First salvo fired by outside groups in race for Sonoma County supervisor

The race for Sonoma County 4th District supervisor intensified this week as candidate James Gore came under attack for his alleged prior work as a lobbyist representing chemical companies and debt collectors, and questions about his oversight of a federal agency that mishandled millions of dollars.

Gore said his opponents are wrong, however - that he was mistakenly registered as a lobbyist by the Washington, D.C., management consulting firm where he worked. Nor, he says, did he oversee budget matters at the Department of Agriculture’s National Resources Conservation Service, which came under fire for making an estimated $10.6 million in payments to “dead farmers,” more than 1,000 individuals who had been deceased a year or more.

The hard-hitting attacks were made on a website set up by an independent expenditure committee tied to labor and environmental groups that are supporting longtime Windsor Town Councilwoman Deb Fudge in the 4th District race. The groups followed up with a similar mailer to voters this week questioning Gore’s past and his suitability to hold public office. Gore’s major backing comes from farm and business organizations, who often square off with some labor and environmental groups in county campaigns.

The moves mark an escalation in the race to replace Supervisor Mike McGuire, with a little more than three weeks left until mail-in ballots go out in the Nov. 4 election.

With few other compelling races on the countywide ballot, the contest between Gore and Fudge is seen as the marquee runoff for local political office - the prize a seat representing the north county and a likely role as a swing vote on key issues that come before the Board of Supervisors.

As such, “the race becomes a magnet for negative campaigning,” said David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political science professor.

“The stakes are high beyond the district. When you look at any issue before the board moving forward, whether water, pensions, roads or corrections - whatever is going to happen before the board - the winner of this seat will be the key that determines the direction the board goes,” he said.

The independent committee behind the first outside salvo in the contest is calling itself Working Families and Environmentalists for a Better Sonoma County. It is funded by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 551, Service Employees International Union Local 1021 - the largest union of county workers - and a limited corporation headed by Southern California developer Bob Bisno, who has applications for two large housing projects in Windsor - Bell Village and Windsor Mill.

Two other independent expenditure groups with the same treasurer - one opposing Fudge and the other supporting Gore - also were registered over the past two weeks. The latest campaign finance reports show no contributions, though one committee appears to be funded by real estate interests.

McCuan said the independent expenditure groups, which are not allowed to coordinate with the candidates, “become essentially the heavyweight boxers that go negative against the candidates.”

They “will attack each one for not being what they appear to be,” he said.

The questions being raised about Gore’s background are some of the same he himself is trying to address, filling in a record and a past that at least until now has been largely unknown to Sonoma County voters.

Although he was born and raised in Sonoma County, Gore, 36, was gone for more than a decade and seemingly came out of nowhere last year to run the first time for elected office when McGuire decided to seek a state Senate seat being vacated by Noreen Evans.

Gore’s newest mailer to voters seeks to fill in details about his biography, with vintage family photos and a timeline starting with his birth in Healdsburg and moving to his service in the Peace Corps and job in Washington, D.C. - a “White House appointment to provide a strong voice for California on agriculture and natural resource issues.”

Headlined “The life and story of a Sonoma County native,” it goes on to state he “proudly served” as assistant chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service before he, his wife and young daughter moved back to Sonoma County last year.

But Gore’s opponents portray him as a carpetbagger with a padded resume and a lot of “hidden stuff.”

“I feel there’s a kind of facade. Voters have a right to know who the real James Gore is,” said Lisa Maldonado, the executive director of the North Bay Labor Council, which represents 30,000 members of 71 unions.

“That’s why the need to create a website with footnotes, if not create links to (news) stories,” she said, “so people can see for themselves.”

Maldonado is a principal officer of the independent expenditure committee opposing Gore. The committee has reported $90,000 total in contributions, all but $15,000 from the two unions.

The committee created a ?website, JamesGoreInconvenientTruth.com, that claims as a federal bureaucrat Gore oversaw “reckless spending, poor performance and mismanagement” and was a lobbyist for Chemtura Corp., which is suing the state to “overturn a law that protects Californians from toxic chemicals.”

Gore said the accusations are “false, fabricated and slander-?based … disingenuous politics at its worst.”

“I would encourage any fact-finding body, or publication, or individual, to dig further if they have any questions,” he said. “I’m proud of my record.”

Fudge on Friday said she had not seen the website or the mailer questioning Gore’s past and would “withhold judgment until I see it myself.”

“It obviously did not come from my campaign. I haven’t seen it, and I haven’t authorized it,” she said.

“I have been concerned for some time about James Gore’s qualifications,” she added, urging voters to take a close look at his background and experience.

She declined further comment.

Gore is listed on a U.S. Senate disclosure database as a lobbyist for five clients beginning in 2006 and into 2008, during the time he worked as a vice president at JBC International, an international trade services consulting firm, and also worked for its affiliated company, Management Options.

But Gore and his former employer say he was incorrectly listed as a lobbyist for those companies.

“He was never a lobbyist for any of our clients,” Jason Clawson, the president of JBC, said this week.

The company in 2009 filed amendments on the Senate database to correct the error, saying an employee in charge of the process incorrectly registered a number of employees as lobbyists, including Gore.

“I have never been a lobbyist,” Gore said this week. “I had no clue they were registering me.”

He said while at JBC, he worked on expanding wine exports to emerging markets in Third World countries.

“He developed programs that helped expand the efforts and sales of U.S. wines abroad,” Clawson said. Gore completed studies that wineries could use to understand foreign market requirements regarding things like labeling, volume, alcohol percentages and additives, he said.

He characterized Gore’s job as that of a “project developer” or “project manager.”

Gore said he talked to government officials at times and “worked on certain initiatives. Some people would call that advocacy,” but he said it did not meet the threshold for acting as a lobbyist, or someone “looking to affect legislation.”

Gore’s role as assistant chief at the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service also has been called into question by his opponents, who say it wasn’t “a presidential appointment” as he has claimed and that he left amid a financial scandal in the agency.

Gore was named to the NRCS position after receiving recommendations from members of Congress, including Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, and then-Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma.

He said his appointment was vetted through the Obama administration’s Office of Presidential Personnel.

“He was a White House appointee, as I was,” said former NRCS chief Dave White. “There were fewer than 10 political appointees out of 12,000 (NRCS) employees. Only two were on the top staff. One was the chief of staff and the other was James.”

“Make no mistake. I was not reporting to Obama, nor did I know him,” Gore said. “I reported through the lines to the Secretary of Agriculture.”

The NRCS came under fire during Gore’s tenure, in fiscal 2012, for making $2.7 million in overpayments though its Farm Security and Rural Investment programs.

The General Accounting Office found that the NRCS from 2008 to April 2012 made an estimated $10.6 million in payments to individuals who had been dead a year or more.

But Gore said anyone pointing fingers at him for making payments to “dead farmers” is misguided, because he had nothing to do with overseeing budget matters.

“My focus was on outreach,” he said. “I never managed those programs or those budgets.”

White, his former boss, said Gore did a lot to increase outreach to farmers in poor areas to get them financial and technical assistance with irrigation and conservation projects.

“He was not involved in budget programs or areas where people would cut checks,” White said.

He said he couldn’t fathom how anyone could attempt to link Gore to the deficiencies identified in the GAO report. “It’s completely ridiculous,” White said.

Gore does admit to one of the criticisms leveled at him by the independent expenditure committee - that he never voted in Sonoma County until this year, when he voted for himself.

Gore said while living in other parts of the country, including Washington, D.C., and Alexandria, Va., he registered and voted regularly.

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com.