Menlo Park: Candidates' wife strikes back at council members Menlo Park: Candidates' wife strikes back at council members (October 23, 2002)

** Were Schmidt and Collacchi engaged in negative campaigning or just defending themselves?

By Pam Smith

Almanac Staff Writer

The wife of Councilman Nicholas Jellins, outraged at information councilmen Steve Schmidt and Paul Collacchi have circulated about her husband and his record, accused the two in a letter to the Almanac of leading a negative campaign on behalf of local political group MPACT (Midpeninsula Action for Tomorrow), with candidates Toni Stein, Bill Halleck and David Speer as the "impotent beneficiaries."

"I think that both Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Collacchi are using the power of their office to attack Nicholas," said Madison Jellins. "I really think this is improper. Neither one of them is running for re-election."

Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Collacchi said that they were defending their records -- both in their own letters to the editor, and Mr. Collacchi in fliers he distributed on residents' doorsteps. The two councilmen said their efforts had nothing to do with the three candidates they endorse, nor with MPACT, a political action committee active in Palo Alto and Menlo Park races.

They said their records were distorted in campaign literature.

"They chose to make me an issue," said Mr. Schmidt. "I'm not going to let them sit around and mischaracterize our record without a response." In his letter, Mr. Schmidt accused Mr. Jellins of waging a negative campaign to mask a lackluster record.

Ms. Jellins said her husband has been impeded by the rest of the council. "Nicholas' role on the council, frustrating as it has been, has been to ensure a full airing of the issues and to limit the damage," she wrote.

Mr. Collacchi took Mr. Jellins' statement that he spearheaded the removal of Santa Cruz Avenue traffic-calming measures as an affront to his own record.

In his fliers, Mr. Collacchi accuses Mr. Jellins of hiding his role in supporting the project. Mr. Jellins supported what's on the ground now, he wrote, and was joined by Mr. Collacchi, not voting by himself, when he earlier voted to remove everything.

Mr. Jellins has stood by his literature, saying he recognized the project's failures when his colleagues didn't.

"The issue that enraged the voters of Menlo Park was not who voted to install traffic calming furniture on Santa Cruz, but rather the majority's refusal to remove the cement obstacles immediately," wrote Ms. Jellins.

Literature put out by the Menlo Park Neighborhood Association, a candidate-controlled committee for Mr. Jellins, and city commissioners Lee Duboc and Mickie Winkler, says voters will choose between them and a group called MPACT that "controls our current city council."

MPACT endorsed all of the current council members except Mr. Jellins. This year, the group endorses Mr. Speer, Ms. Stein and Mr. Halleck.

"In order to get endorsed by MPACT, you have to agree with their agenda," said Ms. Jellins.

"That's horses--t," said Mr. Schmidt, adding that he gets no direction from the group. His commitment to economic sustainability and environmentally sound policies predates MPACT's creation in 1996, he said.

"Why don't they make a boogieman out of the Democratic party, or the Sierra Club," labor, real estate agents, or any other endorsing group, said Mr. Schmidt.

"We are in no way involved with council policy-setting or the current city-specific issues," MPACT's steering committee chair, Edie Keating, wrote in an e-mail to the Almanac . "We evaluate and endorse candidates whose values and practices are consistent with our mission statement ... to transform our region into an environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable community," she wrote.

Three of MPACT's nine steering committee members are from Menlo Park: Mary Kenney; Brielle Johnck, Mr. Schmidt's wife; and former mayor Gail Slocum, Ms. Keating said. The other six are Palo Alto residents. The political action committee maintains mailing and e-mail lists of "hundreds of supporters" from Menlo Park, Palo Alto, and surrounding communities, said Ms. Keating.

E-mail Pam Smith at psmith@AlmanacNews.com.