Under a New Name, Cabaldon Supporters Spend Over $100,000 in Assembly Primary’s Final Week to Deliver Below-The-Belt Attack on Yamada

By Bill Cavala
A veteran of over 30 years in Sacramento

California voters thought they would bring fiscal constraint and open politicking to election season when they passed Proposition 34 limiting individual contributions to campaigns. Major interest groups however have skirted the limits by making “independent expenditures” for or against candidates. In most instances these expenditures are benign, simply amplifying the messages of the candidate controlled campaigns. On occasion, however, the “IE” becomes a hiding place for below-the-belt attacks. The EdVoice fusillade against Democratic candidate Mariko Yamada in the 8th Assembly District primary election is a prime example.

EdVoice is mounting an attack that says, essentially, that Yamada is the kind of politician who thinks first about feathering her nest – siphoning off tax dollars for her private use. Specifically, they accuse Yamada of voting herself an increase in pay as a member of the Yolo County Board of Supervisors.

Now, in fact, Yamada did support a staff recommendation that salaries for the Board - which have been linked for years to 1/3 the salary of a Superior Court Judge – be increased to 40% of a Superior Court Judge. The measure failed passage, so the only “pay hikes” received by Board Members in the decade occurred when the State authorized salary increases for Judges.

What makes this “hit” below-the-belt is the fact that Yamada has turned down her Supervisorial pay hike on two occasions - the only Supervisor in Yolo County to do so.

Instead of “double dipping”, as the EdVoice attack blares through its $90,000 television buy, Yamada took action to deny herself a pay hike during bad budget times. She also turned her back on the customary practice of putting in for “expenses” she incurred on the job. She’s been repaid only a few hundred dollars in her nine years of service to Yolo County as a fulltime employee and Supervisor - compared with over $16,500 garnered by her opponent, Chris Cabaldon, in just the past three years as part time Mayor of small-city West Sacramento.

Far from being a politician who “feathers her nest”, Yamada has been a figure of stern rectitude and principle as a public official. But her virtue could remain an existential fact (like the tree falling unheard in the forest) in the face of over $100,000 of this supposedly “independent” attack.

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