Mailers to Palm Springs voters raises complaints of inaccuracy

With the Palm Springs City Council race entering its final stretch, a newly formed political action committee has mailed a letter to city households touting candidates Judy Deertrack and Robert Stone while attacking their opponents. 

The two-page letter, labeled as a "must read before you vote," began arriving in mailboxes on Wednesday, less than two weeks before the Nov. 7 election. The group behind the mailer, Citizens for Accountable Government, also released a television ad this week attacking candidates Lisa Middleton and Christy Holstege.

The letter makes several claims related to local development projects and the criminal investigation of former Mayor Steve Pougnet and encourages residents to vote for Deertrack and Stone, who both have been highly critical of city leadership.

The letter also states that Deertrack and Stone laid “the groundwork for FBI action”  against Pougnet and two developers who are accused of paying the ex-mayor approximately $375,000 in bribes to buy his support for projects between 2012 and 2014.

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The FBI helped execute a search warrant of City Hall in 2015, but it was Riverside County prosecutors who filed charges against the three defendants earlier this year.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for the Riverside County District Attorney's Office, John Hall, told The Desert Sun in an email that he could not comment on any investigation done by the FBI. "Judy Deertrack and Robert Stone did make a complaint to our office," he noted, "however, that was not the origin of our investigation or subsequent filing of criminal charges."

Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin has previously pointed to The Desert Sun as having helped bring the corruption scheme out into the open. 

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The letter was signed by eight people, including actor Laurence Luckinbill (the husband of Lucie Arnaz), entertainment executive Eric Ellenbogen and a variety of local business people and retirees.  

At least one of the people who signed the letter — Steve Sims, founder of Go Bike USA — has already distanced himself from it. “I looked at it, but I didn’t have a lot of time to read it," Sims said.  

Sims said he also hasn't seen the group's television ad and said he would not be voting for one of the candidates praised in the mailer.

"At this time, I do not support Stone," he said. "I would vote for Judy Deertrack, but not Robert Stone."

When asked why, Sims said, “I’m just not in line with his beliefs."

Sims directed further questions about the group's claims to Frank Tysen, whose name does not appear on the letter but who has been feuding with the city for years over its downtown development plans. Tysen could not be reached for comment Thursday. A general email address at the bottom of the letter also did not respond to an interview request. 

The television ad takes a mocking tone while accusing Middleton and Holstege of being on the same side as land developers.

Middleton, a city planning commissioner, challenged a sentence in the letter accusing her of having "never voted against a single development project."

"You need only have read the newspaper to know … that’s simply not true," she said.  

Middleton voted against extensions for two residential development projects by John Wessman, the Boulders and the Crescendo, in 2016. That year she also voted against Canyon View, another housing project, but was absent from a meeting earlier this year when the project came back before the Planning Commission. The City Council ultimately approved the Canyon View project. 

Wessman is one of the developers also charged in the case involving Pougnet. The other is Richard Meaney.

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The letter gives the impression that Holstege supports high-density development, but she said a comment she'd made about the downtown project was cherry-picked and taken out of context to distort her true view.

Holstege said she was disappointed to see that type of mass-mailer being used in this election. 

"In the world of fake news," she said, "I hope voters can tell that this is not reliable information." 

Deertrack initially defended the letter on Facebook, saying she'd read it twice and found no inaccuracies. But when presented with Middleton's response, Deertrack backed away and said she could not vouch for some sections.

"I have no control over this," Deertrack told reporters. She said she'd advised people close to her campaign not to engage in negative attacks.

Council member Ginny Foat, who was mentioned in the letter as somebody who voted in lockstep with Pougnet and developers, called it a "smear campaign" in a Facebook post. She and fellow council member Chris Mills are not running for re-election. 

The letter gives prominence to Deertrack's and Stone's potential role in the investigation of Pougnet, Wessman and Meaney. Deertrack and Stone first publicly tied themselves to the public corruption probe this past May when they held a press conference and took partial credit for the charges. Their statements came two years after the scandal began to take shape and just as their campaigns were getting off the ground.

When pressed for evidence at that time, Stone showed a Desert Sun reporter an email he sent to an FBI senior agent on April 10, 2015. The email included an attachment, but Stone said he needed time to redact certain portions of it before sharing.

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Twice this week, The Desert Sun again asked Stone for a copy of the attachment. On Thursday, he said he did not have time at the moment to provide the information.

For years, Deertrack had publicly questioned the city's approval process for several Wessman- and Meaney-connected projects. Those questions, she said, formed the basis of a sit-down discussion with investigators in 2015. 

The importance of her contributions to the criminal case, she said, was gleaned from the DA's criminal complaint, which cited more than a dozen of the same projects she'd previously expressed concern over. 

When announcing the charges against the three men in February, Hestrin, the district attorney, credited The Desert Sun for its role in bringing the scandal to the attention of the public.

"After the publication of the first of those articles, we began to get a lot of phone calls," Hestrin said. "Citizens' complaints, coming forward and saying, 'You should look into this.' ... So that began the process of getting the investigation going."

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The remaining candidates in the current City Council race also expressed concerns over the negative attacks coming in the mail and on TV.

Henry Hampton, though he hadn't seen the letter, was skeptical of Stone and Deertrack's contributions to the corruption probe.

“It’s an unfortunate circumstance that the city had to go through, and I think a lot of us are in a position to move on and let this court of law and the district attorney do the business that he needs to do,” Hampton said.

Glenn Flood said he took issue with the letter claiming that other candidates have done nothing about corruption. 

"I did something," he wrote in an email. "I am running for city council to bring trust back into city government."

Reporter Brett Kelman contributed to this article. 

Reach reporters Jesse Marx and Barrett Newkirk at jesse.marx@desert.com and barrett.newkirk@desertsun.com.