Commentary | Election manipulation? It will only get more extreme from here

Politics is a dirty business. An open question is just how much dirtier it will become.

When word spread in February that little-known Amanda Renteria — a failed Central Valley congressional candidate and former aide to Hillary Clinton — had filed paperwork to run for governor without any money or campaign structure, Politico wrote a 1,100-word article that focused on speculation she had been put up to running by Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and/or his campaign. In it, backers of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa — Newsom’s main rival and fellow Democrat — cried foul as her entry meant he would no longer be the only Latino on the ballot.

In an interview for a KQED podcast, Villaraigosa consultant Mike Madrid said he thought …

“something just doesn’t smell right with what happened. … We know something else is afoot. … You don’t run for office and file 30 days out [before the filing deadline] with no endorsement, no infrastructure and no campaign website. … I think the dots are there.”

A Newsom aide called it “severely sexist for team Antonio to paint an accomplished woman as the naive rube manipulated by a bunch of dudes.” Renteria’s history of working for state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and Goldman Sachs — and her Stanford and Harvard degrees — certainly gave the 43-year-old some credibility. So did her recent appearance at a San Francisco event at which she convincingly spoke of her hope to become a positive influence on policies affecting those neglected by government.

More:

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-election-dirty-politics-cgi-artificial-intelligence-20180307-story.html