A political mailer that arrived at residents' doors last month near Baldwin Hills is stirring controversy in the race for Los Angeles City Council District 10 and prompted council action this week.
The city council passed a motion Wednesday to crack down on fraudulent campaign materials and “deepfakes” after the Baldwin Hills mailer, which appeared to have been sent by council candidate and current Councilwoman Heather Hutt, attracted attention. Hutt filed the motion in early February, days after the ad was distributed.
The colorful ad included a photo of Hutt and Mayor Karen Bass smiling together and a list of endorsements. It was packaged with a printed list of official city resources and a logo identifying Hutt as a council member.
This could violate regulations set by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission that prohibit city officials from using their title or position in the city to support a candidate for office, including themselves. By allegedly including campaign materials next to the City Hall logo, Hutt broke this rule, his critics say.
But Hutt campaign adviser Mike Shimpock said the campaign was not responsible for the mailing and had no knowledge of it. He said someone downloaded the campaign flyer from the Ethics Commission's website, where it is publicly available, and then printed and distributed it themselves along with the list of resources.
Shimpock said whoever distributed the materials was trying to make it look like Hutt had violated regulations.
“It's ridiculous and coming from someone with a stake in the matter,” Shimpock said. ““We never printed or produced this.”
Grace Yoo, a former city commissioner who is running against Hutt, said she believes Hutt filed the motion to conceal an ethics violation.
“This is atrocious,” Yoo said. “The fact is that she violated ethics. “They got caught up in her lies and were covering their tracks.”
Devyn Bakewell, director of communications at Hutt City Council's office, said the motion was brought forward “in response to the reality that technology is miles ahead of our ethical rules, not just locally but nationally.” .
“Whether it's dirty tricks against the councilwoman's campaign, Biden's fake robocalls in New Hampshire, or the need for Purdue University to create a database of deepfake political incidents, we must end this activity now,” he said in a statement. an email.
Council President Paul Krekorian and Councilwoman Traci Park supported the motion. Krekorian was not aware of the email when he decided to support the motion, his spokeswoman said.
Dianne Lawrence, a District 10 resident who wrote a critical article about the CityWatch news website's advertisement, disputed Shimpock's claim that the flyer was downloaded from the Ethics Commission's website.
The graph was posted on website on Feb. 2, but Lawrence said residents received the materials in late January, before a third party was able to access and download the picture.
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Lawrence sent the Times cellphone photos of the materials on the doors of the homes dated Jan. 28. Shimpock said the photographs were “obviously” fake.
Shimpock also said the envelope couldn't have been from the Hutt campaign because it didn't have a small mark indicating it was printed by workers represented by the union. All of Hutt's official campaign emails include the brand, he said.
“All of this is clearly false,” he said. “We've run a completely clean campaign, we've been honest about all of this and we've only talked about Heather.”
