Week in Review : Simi Valley : Braly Denies Urging Pot Decriminalization

With a mini-blizzard of news releases, a conservative Republican activist last week injected the politically pungent issue of decriminalizing marijuana into the race between Assemblywoman Cathie Wright of Simi Valley and Hunt Braly, her GOP challenger.

Braly, who has accused fellow Republican Wright of ethics violations, suddenly found himself denying charges that, as head of a Republican college group in 1980, he advocated the legalization of marijuana.

The charges were leveled by conservative GOP activist Steve Frank, a Simi Valley public affairs consultant and admitted Wright supporter.

During an endorsement meeting of a local chapter of the conservative California Republican Assembly, Frank produced a flyer he maintained was printed by the college group headed by Braly, a one-time USC student. The flyer, in part, urged decriminalizing marijuana for personal use, saying it was “ludicrous” to put small-time pot users in jail with “rapists and murderers.”

The flyer carried a phone number that matched what appeared to be Braly’s former home number on another document produced by Frank. But Braly, an aide to state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), a former Los Angeles police chief, denied that he ever advocated legalizing drugs--or smoked marijuana himself.

Braly said he “didn’t recall” the flyer or whether his college group ever formally advocated pot decriminalization. He also said local chapters of the organization, California College Republicans, often printed their own handbills, attaching his phone number because his apartment served as headquarters for the cash-starved group.

But the manner in which the pot charge surfaced was almost as interesting as the charge itself. Frank, an ex-CRA president who noted that he is no friend of the “liberal” Braly, said he received the pro-pot flyer in the mail but had no idea who the sender was. Asked if Wright’s campaign had anything to do with slipping Frank the material, Wright campaign manager Mark Thomas said, “I don’t have any knowledge of that.”

Whoever sent it, the material had the desired effect. Frank dispatched news releases about the flyer to no fewer than 47 newspapers and radio and television stations. And after he presented it to his CRA chapter, the group unanimously voted to endorse the conservative Wright over Braly in their June 5 face-off for the GOP nomination in the 37th Assembly District.

Despite his denials, the resulting publicity put Braly on the defensive, at least momentarily, in his effort to spear Wright with the ethics issue. On the stump, Braly has repeatedly called attention to Wright’s well-publicized attempts to intervene with police and judges on behalf of her daughter, Victoria, who faced jail or losing her license after receiving 28 traffic tickets over several years.