In the age of smart phones and Twitter, a public train car probably isn't the best place to talk campaign strategy, as Assembly candidate Michele Martinez learned this week.
The Orange County Democrat, now on the Santa Ana City Council, was apparently dishing on her cellphone during a ride from Sacramento to the Bay Area on Thursday morning.
Sitting nearby? Bob Salladay, a senior editor for California Watch.
When some comments suggested she was "working with" an Indian tribe on independent expenditures – a potential violation of the Political Reform Act if she was coordinating independent spending that benefited her own campaign, Salladay began to tweet.
"I'm working with chairman Robert Smith from Pala. Yeah, they are going to come in real big with some IEs," Salladay quoted Martinez as saying.
Doug Elmets, a spokesman for the Pala Band of Mission Indians, said Martinez contacted Smith about supporting her bid for the 69th Assembly District, not about an IE, and no decisions had been made.
Martinez, who didn't respond to The Bee's request for comment, released a statement to local media calling Salladay's actions "disrespectful, dishonest and downright creepy."
Salladay tweeted his own response: "There is nothing secret about an elected official talking loudly on a public train."
>CAMPAIGN WATCH
Republican strategist Rob Stutzman's firm, Stutzman Public Affairs, has a new vice president – Amy Thoma. Formerly with Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide and Wilson-Miller Communications, she worked on Carly Fiorina's Senate campaign. She'll be deputy campaign manager for Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher's San Diego mayoral campaign.
>WORTH REPEATING
"I wouldn't consider it being a lobbyist. It's just visiting friends."
REP. DENNIS CARDOZA, D-Atwater, talking to California Watch about his visit this week to Sacramento – as an unpaid member of the board of directors of the Thoroughbred Owners of California, he said – with a group of racehorse owners and lobbyists to speak with members of a Senate committee about online gambling legislation
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