Democratic candidate for California controller studied socialism in Venezuela. Fact or smear?

The race for state controller has excited Republicans, who see Stanford University scholar Lanhee Chen as their best chance to break the California Democratic Party’s lock on statewide offices. He is running against Democrat Malia Cohen, chair of the State Board of Equalization.

Chen has characterized Cohen as a far-left extremist who should be kept from the office of controller, which serves as the state’s top fiscal watchdog.

On Tuesday, Fox News posted a report that seeks to reinforce that narrative, revealing that in 2006 Cohen traveled to Venezuela, then under the control of President Hugo Chávez.

Chen released a statement that says in part, ”The many Californians who fled socialist countries deserve to know why Malia took this trip and whether she still believes in ‘the revolutionary thought and mindset’ of Hugo Chavez’s brutal regime.”

Claim:The article cites a 2006 CNN report about a group of people who traveled to Venezuela in order to see for themselves the effects of Chávez’s revolution.

In the CNN report, Cohen (identified as a San Francisco political organizer), is quoted saying, “The revolutionary thought and mindset is generational. What we see in the United States, and you really don’t see grandparents and parents and even young as active politically.”

Rating: Partially true.

Details: The core claim — that Cohen visited Venezuela in 2006 — is true. But Chen and Fox use it to employ a favorite Republican trope: the Democrat as dangerous socialist.

Cohen took to Twitter to acknowledge that she made the trip. She wrote that she traveled to the South American nation “to study the African diaspora and learn about the country’s medical system.”

The narrative of Cohen, 45, as a diehard socialist doesn’t square with her record in elected office, first as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and then as chair of the California Board of Equalization. As supervisor, Cohen helped to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products in San Francisco and implement a soda tax — hardly socialist objectives.

Her campaign spokesman, Joe Armenta, released a statement that says in part:

“This is another desperate attack by our opponent to deceive voters and distract attention away from his past of supporting the anti-choice agenda. On a day when his Republican friends in DC proposed a national ban on abortion, it’s no surprise that he would team up with Fox News to launch an attack on Chair Cohen over a trip that happened 16 years ago.”

This story was originally published September 15, 2022 at 5:00 AM.