Honda: Enough with the dirty tricks, Sam Liccardo

Here’s my message to Sam Liccardo — speak for yourself instead of using your supporters to do your dirty work.

You had your longtime supporter, Jonathan Padilla, ask for a recount “on behalf of Evan Low” and it backfired. Now you are using your supporter Ann Ravel and her reputation as a former FEC commissioner to lend credence to an alleged violation that appears at best frivolous, an issue that could have been easily resolved if she had confirmed with the nonprofit that their email list was used or not. It was not. The volunteer sent the campaign email to a contact list legally purchased from the county by the Low campaign.

I’m disappointed that a former FEC commissioner would make these unfounded accusations over such a minor transgression by a campaign volunteer while so easily dismissing the more serious charges of Liccardo’s campaign and his big money donors colluding with super PACs to alter the election in such a significant way.

My message to the voters of Congressional District 16: when the Liccardo campaign talks of “crucial transparency questions,” remember only one candidate was sued — and lost — for using their private email to conceal from the public and media their conversations with wealthy power brokers. That was not Evan Low, it was Sam Liccardo.

Voters of District 16 deserve to have real debate about the issues, not these MAGA style hits that rest on innuendos.

We have enough dirty tricks in Congress.

Mike Honda is a former U.S. congressmember who represented District 17  from 2001 to 2017.