Barbara Venezia: Art imitates life during election season

Watching the “The Good Wife” on Sunday, I couldn’t help but see parallels with what seems to be unfolding between the two favored candidates in the special election for our own 37th state Senate District.

In the episode called “Dark Money,” the main character, Alicia Florrick, played by Julianna Margulies, is running for state’s attorney and has to come to grips with the dark side of campaigning — political action committees, or PACs.

Florrick is conflicted about taking PAC money from a homophobic and unsavory character played by Ed Asner.

Funny thing is, when I ran for Newport Beach City Council in 2006, I took money from people who, on a good day, I wouldn’t spit on if they were on fire.

Like Florrick, I grappled with the moral dilemma that contributed in part to my decision to drop out of the race.

The television episode is timely, since last week I wrote about the 37th District battle between former county Supervisor John Moorlach and Assemblyman Don Wagner (R-Irvine). This race, like the fictional one on the CBS drama, seems to be developing dark aspects.

Writing last week’s column, I had received one Wagner hit piece on Moorlach. Since then, more arrive almost daily in the mail, but at the time, I did question him about the initial one.

I wondered if campaign dollars wouldn’t be better spent sending out mailers that actually touted his accomplishments, introducing him to voters rather than slamming Moorlach.

Wagner informed me that it wasn’t his campaign money being spent; it was from an Independent Expenditure, or I.E., that he said he had no control over.

There’s that “dark money” thing again.

For those unfamiliar with PACs and IEs, let me explain a bit about how they function and what purposes they can serve.

While most campaigns have legal limits for contributions directly to a candidate, donations to PACs and IEs do not. They also can conveniently provide plausible deniability for candidates. It’s the old good cop, bad cop strategy.

These organizations can say derogatory things about a candidate’s opponent while the candidate’s hands appear to remain clean.

Legally, PACs and IEs are supposed to act independently from candidates’ campaigns.

The fictional episode of “The Good Wife” explores the legal gray area here as Florrick discovers a tweet from her camp with a cryptic message to a PAC that is funding misleading robo-calls about her opponent.

Staff justifies the tweet, claiming a loophole in the law.

But let’s get back to the real-life campaigns at hand.

I’m not saying Wagner or Moorlach is involved in anything like what’s on the CBS show, but PAC and/or IE money will come into play in their race, as they do in most elections.

As this week progressed, more hit pieces came out accusing Moorlach of all sorts of things that weren’t entirely true, and Moorlach penned a response in the Daily Pilot, “Commentary: Campaign hit pieces distort taxpayer-friendly record.”

Having been there, I can tell you that candidates may not know specifics of what an outside committee will do on their behalf, but they have a general idea where it’s going because people can’t help but talk.

The Orange County Register then debunked two of the claims about Moorlach, put one in context and said another was indeed true.

Candidates should be trying to convince us that their vision for the future deserves our votes.

Wagner’s campaign seems to be about bashing Moorlach.

I’m always suspect of campaigns that continually point the finger at the other guy. That tells me that this candidate has no substance, is running scared or is listening to bad campaign advice.

Whatever it is, it’s not good.

Candidates need to own what happens in their camps.

I see Moorlach doing this.

I have yet to see Wagner do it.

Negative campaigning is an age-old and tricky strategy. Go too far and it makes voters uncomfortable, turning them off from you and on to your opponent.

And judging from the buzz I’m hearing this week, that might be what Wagner’s camp is doing.

BARBARA VENEZIA lives in Newport Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].