Trash Incident Spurs Cry of Dirty Politics

Call it Dumpstergate.

Politics can be a dirty business, and things just got a little dirtier in the race for the 18th state Senate District, Republican candidate Steve MacElvaine said Tuesday. The district covers western Ventura County as well as Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.

MacElvaine was referring to an incident involving two paid employees of his Democratic opponent, Assemblyman Jack O’Connell. San Luis Obispo police said they questioned the two men Friday after they were seen rummaging through a trash dumpster late at night near MacElvaine’s San Luis Obispo campaign office.

MacElvaine said he believed the two men were looking for campaign information both from his office and that of Republican congressional candidate Andrea Seastrand.

“Why else would they go through a trash dumpster with flashlights at 10:30 at night?” MacElvaine said. “Nixon lost the White House 20 years ago by pulling stupid stunts like this.”

O’Connell and his two aides--Jerry Wooledge and Geoffrey A. Weg--did not return phone calls Tuesday.

But Gavin Payne, O’Connell’s campaign manager, said the allegation that the aides were looking for campaign files was absurd. Payne said Wooledge was searching for a checkbook he had lost earlier in the day at a Bank of America branch that shares a parking lot with MacElvaine and Seastrand’s campaign offices.

“He went back to look for it after he got off work,” Payne said. “It’s as simple as that. I’m mystified as to why they are making a big deal about this. We don’t care about what’s in Andrea Seastrand’s trash or Steve MacElvaine’s trash. That’s not what we do.”

The San Luis Obispo Police Department contacted the Fair Political Practices Commission and the district attorney about the incident, but authorities have decided not to file any charges, Lt. Joe Hazouri said.

“There was no evidence of any criminal violation,” Hazouri said.

Ralph Wunder, a Seastrand campaign aide who reported the incident to police, said he was returning to Seastrand’s office shortly after 10 p.m. Friday when he saw two men rummaging in the dumpster.

Rather than confront the men directly, Wunder said he drove to the campaign office where he planned to call police. But Wunder said when the two men saw him they jumped into their car and took off.

He said he followed in what quickly turned into a high-speed chase. Wunder called police from his car phone, and the chase ended a short time later when police intervened.

Because he witnessed the men going through the trash dumpster, Wunder said police gave him the option of making a citizen’s arrest or referring the case to the district attorney’s office. He said he chose the latter.

Tuesday, Wunder questioned why the two men fled if they were only looking for a checkbook. He said he believed the men were looking for information to use against MacElvaine or Seastrand.

“Even if there’s nothing illegal about what they did, it’s certainly slimy,” Wunder said.

Meanwhile, Seastrand, who is running against Democrat Walter Capps in the 22nd Congressional District, issued a press release Monday demanding an apology from O’Connell.

“It is this type of cynicism that stabs at the very heart of the political process,” Seastrand said in her statement.

MacElvaine said the incident called into question the character of O’Connell’s campaign, whose slogan is “Sometimes . . . Nice Guys Do Finish First.”

Said MacElvaine: “Nice guys don’t do clandestine operations.”