Hansberger Rips Campaign Tactic (SB SUN 051006) Assembly Candidate used seal, lettterhead of County for mailing...

If there has been a violation of the voters rules and Regulations then I believe that Hansberger did the right thing, by ripping the campaigns of the others that did it. If it is not fair to do so especially when you are already in office and should know better. You are seated in a post that you were elected to and you should know what the rules of how you got there were..So the slap on the wrist should be so me hefty fines etc etc...

BSRancher...

Hansberger rips campaign tactic Assembly candidate used seal, letterhead of county for mailing Jeff Horwitz, Staff Writer

San Bernardino County Supervisor Dennis Hansberger on Monday denounced a campaign mailer purportedly from the Board of Supervisors endorsing 65th District Assembly candidate Brenda Salas. The mailer, which bears the signatures of two of his colleagues, was an attempt to mislead county voters into thinking the board had unanimously endorsed Salas, Hansberger said in a news release. "That does not and never should occur," Hansberger wrote in a memo to 1st District Supervisor Bill Postmus, the board's chairman. One of Hansberger's constituents, he said, had already called his office demanding to know why the board had used county resources for an endorsement. Hansberger "may request the appropriate authorities to further investigate the matter," according to a news release sent out by his office Monday. "In my view, the two board members who signed the letter should know better than to use their county positions for campaign purposes," said Hansberger in the news release. He was unavailable for comment Monday. The county seal and the phrase "Board of Supervisors, County of San Bernardino" appears above the mailer's return address, which is that of the county's Republican Party headquarters. Inside, printed on the board's letterhead, supervisors Gary Ovitt and Paul Biane praise Salas' stances in favor of Jessica's Law, combating illegal immigration and low taxes. "Please join us in supporting conservative Republican Brenda Salas for State Assembly," the letter concludes, with the two supervisors' signatures below. In a postscript, the letter notes that various publications have called one of Salas' opponents "petty" and "sleazy." Ovitt said Monday that although he had approved the letter's text, he had not seen the letterhead used. Even if he had, Ovitt said, it likely wouldn't have struck him as a problem, because the letter states it was paid for by Salas' campaign. "The real message is what we said about the candidate we support rather than the stationery it happens to be on," Ovitt said. "I'm not that concerned about it." In the end, he said, he expected the extra attention the mailer drew would help Salas' campaign. "Anytime you spell her name correctly and talk about the endorsements, I think that puts Brenda's campaign in a positive light," Ovitt said. Bob Stern, president of the Los Angeles-based government-reform group The Center for Governmental Studies, said that the use of the county's logo probably did not violate state campaign law. "They shouldn't use the seal, but it's not the biggest deal in the world," Stern said. "Even if they use the Great Seal (of California), usually it's just a slap on the wrist."