By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Woodland, CA – On Friday Jeff Reisig’s campaign took off the gloves and went with a surprisingly vicious attack against his challenger, Cynthia Rodriguez.
With a photo of her and money, the header says, “Campaigning For Criminals.”
“Soft on crime policies are bad news for Yolo County! Cynthia Rodriguez is getting thousands of dollars in campaign funding connected to convicted sex offenders and child rapists seeking a soft on crime District Attorney!”
For her part, Cynthia Rodriguez’s campaign declined to comment.
It’s not clear whom the ad even refers to. But it was paid for by Jeff Reisig’s campaign on Facebook.
It is probably not wholly shocking that Reisig would go on the attack—but going this negative, this early, is a bit surprising. Moreover, that he would name his opponent and do it himself is a bit surprising.
Still, in 2018, Reisig went pretty negative, but much of the worst attacks were by third parties like Crime Victims Units and the California Deputy District Attorneys Association.
There are some surprising features of this ad, for sure.
First, as mentioned, Reisig did the ad himself—it was not a third party ad. More on this shortly.
Second, he named his challenger by name. That’s perhaps the most surprising part. Campaign 101 says if you are an incumbent, you don’t name your opponent in attack ads unless you really have to.
Why? Well, in general, incumbents have a huge name recognition advantage and by attacking people by name, you can help as much as hurt your opponent.
Does that mean that Rodriguez is making a lot of headway here? Possibly.
Or it could be something else. In Orange County, for instance, Todd Spitzer, on the day his opponent announced, attacked him by name and linked him to the progressive DA in Los Angeles, George Gascón.
Reisig’s attack ad is actually a lot closer to the likes of Todd Spitzer, who has turned hard right in his quest for reelection—attacking progressives, going on Fox News and News Max.
Reisig’s attack is in the same vein—he attempts to equate the policies of Cynthia Rodriguez with being pro-criminal. It is not clear whom he is referring to—or whether he is referring to anything specific in the ad when he talks about child rapists funding his opponent.
In one sense this is surprising. Reisig has been trying to portray himself as a kind of moderate reformer.
“I’m not an ideologue,” said Reisig in an interview with the Sacramento Bee. “I’m not in the same category as hardcore progressives that are looking to fundamentally rip down the system and rebuild it. I view our job more as threading the needle of criminal justice reform and public safety at the same time.”
Toward that end he has partnered with Measures For Justice on a data portal, with Stanford on racial blind charging, and with For the People on early release.
As the Bee put it, “What Reisig and Chief Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Raven are doing in Yolo County is more than simply offering an innovative approach to prosecuting. They’re charting a sensible path to contemporary criminal justice and lasting change.”
They add: “Their work contrasts with that of well-known progressives such as San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón. It’s a model that traditionalists like Sacramento’s Anne Marie Schubert can and should be emulating.”
The Vanguard has spent a considerable amount of time attempting to show that, despite this kind of rhetoric, Reisig is actually far closer to Anne Marie Schubert and Todd Spitzer than he is to any of the more progressive DAs, or even more moderate reformers like Tori Verber Salazar (a Republican) from San Joaquin County.
By taking a page directly from Todd Spitzer, Reisig has shown his hand.
But there is another level to this—and that makes this attack really not that surprising. Jeff Reisig, despite his tough reputation, has just about the thinnest skin I have ever seen from a public official. He has famously never spoken to the Vanguard, but even more intriguing is we have heard that a number of county officials have been shut out by him as well, after they have been sometimes even mildly critical.
There was the June 2020 dust up with Public Defender Tracie Olson for instance.
Following the public defender protest for Black Lives which was a nationwide event, Public Defender Tracie Olson told a local news station, “Honestly we see Black people go to prison for crimes that white people don’t go to prison for…On April 20, I looked at the jail population. We had about a little under 200 people in the jail, 49 of whom were Black.”
She explained, “So that’s 25% of our Yolo County jail population is Black. Yolo County’s demographic population is 3% Black. So we have over an 800% over-representation of Black men and women in our local jail. So it is a local problem.”
DA Jeff Reisig responded with a series of blistering attacks on the public defender.
He said, “Yolo County Public Defender Tracie Olson’s recent broadside against the justice system in our county was inaccurate, irresponsible, and insulting to both prosecutors and the judiciary.”
He unloaded on her not once, but twice.
But a year later, he seemed to acknowledge that she had a point—even if he didn’t say it directly.
In April 2021, his office launched a transparency portal.
“As a result of data now made available through the portal, Commons, the office has changed policy to ensure more cases—particularly those involving defendants of color—are diverted out of the criminal justice system,” a release at the time stated.
The office “will no longer automatically disqualify an individual from being referred to a diversion program based on their criminal history, and is estimated to increase diversions by 15 to 20 percent.”
His office is promising, “The policy change is the first of many to come that will be driven by data from Commons.”
If that represented a move to soften the image of the DA, which was followed with a number of others, the attack on Cynthia Rodriguez seems to signal a retrenchment back to the bad old days, but, most importantly, it was just an unnecessary and meanspirited swipe that if he was really secure in his reelection and in his own skin, he should have avoided.
Famously? Why would he speak with a blog? A blog that attacks him at almost every opportunity?
Though I did find these synonyms for the word “famously”.
admirably, masterfully, ingeniously, nobly…
So I might have to agree with you on that.
I agree he shouldn’t speak with a blog (however one does that), but why would he not speak to the Chief Probation Officer for several years?
You agree he shouldn’t speak to a blog? I don’t understand — then why did you criticize him for not speaking to a blog?
Running against soft on crime is the easiest thing for Reisig to do. Crime has a long history of unpopularity among voters. Look at the election of Eric Adams as mayor of New York for a template instead of those you mentioned. Getting out early is an attempt to define Rodrigues before she can introduce herself to voters. Although Reisig would never bother to speak to you I have little doubt that he would be pleased that you brought notice to the ad even while deconstructing it.
“Running against soft on crime is the easiest thing for Reisig to do. ”
True. But that actually makes the ad more inexplicable. Why go so over the top if it’s easy to run against soft on crime?
To define her before she can introduce herself to voters.
You act like such an amateur. You think Reisig doesn’t have professional campaign people advising him? That he put this ad out under his own name all by himself?
I’ve known a lot of political consultants over the years and none of them would recommend going negative this early against a person for whom you have a name recognition advantage.
You obviously have limited expertise. Just because it doesn’t fit in your view of how it should be done means little. Would those same consultants suggest to a candidate targeted by such an ad that it would be a good idea for a media outlet to amplify it by essentially reprinting it even while deconstructing it?
Media often replay campaign commercials and then fact check and evaluate them.
Did you fact check it or replay it and deconstruct it? I don’t see any fact checking. Only rehashing of earlier complaints about Reisig. Fact checking would have looked into the accusation that she is being funded by pedophiles and rapists. The tepid no response from her campaign debunks nothing. Perhaps you should have done a little more inquiry before publishing. This is damaging stuff and you made it worse by not fact checking Reisig’s claim.
The fact check and investigative analysis is underway Mr. Glick.
I must say this ad rubbed me the wrong way — strongly the wrong way. I mean everything about that ad is over-the-top and offensive. I’ve been voting for Reisig mostly because the obsessive hatred of the man by the Vanguard must mean he’s doing something right. But I can’t support this sort of campaigning. I also ran into a friend a few hours ago who is campaigning for her. I’m generally not for soft on crime, but since Reisig is starting to appear as unhinged as Putin, I’ll give her a shot. But of course if it turns out that she actually is being funded by pedophiles and rapists, I may go back to Reisig. Let the fact checking begin!
Alan, even though I support Reisig, I did consider the ad a bit too graphic for my tastes. But, in considering the Vanguard’s pending “fact-checking” (sounds like an oxymoron from the start!), please, note that the ad does NOT state “being funded by.” Yes, it’s a fine distinction from “connected to,” but the two are different statements.