Lake Forest council race takes nasty turn with mailers seeking to smear candidate

In what could be seen as a #MeToo moment for local elections, a Lake Forest City Council candidate and her supporters are denouncing mailers that use pictures of her in a bikini and list bogus case numbers to suggest a criminal background.

Neeki Moatazedi, a project manager for the Southern California Gas Co., and Sonny Morper, a retired school principal, are running for the District 2 council seat.

Recent mailers paid for by a political action committee called the California Education Project show photos of Moatazedi posing in a bikini for a body-building competition and a stock photo of a woman in shackles and an orange jail jumpsuit next to three purported criminal case numbers; two of them could not be found in Los Angeles or Orange County superior court online records, and the third was for a 2003 traffic infraction.

“These mailers cross the line on so many issues, including lying about the candidate,” Orange County Taxpayers Association President Carolyn Cavecche said Monday at a press conference in support of Moatazedi.

Moatazedi said the mailers demonstrate “a microcosm of a tired, misogynistic ‘good old boy’ attitude” driven by desperation that a young political newcomer like her could upset the status quo.

The California Education Project, which has an Oceanside mailing address, has been involved in past Lake Forest elections, including recall campaigns, according to prior campaign finance filings, but the group filed two reports with the San Diego County Registrar of Voters this year indicating it has not spent or received any money from July 2017 through June 2018, according to documents Cavecche provided.  No recent filings were found in online searches of state and Orange County records.

Moatazedi’s supporters have reported the group to the state Fair Political Practices Commission for failing to file a report on spending related to the mailers, Cavecche said. They also plan to ask the Orange County District Attorney’s office to look into the matter.

Morper, who is shown on one of the mailers that touts him as a longtime city resident and upstanding community member, said he’s “tried nine ways to Sunday” to disavow any knowledge of or participation in the mailers, which he described as “absolutely horrible.”

Once he learned they’d been sent, he said, he reached out to Moatazedi to alert her.

“I assured her I had nothing to do with it,” he said. “It’s offensive. I don’t buy into that stuff.”

Morper said he holds former councilman Adam Nick responsible and added that he refused Nick’s offer to support his campaign.

Nick turned up at the press conference and defended the mailers as accurate, but said they should not have used pictures of Moatazedi in a bikini because “they take away from the message” that she is unqualified for the council.

Reached later by phone, Nick said he hired a political consultant to help Morper win the election, but Morper was not involved. Nick said he didn’t “micromanage” the consultant or have input on the mailers’ contents. The consultant could not be reached for comment.

The information on the mailers is “accurate to the best of my knowledge,” Nick said. To back up the allegation that Moatazedi has a criminal record, he forwarded a report from Instant Checkmate, an online background checking tool that searches public records for a fee, but does not guarantee the accuracy of its results.

The mailers also point out that Moatazedi lives with her parents and has moved multiple times in recent years, living in Lake Forest for about two years.

Moatazedi said the criminal reference is particularly upsetting to her because she once filed for a restraining order. At the press conference, she called on Morper to apologize and drop out of the council race, to which Morper said, “That’s pure politics. That’s not going to happen.”

Mayor Jim Gardner, who is up for reelection in November, called the mailers “distasteful” and “a cheap shot,” but said it’s not surprising in the current political environment, especially in Lake Forest.

The California Education Project made a robo-call in support of Gardner in 2014, according to campaign filings, but Gardner said he didn’t know about it at the time and is unaware of whether the group is backing him now.

While Cavecche said the Lake Forest mailers are one of the worst attacks she’s seen in a local election, she and Gardner seem to agree that it’s more or less typical of the city, which Cavecche said is “starting to get a reputation county-wide.”

Gardner said he tries to stick to the issues in his campaign, but from the presidential level on down, nasty attacks are common.

“I have sympathy for her,” he said of Moatazedi, “but somebody should have warned her that that’s just the way it is.”

https://www.ocregister.com/2018/10/22/lake-forest-council-race-takes-nasty-turn-with-mailers-seeking-to-smear-candidate/