – it was not an official county letterhead because it didn’t have the county seal,” he said. “People were thinking they were getting something from their county supervisor, but in fact it was coming from Valerie’s campaign.”
Brown sees it differently. “I believe that what we did was perfectly within the guidelines of the FPPC,” Brown said. “If they decide otherwise then we’ll deal with that. We believe that we followed the rules.”