Another mailer causes controversy in Long Beach April 12 election

Another candidate for City Council has blasted a former Long Beach leader for allegedly backing a controversial campaign mailer.

Eric Gray, a candidate for the 2nd District council seat, denounced a mailer circulated by an independent expenditure committee — with a retu address reportedly of former Councilman Gary DeLong — in which the claim is made that Gray was recently issued a notice of default for failure to make payments on his condo.

“Really, basically everything was misleading, false and inaccurate,” Gray said Wednesday. “My finances are in perfect order. This piece implies I’m behind on my mortgage, and I’m not.”

The mailer calls Gray a “waabe politician,” and says Gray isn’t ready to manage Long Beach’s budget, and can’t manage his own finances. Gray said he’s had only one late payment of dues to his homeowner association, and that was last year.

The campaign mailer shows Long Beach Citizens for Good Govement — an independent expenditure committee that supports candidate Joen Gaica — as the sender. Included on the mailer is a sentence saying the campaign literature was not authorized by the candidate nor a committee controlled by the candidate.

The 2nd District race also fields Jeaine Pearce, and Gray called on both her and Gaica to denounce the mailer.

Specifically of Gaica, he said “I would hope that she would denounce it.”

Neither DeLong nor Gaica retued phone messages seeking comment Wednesday.

This isn’t the first time during the campaign season that DeLong has been the focus of controversy.

Earlier this month, five current and former elected officials denounced a campaign mailer — circulated in the 8th District where incumbent Al Austin is facing challenges from Wesley Tubow and Laurie Angel — which juxtaposed violent crime statistics with a faceless hooded figure.

Austin, who is black, said the mailer had racial overtones. Those who denounced the mailer said it recalled Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black male in Florida was reported to have wo a hooded garment before he was shot and killed in 2012 by George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges the following year.

The mailer was also sent by Long Beach Citizens for Good Govement, and featured a photo of Tubow and a campaign statement. The mailer showed the same retu address as the one targeting Gray, and the address belongs to DeLong, according to Gazette Newspapers, which is a sister publication of the Press-Telegram.

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Tubow said the mailer was not part of his campaign.

DeLong, who along with several local business figures has donated to the committee, told the Gazettes that he did not speak for the committee nor have any comment on the mailer.

DeLong was termed out of his Long Beach 3rd District council seat in 2014 and lost a race to Alan Lowenthal for the then-open 47th Congressional District seat in 2012.

Gray said in a statement Wednesday that he was “shocked and appalled that Gary DeLong would throw a bomb into what has otherwise been a positive campaign so far.”