I-Team fact checks 28th District State Senate campaign ads
News Channel 3 I-Team Investigator John White takes a look at the campaign ads in the 28th state Senate district race.
Both candidates are running negative ads against each other.
Republican State Senator Jeff Stone is being challenged by Democrat Joy Silver.
Her ad against Stone raises a number of issues including $300,000 in campaign funds paid to a relative.
News Channel 3 uncovered that the money was paid to Stone’s sister, Lori Stone.
Stone says his sister was a volunteer in his office when he was a Riverside County Supervisor but he agreed to pay her for work on his campaign.
He says it was it was important that she not be paid with taxpayer dollars.
Silver calls it cronyism.
Her ad claims that the Riverside County grand jury investigated Stone for billing taxpayers $100,000 for a friend’s private driveway.
The grand jury report shows that the investigation involved all of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors and that the request for the driveway was made by a longtime family friend of Stone’s for a non-profit artist’s colony in the Temecula area.
Silver’s ad claims that Stone is making more than $100,000/year as a state senator while drawing a pension for over $100,000 dollars for his as a Riverside County Supervisor and Temecula city councilman.
Stone says the claim is true and his pension shouldn’t disqualify him from continuing to serve.
Silver calls it “double dipping.”
Stone’s ad against Silver calls her a “failed businesswoman.”
She says it’s unfair, that her business struggled during the great recession just like millions of Americans struggled.
The ad goes on to say she walked away from $22 million in loans and interest by filing for bankruptcy.
She points out that it wasn’t a personal bankruptcy and involved Rainbow Vision, a gay friendly assisted living community in New Mexico.
She goes on to say that she too lost equity in the project and it hurt to lose a dream in a recession.
Both candidates stand by their ads.
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