Cristina Garcia Claims Gov. Brown’s Endorsement on Campaign Materials, Brown Camp Denies Endorsement

BY BRIAN HEWS

Hews Media Group-Community News has learned that 58th Assembly woman Cristina Garcia, who is under investigation by the Assembly Rules Committee for several sexual harassment allegations, is sending out campaign mailers, and claiming on her digital campaigns, that strongly imply California Governor Jerry Brown is endorsing her.

Trouble is, the Governor’s office denied it.

The Garcia USPS campaign mailer has a number of officials endorsing Garcia, including local ABCUSD Board Member Sophia Tse and Commerce resident Jason Stinnett.

If Garcia cares about “clean” local government, placing Stinnett on her mailer was questionable at best.

HMG-CN reported in 2013 that Stinnett was “hired” as the Public Information Officer for Commerce when the position did not exist. Many called into question the hiring process.

Stinnett was also accused of running local city council campaigns during regular working hours while employed with Commerce.

Finally in 2014, a months-long investigation by HMG-CN revealed that Stinnett, since 1996, had been convicted of drunk driving, reckless driving while under the influence of drugs and alcohol, knowingly operating a vehicle with a suspended license, and ordered to pay $5,000 in back child support as a result of a heated paternity lawsuit filed in 1996.

Despite all the baggage, Garcia included Stinnett who, with the others on the mailer claimed, “We Stand with Cristina.”

On the bottom right of the mailer was a picture of Garcia with Governor Brown.

When asked about this by CALMatters Dan Morain, the Governor’s office responded: “Has he endorsed her? No. No one on our team knew these were going out suggesting Brown endorsed the Bell Gardens Democrat,” said Dana Williamson, consultant to Gov. Jerry Brown.

This is another huge blow to the campaign and Garcia’s, who cannot seem to stop fabricating events to draw attention away from her issues.

Garcia is currently campaigning heavily on “cleaning up corruption” and is for “open transparency in Sacramento,” yet she starts her campaign off by lying about major endorsements.

Garcia has denied any sexual harassment allegations, yet placed herself on paid leave. Garcia was also removed from all Assembly committees.

Later she was accused of calling then Speaker John Perez a “Homo” and tried to deny that allegation.

Days later she was slammed for using slurs against Asians, which she denied, then later admitted it “might have been a bad choice of words.”

Garcia claiming Brown endorsed her follows a pattern of lies in her campaign materials.

In 2012, HMG-CN exclusively reported that Garcia lied about having a PhD, she once again printed the lie on her campaign materials.

Garcia told HMG-CN at the time, “In my campaign literature for state assembly, I stated that I have a PhD from USC. While I have finished all of my course work, I technically am only a PhD candidate. I have yet to finish the final process of my PhD, which is defending my dissertation. I will fulfill that final responsibility in the near future.”

Working Californians Against Corruption campaign spokesperson Erin Lehane said in a statement, “Pretending you have friends you don’t is just one more example of Garcia’s sneaky behavior. If she’s not pretending that she has degrees that she never earned, she’s trying to convince voters that our Governor supports her. We don’t think that it’s any surprise that after all she has been accused of, lying, using racist and homophobic hate language and groping and harassing young men that the group of people that call Garcia friend is shrinking by the day.”