Assembly Candidates Going to Court Over Job Title on June Ballot

The race for a state Assembly seat representing the west San Fernando Valley on Thursday went to a Sacramento courtroom, where one candidate accused another of overstating his credentials in a description to be printed on the June ballot.

A Sacramento Superior Court judge was expected to rule today on candidate Paula Boland’s request that the secretary of state’s office be ordered to reject candidate Robert G. Wilcox’s ballot identification as an “assemblymember’s legislative representative.”

Wilcox, an aide to retiring Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge), branded the court challenge as “a shameful political ploy.”

Wilcox is on leave from a post as executive director of a La Follette task force working to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Earlier this month, Wilcox proposed that the June 5 Republican primary ballot describe him as “Assembly executive director.” After the state challenged him to substantiate the title, he changed the designation to “assemblymember’s legislative representative.”

But an attorney for Boland asserted in a petition for a court order that the second description still exaggerated Wilcox’s status.

“Allowing the proposed designation falsely creates the impression that Mr. Wilcox has a higher, more responsible position than his actual status and also falsely creates the impression that he has some form of incumbency status,” the petition said.

“It looked as though what he really wanted to say was he was an assemblyman,” Boland said in an interview, noting that Wilcox used the term “assemblymember” rather than “assemblywoman,” which would refer more specifically to La Follette.

Boland, a Granada Hills businesswoman, pointed to recent Wilcox campaign literature that described him as a “former field representative” for La Follette. “It has nothing to do with being a legislative aide at all,” she said.

Wilcox, in an interview, said Boland was quibbling over semantics. The state has accepted his proposed “assemblymember’s legislative representative” description, he said. The phrase accurately describes a range of tasks he performed for La Follette in the past four years, including his leadership of the schools task force, he said.

“If part of Paula’s argument is to imply that I’m trying to make people believe that I’m the incumbent, then I feel very sorry for her,” Wilcox said. “The people know who the incumbent is.”

Wilcox characterized Boland’s court challenge as an attempt to distract attention from substantive campaign issues. He said Boland is “hibernating” and “hiding behind lawsuits.”

Boland said: “This is an issue. Be honest with the voters out there. You’ve got to start by being honest about what your job is.”