Dirty-Trick Mailing Traced to Developer : Quick Calls Foil an Attempt to Sabotage Campaign

If Wanda Cavanaugh develops a cauliflower ear, she can blame it on the perpetrators of one of the most clever dirty tricks played during the recent election.

Cavanaugh, who leads a “ragtag group” fighting annexation of a rural valley north of Escondido by the city, spent the weekend on the telephone, trying to undo the damage done by an unauthorized edition of the Lehner Valley News, the anti-annexation group’s home-grown newspaper circulated throughout the rural valley.

“They made up a look-alike paper and sent it to every home in the valley,” Cavanaugh said. “They put it out Saturday (June 4), and it was too late for us to do anything except get on the phone and call everybody and explain that the paper was a hoax.”

Cavanaugh’s marathon telethon (and resulting swollen ear) managed to counteract the message of the phony Lehner Valley News edition, and valley residents turned down the annexation proposal Tuesday 95 to 75.

The message carried by the Saturday edition of the News was: Anti-annexation forces have changed their collective minds and now endorse the annexation of the 721-acre valley to neighboring Escondido.

The lead article in the bogus edition said the “official newspaper of the area . . . has, after careful consideration of all the facts, announced its endorsement in favor of proposition ‘O’ “--the annexation measure.

“We apologize for any confusion we may have caused,” the fake news article continued. “We just hope its ( sic ) not too late to tell the residents the truth about annexation.”

“There were a lot of confused people out here,” Cavanaugh said. “They did a real good job of the newspaper. They stole our format, copied our style--even getting the name of the paper in almost the same kind of type. It looked just like our paper. It was the nastiest hit mail you can imagine.”

But, she said, “They made one mistake. They mailed it, and they used a postage meter. They were not so smart after all.”

When Monday rolled around, Cavanaugh took time off from her telephone calls to track down the the phony edition’s origin. From the postage meter number, she obtained the name of the mailer: Thunderboats Corp. And from the state corporations division records, she obtained the name of the corporate president: John Daley, and the address of the group, the same as the San Diego offices of the Daley Corp., owner of a 3,248-acre ranch poised for a 3,000-home development--right next to Lehner Valley.

“I knew it all along,” Cavanaugh said. “We’ve been fighting two big developers and all of the City of Escondido to stop this annexation. They laugh at us and call us a ragtag group.”

She said that the Lehner Valley residents have been fighting for months “to keep this valley rural,” against the efforts of the Daley Ranch owners and another developer, Ed C. Malone, who owns 114 acres of Lehner Valley land.

Daley Ranch owners want the valley annexed to the city “so they can get a road into their big development through our valley,” Cavanaugh said. “And when they pave the Daley Ranch over with concrete the way they have done with every other piece of property the city has annexed, the runoff from all that will come down and inundate our valley.”

Malone has sought annexation because he needs the city services for his development, Cavanaugh explained.

Neither John Daley nor Malone could be reached for comment Wednesday.