FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Aug. 19, 2014
CONTACT: Alex Roth,
619-228-3253San Diego — Rep. Scott Peters criticized Karl Rove’s “rock throwing” approach on Tuesday after Rove’s secret-donor political group began spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in attack ads to support Rove’s preferred candidate, Carl DeMaio.To prop up DeMaio, Rove’s Crossroads GPS will spend a staggering $705,000 to air the ad repeatedly in San Diego during the next nine days. Crossroads GPS is a so-called “dark money” group that gets its money from anonymous donors and has a history of supporting right-wing causes.The Rove group’s highly hypocritical ad in one breath blames Peters for “out of control Washington spending,” and in the next, attacks Peters for supporting a bipartisan plan to reduce spending. The 2013 Simpson-Bowles plan proposes to reduce the federal deficit by $2.4 trillion over 10 years. Peters said that while he doesn’t agree with every piece of the plan, he does support using this bipartisan approach as a basis for reducing federal spending.“People like Karl Rove and Carl DeMaio stand on the sidelines and throw rocks and lay blame and fail to do the hard work of building consensus,” Peters said. “We’ve got too much of that in Washington, too much divisiveness. We need answers and that’s not what Karl Rove or Carl DeMaio are bringing.”“The point of Simpson-Bowles was to reduce federal spending, which is what the ad says they want,” Peters added. “The only way we’re going to do that is if Democrats and Republicans sit down around a table and solve these problems.”In fact,
a video the Peters campaign released earlier this month of DeMaio pandering to the local Tea Party actually showed DeMaio sneering at the notion of consensus-building, calling it “baloney.”Bipartisan efforts such as Simpson-Bowles, Peters added, are “the kind of serious discussion that this ad demeans.”
“The risk of being a leader is that you’ll take the tough vote,” Peters said.Peters added, “If you like people throwing rocks at each other in Congress, Carl DeMaio will fit in great…He’ll fit in great with the Tea Party. He’ll fit in great with Karl Rove.”Peters is a first-term member of Congress who defeated a 12-year incumbent in 2012. He is the former President of the San Diego City Council, elected by his colleagues three years in a row to this post. He is also a former Chairman of the San Diego Unified Port Commission, selected by his colleagues for this post, too.DeMaio is a one-term City Councilman who 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.