Did California Democrat’s campaign ads give Proud Boy school board candidate a boost?

Jeffrey Perrine came nowhere near qualifying for the November ballot in his suburban Sacramento Assembly race.

His 6,214 votes in the Assembly District 7 June primary were good for just 5.6% and fourth place in a five-candidate field.

But locals who weren’t familiar with the Citrus Heights resident may have heard about him through incumbent Assemblyman Ken Cooley, D-Rancho Cordova. In television ads and mailers, Cooley warned voters that Perrine was a member of the Proud Boys, the white nationalist group with a history of political violence that played a prominent role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

However, some voters and GOP leaders aren’t so sure Cooley was performing a public service. They think he was trying to knock out his most serious opponent, Republican Josh Hoover, and lift Perrine into second place for an easier victory in the fall.

It didn’t work. Hoover finished in second place behind Cooley.

The situation shows the pitfalls of the “pick your own opponent” strategy Democrats have increasingly employed to elevate less-electable extremists at the expense of more competitive opponents.

Now, Perrine intends to use the visibility he gained on Cooley’s dime to win a seat on the San Juan Unified School District Board of Education, a frequent target of his anti-COVID policy protests over much of the past two years.

“I figured I could utilize the name recognition, and the same people will vote for me in November (for school board),” Perrine told The Sacramento Bee in a previous story.

Cooley called allegations that he was trying to push Perrine into the general election “preposterous.”

“That’s not me,” Cooley said. “That’s not how I campaign.”

Cooley ads feature Perrine

In video and print ads, Cooley depicted himself as someone seeking to stand up against Perrine and his viewpoints.

One TV spot contrasted Cooley, a “common sense Democrat,” with Perrine, who was “too conservative for our families.”

“One hundred percent pro-Trump, Perrine was a local leader in Trump’s so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ movement,” the ad’s narrator said. “Perrine even fought local school boards during the pandemic. Trump Republican Jeffrey Perrine: too far right for Sacramento.”

Cooley’s website also condemns Perrine’s candidacy.

“Hate has never been a Sacramento value and is not welcome now,” Cooley’s homepage says. “Now I am being challenged by a member of the Proud Boys. A group that represents everything I am against. I need your support. Let’s show the Proud Boys that we will unite to fight racism and hate!”

Perrine proudly spent no money on his campaign. He tweeted in May about a Cooley mailer that featured his face alongside text saying he “fought local school mandates during COVID” and “calls himself an ‘anti-establishment’ conservative.”

“These flyers continue to be mailed out,” Perrine said. “This s--t is crazy. #kenCooley dumped over 100k on advertising. He must think he can truly beat me.”

Another Perrine tweet from June 8, the day after the primary, describes his thoughts on the election. He quoted a tweet from Hoover, who criticized Cooley’s ads, along with the California GOP.

“My 1200 dollar filing fee made the left and right spend bank loads of money,” Perrine said. “@KenCooleyforAsm and @joshua_hoover were forced to spend money talking about me. I dominated their minds this political season. What a fun investment. Thank you to all the real ones!”

A warning, or a political strategy?

Hoover and Republicans are attacking Cooley for what they view as a politically nefarious tactic. But Cooley and his consultant say he was the only candidate warning voters about Perrine’s radical views.

Hoover, who is also chief of staff to Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, R-Rocklin, said Cooley’s campaign gave Perrine needed publicity.

“Ken Cooley gave Jeffrey Perrine, a Proud Boy extremist whose tactics include threats and intimidation, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free name ID as part of a cynical scheme to deny me a place on the November ballot,” Hoover said.

“Cooley built the launching pad Perrine needed to run for school board, and now it is up to the voters to see through this disinformation campaign. Our schools and children deserve better, Perrine’s brand of politics has no place in our community.”

However, Cooley and his campaign team say their sole intention was to inform voters about Perrine’s extremism, not win him a spot in the general election.

Andrew Acosta, Cooley’s campaign consultant, said the ads featuring Perrine provoked a strong response from Democrats but did not promote his candidacy.

“We told people who he was,” Acosta said. “We said negative things about him. End of story.”

Cooley said he was trying to prevent Perrine from advancing through a field of four Republicans in a lower-turnout election.

Even though Perrine spent no money, those who share his radical views often use alternative, more under-the-radar forms of communication to rally support, Cooley said.

“In a sort of sleeper race, that’s how someone could get into office,” he said. “And someone has to stand up and say, ‘That’s not right.’”

Cooley said he’s always been a “values-centered candidate” with middle-of-the road Democratic views.

“I’m not a Rob Bonta, or some other super blue Democrat, so (the ads) are some kind of trick,” he said.

Democrats bet on ‘pick your own opponent’

Democrats have long been using pick-your-own-opponent in primaries throughout the country with mixed results.

As Cooley referenced, supporters of Attorney General Rob Bonta spent money on ads attacking opponent Eric Early, a conservative Republican, in an effort to lift him over a stronger competitor, Nathan Hochman, a Republican former U.S. attorney.

Early did not prevail, and Bonta will be facing off against Hochman in November.

Ahead of the Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary in May, Democrat Josh Shapiro ran ads featuring Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who received former President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

Mastriano ended up advancing to the general election, and he and Shapiro will compete to become governor in November.

Former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, spent millions ahead of the state’s 2012 primary boosting Republican Todd Akin, who was trailing competitors at the time. He made it to the general election, and McCaskill defeated him soundly, aided in no small part by Akin’s comment that women’s bodies have a way of avoiding pregnancies in cases of “legitimate rape.”

McCaskill told NPR in June the strategy “has to be done very carefully.”

“There were three viable candidates and Todd Akin was kind of the weirdest one,” McCaskill said. “I knew he might say some weird things if he were nominated. And he had less money, so we took a poll and figured out what Republican voters would really like about him.”

Suburban school board race heats up

Perrine is running to represent the Orangevale area on the San Juan Unified School District board.

For the first time, the school district is split into seven areas, each of which will elect a different board member. This means candidates must appeal to a smaller number of voters in their districts, rather than the tens of thousands of residents they previously needed to reach in an at-large election.

Perrine will be competing for the Orangevale seat without the support of Sacramento County’s Republican Party, which removed him from a leadership post on the Central Committee after learning of his Proud Boy affiliation.

The county GOP is considering Tanya Kravchuk, an employee at Children’s Receiving Home of Sacramento, for an endorsement, but not Perrine.

“For good reason we have not invited Mr. Perrine,” Betsy Mahan, chair of the county Republican Party, previously told the Bee. “We had a history with him that has not been a positive one. He has a history of interacting with school boards in an aggressive way that has not been productive. We are just very pleased to have a candidate who can represent teachers and parents who want to put kids first.”

The California GOP, which is running its own campaign to encourage parents to run for school boards, stands behind the local party’s decision on Perrine, said Ellie Hockenbury, state GOP deputy executive director.

“Cooley’s eager investment in this candidate’s Assembly campaign provided him with a launching pad to now run for another office,” she said in a statement. “The Sacramento County GOP has been a great partner to us, and we will follow their lead against supporting an expelled Republican in this school board race.”

Kravchuk and Perrine will be running against incumbent board member Michael McKibbin.

It’s unclear whether Perrine will stand a chance against a GOP endorsee and an incumbent.

The race is already heating up. Videos taken during a recent school board candidate meet-and-greet at Miller Park in Fair Oaks show Perrine confronting nonprofit leader Ben Avey, a candidate for a seat in a different area.

Perrine was frustrated that Avey described the Proud Boys as the “modern day Klan.”

“You’re scared of me for a reason,” Perrine told Avey. “And I am not going to go away. You don’t call me a member of the Klan.”

This story was originally published August 23, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Did California Democrat’s campaign ads give Proud Boy school board candidate a boost?."