Countywide : O’Connell’s Use of Fair Booth Attacked

Republican challenger Lanny Ebenstein on Tuesday accused Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria) of misusing state money to operate a campaign booth at the Ventura County Fair, but then partly backed down when O’Connell produced checks to show it was untrue.

“If Jack is paying for the booth with taxpayers’ funds as a taxpayers’ expense, that’s wrong,” said Ebenstein, who added that he was told by people staffing the booth that it was being paid for out of O’Connell’s state office funds.

O’Connell denied Ebenstein’s accusation, and released copies of two checks totaling $500, made out to the fair from his campaign fund.

“I wish Mr. Ebenstein would get his facts straight for attacking me for some supposed impropriety,” he said. “As I have done for 10 years now, my campaign wrote the check for the fair booth.”

When Ebenstein learned of O’Connell’s reply, he still voiced objections.

“If that is the case, I still think it’s inappropriate for him to be handing out at a campaign booth literature that’s been paid for by the state of California,” he said.

Ebenstein said the booth offered at least 13 pieces of literature put out by O’Connell’s office, more than half of which featured the assemblyman’s photo.

But John Mann, an aide to O’Connell, countered that distributing the literature at the booth was both legal and appropriate.

“It is no different than what Jack does at his regular office hours throughout the district,” Mann said. He acknowledged, however, that state employees staffed the campaign booth during working hours.

Ebenstein found additional fault with that. “I think that it’s pretty dicey,” he said.