Flood Victims Cry Foul on Supervisor Campaign Mailers 

Backers of San Diego County Supervisor candidate Vivian Moreno on Thursday agreed to stop using photos of flood survivors in two campaign ads after survivors objected that their photos were used without their permission and said they don’t support Moreno’s candidacy in the first place. 

Michael Zucchet, general manager of the San Diego Municipal Employees Union, the organization that paid for the direct mail ads touting Moreno’s response to last year’s catastrophic winter flooding in San Diego, said in a Thursday email to attorneys representing the survivors that, “based on the representations about your clients made in your letter,” the union would “agree to discontinue use of [the survivors’] images in any campaign materials.” 

Responding to accusations by the attorney that the ads were “cynical” and “misleading,” Zucchet denied in his email that the union had crafted the ads in “bad faith or [with] ‘dishonest’ intent.” 

The ads at the center of the dispute arrived in South San Diego County voters’ mailboxes earlier this week. They feature images of Moreno, who is running for a vacant seat in Supervisorial District 1, meeting with flood victims and addressing survivors from the back of a pickup truck. 

“When Disaster Struck, Vivian Moreno Stood Up,” one of the ads says. 

Two survivors, Michelle Sherman and Harrold Roberts, are featured prominently in the ads, talking with Moreno on a flooded street and inside the home of Sherman’s mother, Dorothy Dixon, whose house was inundated with five feet of water during the Jan. 22 floods that damaged nearly 600 buildings and displaced more than 1,000 San Diegans from their homes. 

In an interview with Voice of San Diego, Sherman said neither she nor Roberts were contacted about the ad or gave permission for their images to be used. And Sherman said she does not plan to vote for Moreno because, in Sherman’s view, Moreno “came through [our neighborhood] but she didn’t help at all.” 

State law prohibits independent expenditure committees from coordinating election activities with individual candidates or their campaigns. A representative for the Municipal Employees Union said there was no coordination between Moreno’s campaign and the makers of the ad. 

Geraldo Ramirez, a spokesperson for Moreno’s campaign, said that, because the ad was produced by an independent expenditure committee, no one from Moreno’s campaign worked on it or had any other involvement. 

“We’re not sure how that came to be,” Ramirez said. 

Ramirez said the photos in the ad were taken by one of Moreno’s staff members when Moreno toured flood-damaged neighborhoods in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 22 storm. The photos were included in a gallery of photos on Moreno’s campaign website showing Moreno at work as a city Councilmember and campaigning with supporters. 

Ramirez said that, after the campaign learned about the photo subjects’ objections to being featured in a campaign ad, the photos were removed from the campaign website. 

Moreno, Ramirez said, was in fact closely involved in recovery efforts following the January floods and took numerous steps to ensure residents in flood-damaged neighborhoods received help. 

Ramirez said Moreno and her staff members arranged for dumpsters to be brought to flood-damaged streets, brokered a partnership with carpenters to help with demolition and removal of damaged property, walked door to door to connect residents with services and helped to warn residents against unscrupulous real estate agents and other fraudulent offers of help. 

At one point, Ramirez said, “Vivian drove a lady to pick up her heart medication.” 

“We were there the day after the flood,” Ramirez said. Moreno “made sure tenants understood their rights.” 

Sherman said she was especially upset about her image being used in the ad because she is still dealing with the aftermath of the Jan. 22 floods. She said her main worry that day was not her own possessions, many of which were damaged when a storage unit she uses was inundated, but her mother, who lived alone in a house 10 minutes from Sherman’s southeastern San Diego apartment. 

Sherman said that at the time of the flood, her mother was living with bone cancer and used a walker because she “had a lot of pain and difficulty getting around.” 

When the rains began, Sherman said, her mom, who was known simply as “Miss Dorothy,” called her in a panic. 

“She called me and said it’s raining really hard and it’s coming up on my porch,” Sherman said. “I said I’m trying to get someone to go there because it was flooding at my house and coming through so fast.” 

Sherman’s husband, Iziah, tried to reach Miss Dorothy in his car but had to turn back in the face of high water. “He was afraid the car would float,” Sherman said. 

Eventually, Sherman got through to 911 and managed to alert her mother’s neighbors, one of whom swam to Miss Dorothy’s house, got her out and managed to push her up onto a roof where several other neighbors had gathered. 

“If she had stayed in the house, there’s no way she would have survived,” Sherman said. 

Shortly after the flood, Sherman said she was sorting through items in her mother’s house when Moreno, touring the neighborhood with a few staffers, approached her and asked if she could look inside. 

Sherman said Moreno peered around inside the house while a photographer took pictures then left after asking a few questions. 

“I didn’t know who Vivian was when she came through,” Sherman said. “She did not talk to me about taking pictures or an interview or anything. They didn’t offer any help. They just wanted to see the damage and I thought that was it.” 

“I believe they could have done more,” Sherman said of the city’s flood-response efforts. Apart from a city-provided dumpster subsequently delivered to the neighborhood to collect debris, Sherman said she had not benefited from any other city-provided help. 

Last Christmas, Miss Dorothy died. Sherman said she was still grieving and sorting through her mother’s affairs when a friend from the neighborhood sent her a text with a picture of the direct mail ad featuring her photo. 

Sherman said she was “shocked” to see the photo. “I instantly got upset, like, are you kidding me? … We just lost my mom. [Moreno] doesn’t know what we’re going through.” 

Sherman said she was even more puzzled because “I’m not a big fan” of Moreno. “My mom said if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” Sherman said. “I’m going to stop right there on that.” 

Sherman said a friend of hers put her in touch with Dan Rottenstreich, the campaign manager for Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre, one of Moreno’s rivals in the Supervisor race. 

Rottenstreich connected Sherman and Roberts with Ricardo Ochoa, Aguirre’s campaign attorney. Ochoa sent a cease-and-desist letter on Thursday to the independent expenditure committee that produced the ad. 

That same day, Zucchet sent Ochoa an email agreeing to stop using the photos. 

The dispute comes as the special election race for District 1 Supervisor turns increasingly negative. Campaign records show that candidates and outside groups so far have spent more than $400,000 attacking each other. 

Ads are inundating voters’ mailboxes and social media feeds, many of them dueling over which candidate has done a better job responding to natural disasters, including the Tijuana River sewage crisis and the January 2024 floods. 

Sherman said she was still upset about the campaign ad but uncertain what to do next. “I don’t know yet what I’ll do,” she said. “My feelings have not subsided.”