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A longtime Democratic campaign manager says he is ready to “move on” after a city ethics board dismissed a complaint by a Westside city council candidate alleging her opponent’s campaign manager encouraged her to withdraw from the race.
Stephanie Telles filed a complaint this summer after she failed to submit enough signatures to qualify for the City Council District 1 ballot. In her complaint, Telles says that after she announced plans to appeal the disqualification, Scott Forrester, working on behalf of another candidate, Ahren Griego, offered to help her retire any outstanding campaign debt if she abandoned the appeal and did not appear on the ballot.
Forrester, a well-known Democratic campaign manager and former chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, confirmed the conversation but says no rules were broken.
Forrester’s attorneys, State Sen. Antonio “Moe” Maestas and former State Sen. Jacob Candelaria, told the board that Telles’ complaint did cite any specific rules or laws she believed Forrester’s offer had violated.
In a hearing on Wednesday, board members debated whether they had jurisdiction to regulate conduct by anyone except candidates. The board ultimately voted to dismiss the complaint.
With early voting starting in just three weeks, Telles’ status on the ballot is still uncertain. After the city clerk found that she was seven signatures short of the qualifying threshold, her campaign submitted additional signatures, including some apparently collected after the city’s deadline, to the county clerk who qualified her for the ballot. Voters represented by Maestas and Candelaria filed suit in District Court to overrule the county clerk by challenging those signatures and 42 others they say were also invalid. That case is pending.
District 1 includes a large swath of the Westside roughly from Central Avenue to Montaño Road. Current City Councilor Louie Sanchez is running for mayor instead of city council.
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