FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 6, 2014
CONTACT: Lucas O’Connor, 858-571-7424
Copy Cat Carl DeMaio Caught Again
DeMaio falsely published names of Peters supporters
as his own just weeks after he was caught plagiarizing
San Diego – Carl DeMaio’s campaign has once again stumbled in the desperate pursuit of headlines, falsely listing strong Scott Peters supporters as members of DeMaio’s “Middle Class Democrats and Independents Coalition.”
The Peters campaign has identified at least five Peters supporters, some of them active campaign volunteers, who were included incorrectly and without permission on DeMaio’s list, unveiled Thursday. Several have since been scrubbed without comment from the online version of the press release after Peters supporters wrote to DeMaio asking to have their names removed.
“It was only two days out of the primary before DeMaio was reduced to making up support from Peters backers to stay in the limelight,” said Peters Communications Director Lucas O’Connor. “Carl was always going to have trouble backing up his moderate talk after he built his entire career peddling extreme ideas and appealing to the Tea Party, but faking a supporter list is pretty bad.”
DeMaio’s highly-promoted unveiling of his list of supposed supporters also attempts to portray Scott Peters as out of touch, which is particularly ironic since multi-millionaire DeMaio is apparently so out of touch that he didn’t even know the difference between Peters supporters and his own.
The latest half-truth comes on the heels of DeMaio plagiarizing of a full National Journal report and brazenly trying to copy Scott Peters’ record of success for the district.
DeMaio has historically struggled to build and maintain public support for his agenda. At various points, his ideas have been publicly discredited by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, and the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. He is a one-term City Councilman who cast the lone vote against every one of Republican Mayor Jerry Sanders’ budgets because they weren’t extreme enough. And he has the distinction of being the only member of his City Council to never be selected by his colleagues to chair a Committee. He ran for Mayor in 2012, and lost to Bob Filner after outspending Filner 3-1.