Mark Spannagel

Mark Spannagel Continues to Bleed Doug LaMalfa’s Campaign

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May 242012

We take a break from our regularly scheduled beatings of Arnie Zeiderman and Jeff Seaton to post a press release from the Aanestad for Congress campaign. Please note that Sam Aanestad’s opponent (Doug LaMalfa) was a driving force behind Arnie Zeiderman’s election to California Republican Party Vice Chairman Northern Region.

Did He or Didn’t He?

Doug LaMalfa’s “Evolving” Position on Dirty Campaign Tactics

LaMalfa: “It’s completely independent…”

Matt Ray: “Independent as in Spannegal [LaMalfa Chief of Staff and paid campaign staffer] put it up…?” [KPAY-AM, 5/17/12]

Doug LaMalfa and the LaMalfa for Congress campaign have issued a number of false and contradictory statements about the illegal attack website,www.Sam4Congress.com, which has been traced back to LaMalfa Chief of Staff and paid campaign staffer Mark Spannegal.

What has Doug been saying? Well…let’s just say that his position has been “evolving.”

First he said, “It wasn’t me!”

“…it was not authorized by my campaign in any way, it was not condoned by my campaign…” [Burney Tea Party Candidates Forum, 5/15/2012]

“Neither Doug LaMalfa, nor the LaMalfa campaign, had any knowledge or involvement in the construction or posting of the website in question, which just came to our attention this morning.” [Sacramento Bee, 5/15/2012]

“…It certainly wasn’t productive or helpful to what I’m trying to do so I don’t condone it…”–[Burney Tea Party Candidates Forum, 5/15/2012]

“…hopefully that chapter’s behind…” [Burney Tea Party Candidates Forum, 5/15/2012]

Then his campaign tried to deflect the controversy by saying “The other side is just whining.”

“Political satire has a long history in American politics, something that thin-skinned candidates, or those trying to hide their record, sometimes have trouble fully appreciating.” [Sacramento Bee, 5/15/2012]

“(The complaint) has no merit and is nothing but a political ploy meant to divert the voter’s attention away from the real issue and his real record.” [Redding Record Searchlight, 5/16/17]

“The campaign did not solicit or in any way put up a website like that there.” [Interview with Matt Ray on KPAY radio, 5/17/2012]

“…I didn’t solicit it, I didn’t really want it to happen but there it is…” [Interview with Matt Ray on KPAY radio, 5/17/2012]

And now Doug is saying, “I took it down now…what’s the big deal?”

“…the steps have been taken, [to] make it go away.” [Interview with Matt Ray on KPAY radio, 5/17/2012]

“…it’s been handled…” [Interview with Matt Ray on KPAY radio, 5/17/2012]

“…Well, when you look at what would be in there, I mean, I haven’t spent a lot of time looking at that stuff, but basically it was kind of like poking a little bit of fun at things and all that…” [Interview with Matt Ray on KPAY radio, 5/17/2012]

“…there it is and so we’ve taken steps to make it go away…” [Interview with Matt Ray on KPAY radio, 5/17/2012]

LaMalfa: “It’s completely independent…”

Matt Ray: “Independent as in Spannegal [LaMalfa Chief of Staff and paid campaign staffer] put it up…?”

[KPAY-AM, 5/17/12]

As the FEC begins its investigation on the illegal website and details on the civil lawsuit against LaMalfa’s campaign and his chief of staff come to light, it will be interesting to see how Doug LaMalfa’s position on the truth continues to “evolve.”

Check out Video Clips from Sam Aanestad Press Conference Blasting LaMalfa

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May 192012

This clip is Sam Aanestad himself going over the litany of dirty campaigning by Team LaMalfa. Doug LaMalfa is endorsed by Ted Gaines, Beth Gaines, the establishment and uses Dave Gilliard as a consultant.

The significance is that Sam Aanestad held his press conference in front of Doug LaMalfa’s district office and the office was reported to have been dark for at least two days this week.

Mark Spannagel, Doug LaMalfa’s chief of staff was implicated by subpoenaed records for creating an attack website against Sam Aanestad – fraudulently claiming it was done by Micheal Dacquisto, failing to report the independent expenditure and for possible violation of Federal Election coordination rules.

This clip is Aanestad attorney Barry Pruett discussing the legal details of the case. Pruett later filed legal action against Doug LaMalfa.

As of yet, there has been no disciplinary action against Mark Spannagel. Don’t expect any as it has been the pattern of team LaMalfa to engage in character assassination, manipulation of tea parties, creating fake groups to rig endorsements with, destroying campaign signs, creating fake newspapers to attack political opponent’s marriages, alleging FBI investigations of political opponents, tying opponents to Hugh Hefner… and now professionally created attack websites fraudulently pinned to political opponents.

But remember – $4.7million dollars later – “He’s one of us!”

Just wow.

Doug LaMalfa, David Stafford Reade, Mark Spannagel Hammered Again

Dave Gilliard, David Stafford Reade, Doug LaMalfa, Mark Spannagel 1 Response »

May 172012

The Chico News and Review lit into Doug LaMalfa bad along with David Stafford Reade and Mark Spannagel. If anyone thinks that LaMalfa will do anything to Mark Spannagel over this – think again.

Congressional candidate Sam Aanestad has charged that the campaign of his opponent for the 1st District seat and fellow Republican, state Sen. Doug LaMalfa, has violated federal disclosure laws and maybe even committed libel.

Aanestad, an oral surgeon from Grass Valley, says a website posted about a month ago questioning his professional background fails to disclose who is behind it. In a press release Tuesday (May 15) Aanestad said the site, Sam4Congress.com, which heavily criticized his record as a state assemblyman and senator, was paid for by LaMalfa’s campaign without proper disclosure. (The site has been taken down in recent days.)

“In a clear violation of federal campaign finance disclosure laws, and verified yesterday by release of official Internet registry documents, Doug LaMalfa’s congressional campaign registered and built a negative website about Sam Aanestad, then posted the site on the Internet while disclaiming its contents to link with another candidate in the race, Republican Michael Dacquisto,” the release says. “The website, www.Sam4Congress.com, violates a number of campaign finance laws, including several illegal independent expenditures and conspiracy to improperly disclaim a federal campaign website.”

When first posted the site, which includes less-than-flattering photos of Aanestad, carried a disclaimer that said it was from a group called “Free Thinkers for D’Acquisto.”

Dacquisto, an attorney in Redding, is another Republican candidate in the eight-member race for retiring Rep. Wally Herger’s seat. He said he had nothing to do with the website.

“Yeah, Sam Aanestad called me several weeks ago and said somebody had a website up, and he basically said he was not happy,” Dacquisto said in a phone interview the day of the press release. “I told him I don’t do that, and he said, ‘I believe you.’ They didn’t even spell my name right.”

The Aanestad campaign filed a lawsuit to try to determine who was behind the site and subpoenaed records from its host, Wix.com. On Monday (May 14) the campaign released the records, which show the site was registered on April 18 by Mark Spannagel, LaMalfa’s chief of staff and campaign manager.

The next day LaMalfa consultant Dave Gilliard released this statement via email: “Neither Doug LaMalfa, nor the LaMalfa campaign, had any knowledge or involvement in the construction or posting of the website in question, which just came to our attention this morning.”

It also added this disclaimer about the role of humor in politics: “Political satire has a long history in American politics, something that thin-skinned candidates, or those trying to hide their record, sometimes have trouble fully appreciating.”

Gilliard did not return a call asking about Spannagel’s role in matter, but told The SacramentoBee that Spannagel is working for LaMalfa’s campaign “on a part-time basis.”

Dacquisto said Aanestad originally brought up the subject durng a candidates’ debate in Chester on May 4. At the time, he said, Aanestad asked about it and Dacquisto assured him he wasn’t behind it. LaMalfa’s only comment on the matter, Dacquisto said, was that he was not in favor of dirty politics.

“This means either he’s lying or he has no idea what his chief of staff is doing, and I don’t know which is worse,” Dacquisto said. “And who’s paying the chief of staff to do this? The taxpayers?”

At a press conference held outside of LaMalfa’s vacant Redding office, Aanestad pointed to the information his Grass Valley attorney, Barry Pruett, had received via the subpoena, according to a story in the Redding Record Searchlight.

“That shows a direct link to the LaMalfa campaign and the kind of deceitful, dishonest tactics they will go to win this election,” he said. “If they’re going to be deceitful and dishonest now, you wait until he’s entrenched as a congressman when no one can touch him.”

Dacquisto echoed those words.

“It is worse than disappointing,” he said. “It is despicable. I would never use someone’s name without their permission, and these kinds of hardball activities are an example of politics as usual, and it’s not what the voters want. Doug LaMalfa should fire anyone who was involved in this in any way, shape or form.”

He questioned LaMalfa’s claims of ignorance about the matter.

“If Doug LaMalfa didn’t say to his chief of staff, ‘Get Dacquisto’s name off of there,’ wouldn’t you think he would at least ask the guy, ‘What are they talking about? Why is this out there?’ And then the chief of staff would either say, ‘Oh it’s nothing,’ or he would tell him the truth.”

At some point the disclaimer on the website changed from “Free Thinkers for D’Acquisto” to “100% TRUE, 100% VERIFIABLE, 100 % POLITICAL SATIRE.”

An early posting questioned Aanestad’s professional background.

“FYI Sam Aanestad is not an ‘Oral Surgeon’ or ‘Doctor’ as he claims,” it says. “He is only licensed as a dentist, did not to go medical school and does not have an MD. How important is this? Not very except as evidence of a long and deliberate habit of misleading voters of the district.”

A later posting includes this message: “From opposing keeping hardened murders [sic] and gang members behind bar [sic] for life to granting taxpayer financed financial aid to illegal immigrants, Sam Aanestad isn’t the Principled Conservative he claims.”

Spannagel and David Reade, LaMalfa’s chief of staff when he was an assemblyman, have both run afoul of the California Republican Assembly for their campaign tactics.

Last July the CRA Board of Directors kicked Spannagel and Reade out of the conservative group after they were accused of manipulating the assembly to get its endorsement of Mitt Romney in the 2008 presidential primary. Reade is currently Assemblyman Jim Nielsen’s chief of staff.

Reade was expelled from the CRA for 10 years and Spannagel for five.

Aanestad backer Jim Ledgerwood, a local long-time activist in the Republican Party, said he too was disappointed by the news.

“I’ve been around for a while, and I’ve never seen anything this dirty,” he said.

Redding Record Searchlight Lights Up LaMalfa for Dirty Campaigning

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May 162012

David Stafford Reade ran against Sam Aanestad in 1996 for Assembly. There is a particular hatred for Aanestad in the entire LaMalfa / Gilliard / Reade crew.

Click here to see an ad run against David Reade in 1996. Reade was exposed for having three DUI’s, including one with possession of narcotics. It would be reasonable to assume that David Stafford Reade may well have been involved in this illegal operation as well.

Here is the Record-Searchlight commentary in its’ entirety.

By the standards of political flame wars, nothing on the anti-Sam Aanestad website www.sam4congress.com was all that scorching.

He’d had a high-dollar state car as a legislator? Well, him and every other member of the Assembly and Senate until budget cuts yanked that perk last year.

He’d cast an occasional vote that deviated from the conservative line? Independent thinking! The horror!

The Record Searchlight had printed unkind editorials about him? True! And not a rare experience for north state politicians.

But the site’s weaselly tactics — and the LaMalfa congressional campaign’s craven response to rival Aanestad’s complaints — are not just cowardly but also, arguably, a violation of federal election laws. The heart of those rules is disclosure of who’s behind political statements. You know, “I’m Wally Herger and I approve this message.”

Well, Aanestad’s campaign offered credible evidence — subpoenaed from the domain-name host — that none other than LaMalfa’s Senate chief of staff and congressional campaign aide, Mark Spannagel, had registered the site last month. So did the campaign stand behind its work, as a decent sense of fair play and the law demand?

On the contrary. Initially, the site was attributed to “Free Thinkers for D’Acquisto” — presumably trying to pin the negative anti-Aanestad campaigning on yet another Republican candidate for the seat, Redding lawyer Michael Dacquisto. After Dacquisto raised complaints a few weeks back, that “credit” disppeared. Then Tuesday morning, shortly after Aanestad’s campaign released the evidence of a Spannagel connection, the site abruptly went dark. Just when it was getting noticed — where’s the pride in its craftsmanship?

Then, Tuesday afternoon, LaMalfa’s campaign released a laughable statement denying that he or his campaign “had any knowledge or involvement in the construction or posting of the website in question.” Right, it was an independent expenditure — by LaMalfa’s chief of staff.

It’s not as if an obscure website skewering a rival is the gravest sin in politics. Heck, political news junkies will see worse this week.

But as Aanestad accurately pointed out at a press conference Tuesday, this bit of juvenile underhandedness is the sort of dirty trick LaMalfa and his political entourage have long made a specialty. This is the guy who, back in 2004, sent out ads linking Tehama County Supervisor Barbara McIver and pornographer Larry Flynt.

Politics is a contact sport, to be sure, but if this is how people get to Congress, is it any wonder the voters don’t trust politicians in Washington?

LaMalfa Continues to get Hammered: FEC / Federal Complaint Filed

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May 162012

Prologue – David Stafford Reade ran against Sam Aanestad in 1996 for Assembly. There is a particular hatred for Aanestad in the entire LaMalfa / Gilliard / Reade crew.

(This is re-printed from the Aanestad campaign)

Doug LaMalfa and the Big Cover-Up

LaMalfa Campaign Team Scrambles to Synchronize “Story” After Being Caught Conspiring to Break Federal Law; Aanestad Files FEC Complaint

(Penn Valley, CA) – Yesterday, official Internet records revealed that Doug LaMalfa’s congressional campaign created an anti-Aanestad attack website and an attack online advertising campaign, and willfully violated federal law by putting an opponent’s campaign disclaimer on those attack communications, thereby trying to make it appear that they came from another source.

Now, the LaMalfa campaign is caught with a substantial number of contradictory stories as the scramble to “synchronize” their explanation of the illegal activity complicates their case.

Yesterday, LaMalfa spokesman Dave Gilliard told the Sacramento Bee that “neither Doug LaMalfa, nor the LaMalfa campaign, had any knowledge or involvement in the construction or posting of the website in question, which just came to our attention this morning.”

But website hosting records revealed the very person who registered the Sam4Congress.com website is LaMalfa Chief of Staff and paid campaign operative Mark Spannegal.

And, as fellow candidate Michael Dacquisto pointed out in the Redding Record-Searchlight yesterday, Doug LaMalfa was personally made aware of the website last week during a candidate forum, where both Sam Aanestad and Mr. Dacquisto focused their attention on the unethical website while LaMalfa brushed off the complaints. Mr. Spannegal was also in attendance.

“That furious tapping noise you hear,” said Aanestad spokesperson Mark Standriff, “is the LaMalfa campaign team wearing out their email delete buttons as they seek to get rid of a lot of contradictory evidence.“

“The Federal Election Commission prohibits both campaign staff and agents of the campaign from engaging in illegal campaign communication activities,” said Barry Pruett, legal counsel for the Aanestad for Congress campaign. “Whether or not Mr. Spannegal is being paid is moot, according to the FEC. Frankly, the only person who is more involved in Doug LaMalfa’s campaign than Mark Spannegal is Doug LaMalfa himself.”

Mr. Pruett is also formally filing a complaint with the FEC this morning, citing failure to disclose campaign communications on behalf of the LaMalfa for Congress campaign by a campaign staffer or agent, willfully committing fraud by disclaiming a campaign website as produced by another candidate, illegal campaign expenditures by a member of the LaMalfa campaign, and conspiracy to break federal law. The Aanestad for Congress campaign is asking the FEC to conduct an immediate and full investigation.

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