As Election Day nears, the battle for California’s 17th congressional district has gotten ugly; with Ro Khanna’s campaign realizing their only hope is to fling mud at the well-respected, progressive incumbent, Mike Honda.
Already covered in my previous article were Ro Khanna’s deceitful posts on Facebook implying Mike Honda was avoiding a debate, even though Honda had agreed to the terms a week earlier. It was obvious the only person delaying was Khanna, so that his planned rally calling out Honda for not agreeing to a debate could take place.
Soon after confirming his deceit with the help of Khanna’s own Communication Director, Tyler Law on Twitter, I was banned from his Facebook page. Also touched on in that article was the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer, Carla Marinucci’s unquestioning regurgitation of the Khanna campaign’s talking points. So eager is she to spread Ro’s word, she even tweets out Khanna’s op-ed from a competing newspaper. But hey, he attacks Honda for not involving himself in issues not relevant to his congressional duties, so she must cover it.
Marinucci’s journalistic lapses are molehills compared to the mountain of effluent spewed by San Jose Insider’s, Josh Koehn. On September 24th the San Jose Insider, the online version of San Jose’s free weekly, The Metro, posted an article based on an anonymous source’s accusations that Honda’s campaign staff was using congressional resources and time to campaign. Without checking his source, the article was posted complete with screenshots of the damning emails by ex-staffer Jennifer Van der Heide. The fact that the emails were sent from a personal account on a weekend didn’t seem to pique Koehn’s journalistic curiosity. Marinucci and Khanna staffers gleefully tweeted the story out.
Soon a press conference was called with two of Khanna’s supporters calling for a congressional ethics investigation. Dutifully covered by Marinucci, using all her investigative skills, she pointed out, “Khanna, who was also present Friday at the press conference […]”, well duh, look at the picture Carla, it was held at the Khanna campaign office, no doubt organized by the Khanna campaign.
Koehn, who must have been feeling the “internal” emails sent from a personal account on a weekend were not inciting the desired outrage, dug deeper into his trove of emails provided by his supposedly credible source. Thinking he found the smoking gun, he posted another article pointing to an email sent on a Thursday morning. But, in his fervor to disseminate his source’s story, he forgot to check Van der Heide’s official schedule that showed she was not working that day. Oops.
It took the work of an obviously trained journalist to peel back some of the layers of the story. In the Mercury News’s article by Josh Richman, “Honda email leaker revealed as former aide arrested for death threats,” it was revealed the anonymous source, Ruchit Agrawal, who’s story was unquestioningly reported by Koehn, was actually arrested for threatening other Honda staffers. After arriving drunk to a dinner at the home of ex-staffer Ashley Roybal, he offered to pay Roybal to help him find violations committed by Honda’s office in his efforts to seek revenge for their “wasting a year of his life." First declaring he was “going to war”, then threatening to shoot Van der Heide and other staffers, even claiming that if he could shoot Van der Heide’s 10 year-old daughter in the face, he would.
In Koehn’s articles Agrawal also accused the Honda staffers of conspiring to create a “pay-to-play” scheme centered on invitations to a 2013 event with State Dept. representatives. Throughout the week the Khanna campaign continued to clog the #CA17 twitter stream with links to Marinucci’s and Koehn’s articles on the alleged “pay-to-play email scandal.” All this despite the fact records showed the invitation was sent out in a newsletter open to all constituents, and only 2 of the twenty attendees have ever given money to Honda.
The Khanna campaign chose to spend a week’s effort by tweeting, press releases, and Facebook posts on this story. It might have been smarter to listen to the advice of his Facebook followers, “I'm with Michael. I encourage you to give these sorts of stories a little space to reach constituents through other means. Please, model the virtue of staying above it.”
If the Khanna campaign thinks it appropriate to dig through Honda’s lifetime of public service; from the Peace Corps, to teacher, school board and beyond, I’m sure he won’t mind if we look into to his past. We can start with the recent primaries. When polling showed Khanna behind Honda and Republican Vanila Singh in California’s “open primary” race, the only chance Khanna had of making it to the general election was if more Republicans entered the race. Another Republican on the ballot might siphon enough votes from Singh to dilute an already small minority of Republican votes.
Well that is exactly what happened when two Republicans entered the race just before the filing deadline, allowing Khanna to squeak by Singh for the number two spot in the “top two” primary. Of the two Republican late-entries, one was disqualified by a judge for nominating “petition irregularities," while the other, Joel Vanlandingham was challenged. But the case was thrown out after Vanlandingham and the Alameda county registrar were unable to attend the trial on such short notice.
Funny thing about Vanlandingham’s nominating petition: 14 of the 48 signatures were collected by Manorama J. Kumar, who shares an address with Manorama K. Joshi who had signed Khanna’s nominating petition in February. How does Khanna answer to these odd coincidences? Maybe he channeled Karl Rove when he wrote the op-ed titled, “The current campaign for congress has turned ugly.” Why? Are we to believe Honda convinced a Khanna supporter to nominate the Republican? Khanna must think the voters of district 17 are stupid.
During Khanna’s first attempted run for congress in 2004, again challenging a Democrat, Tom Lantos in the 12th district, Khanna was denounced by President Clinton after using his image and comments on a flyer, giving the impression that he endorsed Khanna. Clinton was so upset "that Ro Khanna has misled the people of the 12th District in this mailing,” he made a rare primary endorsement …of Khanna’s opponent. Khanna lost the race.
A race Khanna did win was in 1996, when he ran for and won student government president while at the University of Chicago. But it was a short-lived victory. Amid accusations of ballot box stuffing and fraud, Khanna quickly resigned. Despite claiming he never lied during an Elections and Rules committee’s investigation, he admitted that he and two others deliberately doctored receipts in “a conscious attempt to cover up the spending” during the investigation. Sort of sounds like lying to me.
Maybe encouragement by partisan reporting has led Khanna to believe a campaign of destruction is better than a campaign of instruction, or maybe this is just how he rolls. It seems his desperate grab at power will most likely sour the voters to his brand for many years to come. While Khanna muddles in the mud, Rep. Mike Honda continues to gather endorsements from the local community and national progressive groups. Just last week the Ethiopian American Council, Climate Hawks Vote, and even actor, Kal Penn, endorsed him.