A group billing itself as "Education Leaders for High Standards" has sent thousands of campaign mailers blasting Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, for trying to "weaken academic standards" on the eve of her contested Senate primary.
But more than 90 percent of the funds for the mailer came not from "education leaders" but from a coalition of Indian gambling tribes, most notably the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians. The tribe has battled with Hancock to open a casino with slot machines in her East Bay district.
Hancock, who will face former Assemblywoman Wilma Chan, D-Oakland, in a Democratic primary on June 3, called the attack mail "both payback and intimidation."
"If these tactics can defeat me, it sends a message to other legislators that they question or oppose gambling interests at their own risk," said Hancock in an interview.
The California Tribal Business Alliance donated $99,000 to the "independent expenditure" mailer campaign. That committee, in turn, was funded by five $75,000 donations from gambling tribes and $244,000 from the Lytton Band, which operates the San Pablo Lytton Casino in Hancock's district.
The Lytton band negotiated a 2004 casino compact with the governor's office, but that deal was never approved by the Legislature.
Doug Elmets, a spokesman for the alliance and Lytton tribe, said the mailer was "hardly deceptive."
"Native Americans are as interested in education as, frankly, any demographic," he said. "Loni Hancock's record on education is as lousy as it can be."
"I don't think that people are going to be that interested in (who exposes) her bad voting record," Elmets added.
The mailer accuses Hancock of authoring AB 2975, a 2006 "bill to weaken academic standards."
The legislation in question, which would have changed high school exit exam requirements, passed both houses. Chan voted for the measure and has criticized the mailer. "I am opposed to this attack on Ms. Hancock," she said in a statement.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ultimately vetoed the Hancock bill, saying, "Redefining the level of academic achievement necessary to designate students as proficient does not make the students proficient."
Hancock decried the largely tribe-funded mailer as a sign of "a broken system of campaign funding very detrimental to legislators that take on well-funded interests." Hancock has been the Legislature's chief proponent of publicly financed campaigns.
"It is particularly dangerous for democracy when high-sounding titles are made up out of whole cloth to deceive people about who is really behind the mailing. I can understand that groups wanting to set up urban gambling casinos would not want me in the state Senate," she said. "But they ought to say who they are and they ought to talk about the issues."
Another $10,000 for the mail was contributed by EdVoice, an education advocacy group funded by prominent business leaders. "I just think that what's happening right now is the Loni Hancock folks are trying to make the messenger the issue, not the message," said Paul Mitchell, EdVoice's political director.
Chan, the former Assembly majority leader and Alameda County supervisor, has benefited from other, less controversial independent spending in the campaign. A coalition of health care interests has spent more than $200,000 campaigning for Chan, the former chair of the Assembly Health Committee.
Both Chan and Hancock seek to replace termed-out Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata in a heavily Democratic district in Alameda County.
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