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The Debora Fudge "duck" mailer
Mike McGuire is crying foul over the latest voter mailer from rival Debora Fudge, or maybe that should be “fowl.”
Fudge’s mailer has a photo of a duck, next to a yellow rubber ducky, with the message “Don’t Settle for Anything Less Than the Real Thing.”
It tells voters she is a “real” leader with a “real” record, suggesting McGuire is about “just promises” and “just politics.”
McGuire, who is running against Fudge for the North County supervisors seat, called it “a piece of mail full of personal attacks.”
Fudge, in turn, denied that she was “going negative” or engaging in personal attacks, saying it simply repeated parts of the newspaper editorial endorsing her candidacy.
“All it is, is a picture of two ducks and The Press Democrat editorial. ‘Vote for the real thing.’ I don’t think that’s going negative,” Fudge said.
The Mike McGuire "ducking the truth" mailer
But the mailer caused McGuire to fire back with smaller type on one of his own mailers, asking “Is Debora Fudge Ducking the Truth?”
Beneath a picture of a duck, with its head underwater, McGuire’s mailer states: “Fudge promised the editors of The Press Democrat that she would not run a negative campaign. So why is she escalating her personal attacks on Mike McGuire?”
McGuire’s riposte was added to a corner of one of his mailers that touts his plan to create jobs, and advised voters to “check the facts yourself at: SonomaTruthTracker.com.
To Fudge, McGuire is using her “cute” mailer as an excuse to escalate his own attacks.
“To create a website like this to ‘tell the truth’ is extremely negative. I haven’t done anything toward him,” she asserted.
On the website set up by McGuire’s campaign, it calls into question donations that Fudge, a Windsor Town Council member, took from developers, including those whose housing projects were given conceptual approval by the council. It also refers to a “highly questionable” $2,500 campaign contribution Fudge took from a developer whose project was approved by the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit board of directors, which she chairs.
Fudge said the donation from Railroad Square Associates came long after its mixed-use project was approved near Santa Rosa’s Railroad Square.
And she said she checked with Windsor’s municipal attorney before she recently accepted $2,000 in donations from the Schellinger Brothers, whose Hembree Village project was approved for building entitlements last year by the Town Council.
“It was perfectly legal. I called the attorney and there was no conflict of interest,” Fudge said.
McGuire’s website also goes into other issues the two have sparred over in their debates.
They include her stance against a ballot measure to pay for widening Highway 101, something Fudge acknowledged she was opposed to a decade ago because there was no mass transit alternative to accompany it.
Since then, she said she has embraced the extra freeway lanes.
McGuire’s website also questioned whether under Fudge’s leadership Windsor was transformed into a “booming economic center” as she has claimed. And McGuire, a Healdsburg City Councilman, also questioned how she can claim to be protective of the greenbelt between Healdsburg and Windsor when she voted to put a large car dealership on the edge of the open space.
“I felt I had to correct the record and set the facts straight,” McGuire said of his website. “What she says and what the facts are, are two different things.”
Fudge for her part, claims that McGuire is the one mincing words, particularly when it comes to questioning Windsor’s relatively healthy municipal budget, or claiming that Healdsburg has “one of the county’s strongest local economies.”
She noted that alarm bells were sounded just last week over Healdsburg’s budget. The city’s finance director acknowledged the general fund has a structural deficit projected to eat up all of Healdsburg’s financial reserves by 2014.
McGuire didn’t back down. “Healdsburg is in pretty good shape,” he said. “I have balanced nine tough budgets and will balance the budget this year. The council knows more work needs to be done.”
Of course, essentially all cities and counties have suffered from the economic downturn as sales and property tax revenues have plummeted.
But when it comes to the rubber ducky mailer, Fudge has no regrets and McGuire thinks he responded appropriately.
“I look at a young rubber ducky and the brown duck. The brown duck seems more real, with more experience and a longer track record. That’s what it represents,” Fudge said.
McGuire said it’s not so benign. As a kid, he said he raised ducks, turkeys and chickens.
“Ducks are messy,” he said.
– Clark Mason
The Press Democrat
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Thanks Janet. You may be right; I don’t know much about Fudge. But the closeness of McGuire’s supporters to Paul Kelley, plus McGuire’s youth, doesn’t give me confidence that he will support working people’s needs. It looks more like he will support business & development interests.
I am not against business; I love the small businesses who are in touch with and who respond to their customers. It is the big corporations and arrogant absentee financiers/developers that destroy family neighborhoods and communities.
The wine country elite have not done anything in the last 20 years to enamor me of them. My votes are more against them, than for Fudge. I just want to see the same old crowd out on their keisters. It is not the wisest position for me to take because it is somewhat uninformed. Can you, or anyone, convince me that my assessment is not true?
Hi Noah,
Does it worry you to see Fudge campaign signs all over Windsor on empty parcels, right next to those blue “Under Development” signs? Does it make you wonder exactly why those developers are supporting Fudge?
If it doesn’t, it should.
Frank, I admit I’m not conversant anymore with all the relationships going on behind the scenes. I’m especially confused by the support of McGuire by SEIU (I belong to local 1021).
According to Bleys Rose, (\North county supes race splits labor, environmental alliance\ ), \Lisa Maldonado, labor council executive director… …denied that labor’s rejection of Fudge had anything to do with unions being upset with what they view as her lukewarm or ineffectual support for living wage provisions on the private construction portion of the SMART project at Railroad Square.\
I was against the Smart Train from the beginning because it looked more like a covert real estate deal than a transportation plan, and yes, I know that Fudge is on the Smart Board. Isn’t conflict fun?
I also read somewhere that McGuire was favored by the union for having saved some union jobs, and some connection to the Saggio Hills project in Healdsburg.
It looks to me like there are insider political reasons for labor’s split between Fudge and McGuire, but I am neither a lawyer nor an insider so I don’t know for sure.
It is awfully hard for me to get over all the signs promoting McGuire in exactly all the same places that used to promote Paul Kelley, and Kelley was never any friend to working people.
So I might well be misinformed, and am probably under-informed, but my intuition tells me something when I see who supports whom.
One last thing: you say Mcguire’s support is broad based; well, it certainly appears that folks with money are supporting him (look at who posts his signs). You also say that Fudge’s support is from \entrenched, older-generation politicos and radical enviros.\ Would that be an apt description of the North Bay Labor Council?
McGuire is shocked, shocked that a mailer questions his credentials. He must not be ready for politics. But wait! He has a whole website set up solely to attack Fudge! Yet he claims that she’s nasty.
Noah,
It was McGuire, not Fudge, who was endorsed by the North Bay Labor Council.
McGuire’s support is broad-based and Fudge’s comes from entrenched, older-generation politicos and radical enviros.
I remember 4 years ago when she cried foul over the PD Paul Kelley endorsement and questioned their objectivity. Now she cannot stop quoting that same endorsement and cries foul over every endorsement she does not receive. Can you say Entitlement?
Romiero says “Fudge is backed and funded by the unions” and “Mcguire is funded and backed by locals.”
Everywhere I look, the biggest campaign signs for McGuire are on land owned either by big vineyards or big developers. He is only 30 years old. Do you think he is going to be independent of the very interests that have put Sonoma County into its present condition?
If by being owned by the unions means she is closer to the interests of us working people, then Fudge has my vote.
Love that McGuire can keep a good sense of humor about all this!
Can we get some candidates that don’t cry over every campaign jab, whether insinuated or direct?
Ted Nugent for supervisor!
Fudge is nothing but a whiner and a complainer. What our society needs now more than ever is someone who stands up for what he/she believes in and works for the local’s best interests, but also someone that is able to reach out and understand where the other side is coming from. We need consensus and teamwork to solve our problems. Mike McGuire is the person to do that. So who’s the real thing here?? Not Fudge, that’s for sure!
The North Bay Labor Council put out a mailer endorsing McQuire not long ago…that’s a really good reason to vote for Fudge.
Wrong Romiero! Try Again!
Fudge must be felling the pressure. Her days an numbered.
Fudge is backed and funded by the unions
Mcguire is funded and backed by locals.
Nov.8th just cannot come soon enough !!!!!