Honey, the Democratic candidates are fighting again: Ashby, Jones serve up a petty spat
Things are getting real petty in the race for California’s 8th Senate District, where “Environmental Advocate/Educator” Dave Jones and “Councilmember/Women’s Advocate” Angelique Ashby are battling it out — not over policies or stances, but over words.
Of course, I’m referring to the pair’s most recent spat over their ballot designations.
Except it’s not even their most recent spat, because back in April, Ashby took Jones to task over his “Educator” label, claiming that it implied he’s a teacher, which apparently can make voters like you more. (If that were true, I’d like to think we’d pay teachers more.)
So this week, Jones filed a petition against Ashby and Secretary of State Shirley Weber over Ashby’s “Women’s Advocate” designation — and he won.
I will say though, that the whole thing has created a convenient boost for Ashby’s image right before the election. She’s a known mentor to a young generation of women in politics, including city council candidate Karina Talamantes. And, for a time, Ashby was the only woman on the Sacramento City Council.
So now, thanks to this squabble, Ashby is well and truly associated with advocacy for women’s rights, right at a point in U.S. history when those rights have come under attack from the highest courts in the nation.
And since she’s vying to be a senator in one of the few U.S. states that promise its constituency full protection of those rights… Well, you have to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t engineered by Ashby and her team just so that this exact scenario would happen. And as always, Jones just couldn’t help himself.
Jones — my man, my buddy, my pal — that was bait. And you took it like a starving mouse who found a bit of free cheese inside a neat metal house.
And when that trap snapped off… boy, did it create a resounding crack across Sacramento social media.
Ashby wrote that she’s a “lifelong dem, pro-choice, woman, former single Mom, & for 6yrs the only woman on (city council). Today my opponent said being a women’s advocate is not a vocation. Help me prove him wrong… let’s change my title to Senator.”
As a Twitter connoisseur, let me assure you: That was a chef’s kiss of a tweet — I wouldn’t be surprised if Ashby picked up a few hundred extra votes from Sacramento-area women just from that.
Christine Pelosi, daughter of the House Speaker and a force in the #WeSaidEnough movement in Sacramento, supported Ashby on her Twitter page, invoking the Streisand Effect: The phenomenon that occurs when an attempt to censor information has the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of it — usually via the internet.
(The effect is named for Babs’ 2003 attempt to get the California Coastal Records Project to remove an online image of her house, which then drew thousands more views to the site where it was hosted.)
“Dave Jones says Angelique Ashby can’t put women’s advocate on her ballot bio (which few voters really go by),” Pelosi wrote, “and whether she can or not, women (and women’s advocates) all over Sacramento will read that he doesn’t consider their work a vocation.”
Pelosi also told me that she generally discourages candidates from bickering over the ballot designations because, again, no one really cares, and it usually draws attention to the exact thing you don’t want voters to see.
Yes, Jones technically won the petition battle, but it’s Ashby who won the larger war. Of course, that didn’t stop Jones from trying to re-take control of the narrative when he sent out a press release — which was nearly as long as his personal bio at the end — and mainly focused on a years-old controversy from Ashby’s 2016 mayoral run when she designated herself a “public defender” despite only ever having served as an intern in that office.
“Ashby’s attempt to mislead voters shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who followed her primary campaign,” said Jones’ campaign spokesman Michael Soneff. “She never shied away from misrepresenting her record and the record of Dave Jones.”
Ah yes, the “she did it first” defense. That one always works; ask any kindergartner.
Listen, we can actually solve this really easily. Because I promise you both: No one cares what your ballot designation is. It’s as simple as that.
This story was originally published September 1, 2022 at 1:57 PM.
