Countywide : GOP Admonishes Assembly Candidate

The Orange County Republican Party on Wednesday admonished 70th Assembly District candidate Marilyn C. Brewer for claiming in a campaign mailer that she is the “only candidate in this race who has pledged not to accept” a recent legislative pay raise if she wins the seat.

The Brewer campaign, however, stood by its statement and dismissed the “admonishment”--the least punitive finding that could be issued under the party’s rules.

The complaint was brought against Brewer by a rival candidate, Thomas G. Reinecke, who vowed to donate the recently approved 35% pay raise to charity if he is elected to the Assembly seat being vacated by Gil Ferguson.

The pay of state legislators--which has become a hot issue in some local races--will increase in December from $52,500 to $72,000 a year.

Reinecke said he thought Brewer’s statement was “malicious . . . and it’s misrepresenting the facts to the voters. And I think the voters should be informed to the true facts.”

Reinecke said his campaign does not “do any negative campaigning, nor will we.”

His campaign recently sent out a letter pointing out the financial difficulties of the third candidate in the race, Irvine Councilman Barry J. Hammond. But Reinecke claimed it “was basically a factual piece. But what (Brewer) is doing is manufacturing facts.”

Brewer responded: “Reinecke is accepting the pay raise. That’s the only thing we are claiming.”

Her campaign consultant, Harvey Englander, said he argued to the ethics committee that “there is a world of difference” between refusing a raise and therefore not taking control over the funds, and donating the raise to charity.

Englander said the campaign checked with state officials and determined that a legislator can reject the pay raise outright. Anyone who receives the raise and then donates it can claim the donation as a tax deduction, he said.

He added that a legislator can also go back on his promise, as did one Reinecke backer, Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange), who donated a pay raise for only his first year in office.

In a prepared statement issued by ethics committee chairman Chuck DeVore, the GOP panel said it was “unmoved by this legalistic argument and finds that the statement in the Brewer mailer would have misled a reasonable person as to . . . Reinecke’s stated position on this issue.”

Hammond, the third candidate in the race, has not stated whether he would accept or reject the pay raise.

In a related matter, Reinecke apologized for an error in a letter sent to some district voters under his father’s signature, which claimed that state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) had endorsed the younger Reinecke. Bergeson, who has remained neutral in the race, sent a letter to Reinecke late last week demanding that he discontinue distributing the false claim of her endorsement.