CROSSED LINES: The Long, Dark, Dirty Campaign to Unseat Supervisor Adam Hill
By ED OCHS
This column was first published in 2016. I’m re-posting it here as a reminder of what SLO County Supervisor Adam Hill had to endure, not just during his political campaigns, but week after week for nearly a decade.
“Dirty tricks are those political maneuvers that go beyond mere negative campaigning. They involve the secret subversion of an opponent’s campaign via outright lies, spying, or any other tactic intended to divert attention from policies in an underhanded or unethical way. At their best, dirty tricks erode the public’s confidence in the political system, and at worst they can cost lives.”
Just when you thought American political campaigning couldn’t get any lower, along comes 2016 and hits the reset button on the race to the bottom.
While political dirty tricks enjoy a certain infamy, even celebrity in American history, this election year’s crop of trickery and nastiness has taken a turn for the worse, and not just nationally: It ranks among the most visible and most vicious election cycles in the history of SLO County, thanks to the Internet and savvy, shadowy saboteurs who know how to push the digital envelope over the top.
Fake attack Facebook pages, a fake news website, and anonymous social media operatives are making classic political smear campaigns more lethal than ever before, spreading outright lies and brazen libel faster and further than ever before. And no accusation, no charge, no subject is off limits for the life-crushing, career-staining language of defamation and ruination.
Heading into the 2016 elections, the Democrats held two seats on the SLO County Board of Supervisors and the Republicans three — with retiring moderate Republican Frank Mecham occasionally joining the minority Democrats as the “swing vote”. In the upcoming June 7 primary election, a hard-right Republican will likely replace Mecham, eliminating the “swing vote” and solidifying the Republican grip on the board and on the county’s agenda for the next several years.
The case for and against Adam Hill
Even though the board majority doesn’t appear to be at stake in the upcoming primaries, no seat is being more hotly contested than the Third District race between two-term Democrat Adam Hill and his two opponents, right-leaning independent Dan Carpenter and conservative Democrat Debbie Peterson, both of whom have cultivated the support of the right-wing lobby, Coalition of Labor, Agriculture & Business (COLAB) as well as from Republican Supervisors Debbie Arnold and Lynn Compton, who share a personal as well as political antipathy for Hill.
Initially, though competitors, Carpenter and Peterson formed an unofficial strategic alliance with the hope of holding Hill’s primary vote under the 50% necessary to avoid a runoff between the two top vote-getters in November. Hill is supported by fellow Democratic Supervisor Bruce Gibson, who has
also been a target of the right, and the SLO Democratic Party. Some say it was the “rude,” “immoral,” “liberal” behavior of both Democratic supervisors that sowed the early seeds of erosion in the trust in county government and a discontent that would fuel a right-wing political surge in the county, culminating in the joint effort to defeat Hill.
There’s little argument in any quarter of the county that New Jersey-born and raised Adam Hill has been a controversial and sometimes polarizing member of the board of supervisors virtually since the day he took office in January 2008. An eloquent spokesman for addressing persistent homelessness, reducing poverty, increasing educational opportunities and incubating new businesses in the county, Hill has also been his own worst enemy when it comes to personal public relations. Developing a reputation early on for interrupting public comment speakers at meetings and impulsively calling out right-wing conspiracy theorists prompted his opponents to pin the “bully” label on him and market their negative campaigns around the basic notion of “I’m not Hill”.
In their April 23 editorial endorsing Hill for re-election, citing his record over his personality, The Tribune wrote: “Yes, there are times when Hill has behaved arrogantly, abrasively and self-righteously. (For the record, The Tribune has been among Hill’s targets on multiple occasions.) As we said in 2012: ‘Diplomacy has not been Hill’s strength, and that is something he should work to improve.’ He still has work to do in that area. However, Hill’s enemies — and we don’t believe that word is too strong — have been over the top in demonizing him.”
The Tribune chided Hill’s detractors for embellishing his aggressiveness: “Hill does not bite the head off every speaker who approaches the podium at the Board of Supervisors chambers. Check for yourself.” And to those who “accuse him of being in the back pocket of developers. That’s not borne out by his record. … He focuses on solutions rather than problems, and on a board that leans conservative, his more liberal voice assures all points of view are considered.”
An important endorsement for sure, but the political battle lines had already been well drawn before The Tribune weighed in. Defeating the Hill the Liberal by any means necessary, at any cost, no matter how dirty, no matter who gets hurt in the process, was already a long public war, with Hill and his Democratic supporters on one side and the Republican Party, Tea Party, right-leaning independents and disaffected Democrats on the other. Knowing the opposition he faced, Hill still could not have been prepared for the onslaught that followed. By any standard of deceit, deception and trickery, the lengths and depths to which Hill’s opponents have gone to oust him have been extraordinary in their organization and frightening in their intensity and determination.
CalCoastNews
The primary focal point of the anti-Hill assault is a faux news website, CalCoastNews.com (CCN), launched in 2008 initially to expose government corruption in the county. CCN was co-founded by former disgruntled New Times writers, Dan Blackburn and Karen Velie, and KVEC talk-radio-show host Dave Congalton, sort of a watered-down local version of Russ Limbaugh, boasting a similar arrogance, without the big audience.
Though Congalton was once listed as Contributing Editor to CCN, and now claims some undetectable degree of separation from the website he co-founded, he has turned his show into a virtual echo chamber for CCN fodder. It’s hard to tell he’s still not working closely with CCN: using his show to promote his former partners; amplifying their stories; and featuring supportive, almost familial on-air interviews with CCN senior correspondent Daniel Blackburn. At one time Congalton also featured Velie, but because of complaints about her on-air comments from local law enforcement and others, Velie was banned from KVEC.
Nevertheless, Congalton continues to feature Blackburn in what has become almost a weekly ritual of promoting CCN’s unsubstantiated allegations followed by the pummeling of political and personal enemies, designed to undermine the credibility of anyone criticizing CCN’s violence-tinged attacks on targets it deems corrupt. Congalton’s show is his hermetically-sealed bully pulpit from which he enjoys whipping the mob to a fury. There is no recourse for those attacked; equal time is non-existent. Though he advertises an openness to differing points of views, he is routinely rude to call-in listeners critical of CCN, cutting them off, bashing them after the call, and banning some altogether, acting more like an active partner in defending CCN than an employee of KVEC serving the community.
In spite of Congalton’s polarizing antics and personal investment in CalCoastNews, having a media outlet, one of few in a small county, has given CCN a voice and public reach beyond solely a website. And while Congalton’s show draws only modest numbers, he has amped up the tone and volume on his irresponsible, inflammatory rhetoric to fan the flames of the negative campaign against Hill, further polluting the toxic cloud engulfing the county.
The animus between the players in this bitter game is palpable: Adam Hill has publicly condemned Velie and CCN. Velie was once at student in Hill’s creative writing class at Cal Poly, and Hill has implied she is a bad writer. Now Velie not only wants to defeat Hill, she wants to silence him; and more than silence him, she wants to ruin him. Congalton, Velie’s fiercest protector, has compared Hill to gangster Al Capone. Hill has called Congalton a third-rate radio host in a tiny market. There is no turning back for anyone; no alibis, no apologies.
Branching out from trying to uncover corruption, CCN eventually refocused its coverage on sex, scandal and crime, sandwiching their original pieces between articles lifted from other sources including The Tribune. In 2012, the group began to expand its attacks to include political opponents, specifically Hill and Arroyo Grande Mayor Tony Ferrara. These efforts — Ferrara was defeated by a write-in candidate — ultimately led to abandoning their thin guise as investigative journalists to openly stalking and harassing Hill and his wife, accusing her of theft and money laundering, and him of abuse of office, conflicts of interests, bribery, and other crimes, without offering any credible evidence. CCN brags it has written 100 articles on Hill; they complain that the local media has ignored their work, and are genuinely puzzled why.
CCN’s main weapons of mass destruction against its chosen enemies have been publicizing unsubstantiated allegations that are never proven, corrected or retracted, and spreading malicious rumors and outright lies on the Internet that can’t be traced back to an individual. Enter Facebook pages “Fire Adam Hill” and “No Adam Hill for SLO”. Operator(s): Anonymous.
“Fire Adam Hill”
At the dawn of 2016, anonymous Facebook page “Fire Adam Hill” suddenly appeared on the Internet promoting CalCoastNews’s ginned-up stories, accusing Hill and his wife of an assortment of undocumented criminal behavior, and calling not just for his defeat, but his arrest. Wrote the anonymous “Fire Adam Hill” operator on April 16: “Team Adam Hill needs to experience prison and well deserves it.” And on April 18: “We are not too worried about Adam Hill getting reelected. We are more convinced he will be arrested. His bizarre politics are not legal in California.” And on April 18: “Did SLO politician Adam Hill discuss murdering Cal Coast News reporter? It’s time to arrest Adam Hill.”
Though they continue to pump out daily doses of incendiary propaganda across the Internet, the anonymous operators behind “Fire Adam Hill” have refused to divulge their identities because, they claim on their page, “if Adam Hill could identify the backers of this site he would attempt to destroy them.” Yet there is no evidence to support such a claim, just as there is no evidence to support the man-made avalanche of baseless allegations published on CCN and redistributed on “Fire Adam Hill” at some expense.
When a Tribune reporter tried to contact the anonymous operators of “Fire Adam Hill” through their Facebook page for an interview for their April 22 article, “Third District Race Turns Sour Amid Accusations of Online ‘Trolling,’” according to the reporter “a representative of ‘Fire Adam Hill SLO’ declined to disclose the identity of the page owner, responding to the question with a winky face emoji.”
In March, “Fire Adam Hill,” through sister page “No Adam Hill for SLO,” started producing amateur anti-Hill videos and distributing fake “Wanted” posters featuring Hill, his wife and Hill supporters, calling for their arrest and posting the phone number of the SLO Police Department. The poster included an emblem of a real SLO police badge, which the police forced “Fire Adam Hill” to remove from their poster. Though they have refused to take responsibility for their libelous content, strong circumstantial evidence points to the family of CCN’s controversial publisher, Karen Velie, as operators of the page. Velie is the author of most of the “hit pieces” on Hill that have appeared on CCN, and which are continuously featured and boosted on “Fire Adam Hill.” Velie’s daughter, Summer Awbrey, has been linked to “Fire Adam Hill” and “No Adam Hill for SLO” as well as CCN. Criticism of Velie or Awbrey is attacked on “Fire Adam Hill” for “harassing a CCN reporter and her family.”
CCN, its Facebook page, the anonymous “Fire Adam Hill” and “No Adam Hill for SLO” Facebook pages and websites all target Hill and his supporters with fictitious, Google-boosted attacks shaped to ruin lives, foment hatred and incite violence while promoting Carpenter and Peterson. Over time, CCN has become a magnet for disaffected county residents who believe the county is corrupt — no hard evidence required — and embrace every conspiracy theory under the sun, joining a gaggle of racists, bigots and political extremists who accept CCN as a legitimate news source. Their collective views capture the thrust of today’s extreme Tea Party politics, fueled by the bile surging up out of its venomous, bigoted base.
There is a reason why neither of Hill’s opponents, and no one in the Republican Party, will directly condemn CCN’s endless, obscene campaign to defeat Hill: because it works for them. They have remained mute in the face of this full frontal assault on the democratic process because they believe it gives them an edge. The circle of participants is incestuous. Carpenter and Peterson are listed on CCN as contributors. Carpenter has paid to advertise on CCN and opines, along with Peterson, on the site. Peterson sits with Velie on the local ACLU board along with other CCN intimates, CCN attorney Stew Jenkins and Saro Rizzo, brother of the owner of Café Roma, a Velie hangout. Saro Rizzo’s sister, Lisa, is a reporter for CCN.
Yet, with all of their connections, CCN remains a shrinking island of influence. Beyond their limited borders, after almost four years of non-stop allegations and accusations blasted out to the county and the country, to this day not one local media outlet has corroborated any of CCN’s self-proclaimed “100 stories” about Hill.
The End?
Has CalCoastNews — by the sheer volume of their 100 stories — caused enough voters to question Hill’s leadership, morality or mental health? Or has CCN’s take-no-prisoners approach to its political and personal enemies, along with “Fire Adam Hill” and its anonymous defamation machinery, reached a negative critical mass with the electorate and begun to backfire on its cynical promoters? Could their dirty tricks actually end up helping Hill’s re-election and taking down his opponents rather than him?
“We’re kind of at that point, both in our local election and in the national election, where people say things online that you just wouldn’t say in person,” Hill remarked to The Tribune in April. “But it’s not something that we should continue to tolerate. It feels like it’s crossed a line.”
The why part of the hate campaign against Hill is the easiest part to explain: because winning is everything in politics. There is no second place. And there’s too much at stake to leave to chance, that is, to leave to the voters to see through the fog of war — the heavily orchestrated dis- and mis-information smokescreen — to discern the truth. With that in mind, considering the massive effort mobilized for this bitter mission, CalCoastNews and Hill’s opponents, aside from tarnishing Hill’s public image and terrorizing his wife and family with their shockwave of attacks, will have accomplished nothing if Hill is re-elected.
That is, of course, if Hill manages to eclipse the forces of darkness aligned to defeat him. Perhaps the lies will win, the sheer number of them. There’s no turning back. Too many lines have already been crossed, too many points of no return passed. With weeks to go before the election on June 7, the worst is probably yet to come.
All it might take to tilt the outcome is crossing the line one more time, for one more dirty trick on democracy.
Update: Hill won in his re-election in 2016 and again in 2020. In the 2020 campaign, Hill was the target of a Kevin Rice robocall in which Rice impersonated a white supremacist group, and his opponent, Stacy Korsgarden, accused him in mailers of being a sexual predator, both promoted by CalCoastNews.
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