By Tessa Roy, WPRO News
With just over a week left before primary elections, Democratic candidate for governor Matt Brown announced he’s issued a cease and desist letter to Governor Gina Raimondo over recent mailers and television attack ads, claiming he’s being defamed. Brown’s campaign also said it would be asking TV networks to stop airing the ads.
A recent Raimondo mailer highlighted campaign finance issues surrounding Brown’s 2006 bid for Senate, called him a “financial disaster,” and featured graphics painting Brown in the image of President Donald Trump. The mailer and a television ad included claims that Brown “stiffed” his workers over $100,000 in pay, hid over $150,000 in debt, and paid himself a $300,000 per year salary at his nonprofit Global Zero.
Brown suggested Raimondo’s team is going negative so close to the September 12 primary because they’re nervous.
“Politicians only pour millions of dollars into negative attacks when they know the race is close,” he said in a statement.
In the cease and desist letter, Attorney Laurence Gold refutes the claims made in the ad and mailer. He wrote that Brown’s Senate campaign did not hide any debt, but reported all of it to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in a timely manner.
On the “stiffing” of workers, Gold said all of Brown’s Senate campaign staffers were fully paid. He wrote that the $100,000 figure Raimondo’s campaign referred to actually had to do with the campaign’s business vendors who participated with the campaign in making a submission to the FEC under its debt settlement rules.
Gold wrote that because fundraising ended with the campaign, the campaign settled with each vendor at half of what was owed, which he said was approved by the FEC. Gold said that process, though “unfortunate,” is “typical of unsuccessful campaigns” and has nothing to do with paying or stiffing workers.
Gold also wrote that Brown did not set his own salary at Global Zero, which would have been a violation of IRS rules. Gold cited Global Zero co-founder Bruce Blair as stating that he set Brown’s salary.
“These are all deliberate, defamatory falsehoods, as the Raimondo Campaign plainly knows,” Gold wrote. “Even measured against the high bar set by the law for defaming public figures, the Raimondo Campaign’s statements measure up; they were not mere campaign hyperbole.”
Raimondo’s campaign spokesperson Emily Samsel stood by the ad and mailer.
“The ad informing Rhode Islanders about Matt Brown’s history of fiscal mismanagement is straightforward and factual, and we stand by it,” she said. “This is a last-gasp stunt by a failed candidate who has misled Rhode Islanders and distorted the Governor’s record from beginning to end.”
