Sacramento voters deserve more than attack ads from Ashby-Jones California Senate race

For Californians wondering why a state Legislature filled with Democrats is incapable of solving our entrenched crises, look no further than the nastiness surrounding the race for its next Sacramento-area senator.

Neither Sacramento City Councilwoman Angelique Ashby nor former California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has served a single day in the Senate, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by all the Democratic infighting, a cornerstone of today’s Capitol.

I can already imagine my tiny apartment mailbox pleading with them to stop stuffing it with attack ads.

Jones clung to a 3.7-point edge over Ashby as of Thursday as both candidates easily secured a spot in the November election for the 8th District seat.

“This is clearly a close race, and voters saw through over a million dollars in negative ads from my opponent intended to smear me and my record,” Ashby said in a statement Tuesday night. “I’m excited to continue sharing my story and positive vision for our community as we head into November.”

Ashby has actually benefited more from independent expenditures of dark money by special interests than any other candidate running for the state Senate this year, campaign finance records show. Almost $1.4 million has been spent on her behalf by groups that presumably don’t want Jones to succeed Sacramento Sen. Richard Pan, who can’t run again due to term limits. Hayward Councilwoman Aisha Wahab, who is running in a Bay Area Senate race that is also between Democrats, has been the second-greatest beneficiary of such money.

Two political action committees, Future PAC and Californians for Jobs and a Strong Economy, have essentially joined forces to do as much as possible to muddy the Sacramento race and attack Jones, a Bee analysis revealed. They bought a billboard near Jones’ Curtis Park home portraying him as a bobblehead. They have also purchased online, television and print ads.

Ashby has no role or say in the PACs and their attacks against Jones, but she did provide an opening for criticism. Campaign finance records show Ashby received a $4,900 contribution from Californians for Jobs and a Strong Economy, undercutting her pledge to reject fossil fuel money; oil accounts for 15% of the committee’s funding, which comes from a variety of industries.

Ashby didn’t address the contribution directly when asked about it, but she said in a text message that her opponent “made a choice to spend his campaign dollars to fill mailboxes with misleading and dishonest images and statements about me, rather than to tell voters about his own accomplishments.”

This type of campaign atmosphere is becoming familiar for Jones, a former assemblyman and Sacramento city councilman who can’t seem to resist when a faceless industry enters the picture. During an unsuccessful bid for state attorney general four years ago, he attacked incumbent Democrat Xavier Becerra over contributions from oil, tobacco and insurance companies while downplaying donations he had received from insurance industry lawyers over the years.

The two PACs revived that attack against Jones this year. His response has come in at least a dozen mailers, including a bizarre piece in the style of a children’s book that depicts Ashby alongside old, cigar-smoking white men representing nefarious special interests. That can’t feel good for progressive Democrats that happen to be old white men who enjoy cigars.

Special interest groups have once again jumped to oppose Jones’ latest political ambition, and his inability to rise above it has consumed the race to the detriment of everyone. When both candidates met with The Bee’s Editorial Board in April, Jones kept pulling the conversation back to industry spending despite our efforts to keep the discussion focused on the candidates’ ideas.

“I don’t think you can ignore the elephant in the room, which is that hundreds of thousands of dollars in dark money is being spent by a major oil company and others that are designed to try to take me out to benefit the other opponent,” Jones said during the interview.

The losers amid all the political spending and attacks are Sacramento voters, who may have seen more illustrations and tableside figurines than the candidates’ actual platforms. The result is a campaign for a key California Senate seat hopelessly reduced to infighting because industry forces stuck their noses into the race.

If this is what passes for a campaign between Democrats, it’s no wonder the state’s biggest issues remain impervious to the state Legislature’s Democratic supermajority. Special interests have perfected the art of squashing meaningful debate.