College board candidates deny link to flier

Coast Community College District board members featured in an independently funded campaign mailer that some groups are criticizing say they have nothing to do with it and shouldn’t be criticized for its content.

A mailer sent out by the independent United Citizens for Better Community Colleges features a photo of incumbents Mary Hornbuckle and Armando Ruiz standing with student representative Michael Battistone, urging voters to reelect Hornbuckle and Ruiz. Trustees Jerry Patterson and Jim Moreno, as well as candidate Lorraine Prinsky, and the Coast Federation of Educators faculty union said that putting a student on a mailer like that was unethical.

Battistone has said in a written statement that he hasn’t endorsed any candidate and that his presence in the photo was misinterpreted.

Ruiz said he didn’t make the decision to send out the mailer; the independent group did. But he also doesn’t have a problem with being in a photo with Battistone.

“I never intended to show that he endorsed Mary and myself,” Ruiz said. “We’re just with a student, that’s it.”

But he also took aim at Patterson, one of the mailer’s strongest critics, who said Tuesday that he was suspicious of the committee’s one listed member, former district chancellor William Vega, and a donor list full of vendors to the district.

“He talks about this, but he doesn’t talk about how much money the federation of teachers has spent on this election, on behalf of my opponent,” Ruiz said. “I have nothing to do with that, just like the union is doing independent expenditures on his behalf.”

A union-funded committee called Coast Professors and Educators United has sent out mailers attacking Ruiz.

Hornbuckle also distanced herself from the mailer, saying she posed for a photo at a luncheon without knowing exactly what would be sent out.

“I thought it might be on one of those voter guides, something like that,” Hornbuckle said.

But Hornbuckle distanced herself from someone as well: Ruiz. Contrary to the joint endorsement by the mailer, she said she wasn’t running with Ruiz and hadn’t endorsed him.

“All of the campaigns I’ve run, I’ve run on my own,” she said. “We are not running together as a team in any way, shape or form.”

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes.com.