Carl DeMaio’s new campaign ad features an endorsement from a local politician recently re-elected overwhelmingly, and in a district overlapping the one he’s running to represent.
Oddly, the ad goes out of its way to make her seem like just another resident who thinks he’d be a good congressman.
Councilwoman Lorie Zapf, a Republican just re-elected to her second term in the coastal district that sits entirely within the 52nd Congressional District that DeMaio’s running to represent, is identified in the ad simply as “Lorie – Republican.”
“Carl took on some of the biggest issues facing San Diego: pension reform, creating jobs, cutting red tape,” Zapf says in the ad.
Other testimonials for DeMaio in the ad come from “Shivone – Democrat” and “Paul – Independent.”
A spokesperson for Zapf said she didn’t know why the councilwoman wasn’t identified as such. She said the spot was set up outside her office because it was political and didn’t pertain to city business.
A DeMaio spokesperson also said he couldn’t explain the omission.
“I don’t have an answer for that right now,” said Dave McCulloch. He said he’d ask others in the campaign why the decision was made and get back to us. We’ll update this post when that happens.
The omission is peculiar.
If DeMaio’s campaign just needed a normal person — or, specifically a female Republican — to say DeMaio is a good candidate, that shouldn’t be hard to come by.
And if it had video testimony from a recently re-elected representative in a district in which he’s running, it would seem logical to play that up as such and not present Zapf’s endorsement as if it was one from an average citizen.