Democratic Topeka Mayor Michelle De La Isla on Tuesday lashed out at Republican congressional rival Jake LaTurner for campaign rhetoric that casts her as a radical who wants to defund the police.
With two weeks left before the general election, the 2nd District congressional hopeful called a news conference Tuesday where she criticized the Republican treasurer for crafting an ad campaign aimed at undermining her credibility on law enforcement.
“I would be damned if I let my daughters watch somebody lie about me and me sit down and take it because it is the proper thing to do in politics,” she said.
“Some attacks are just absolutely too false, and I cannot ignore it.”
De La Isla ripped into an ad – that has since been replaced – that didn’t reflect a complete view of the comments she made responding to charges that the city of Topeka was defunding the police.
The ad in question used a segment from an August news conference where De La Isla described defunding the police as a “very bad marketing term because what it means is what the city of Topeka has already been doing as practice for the last two years.”
However, De La Isla played a recording of the rest of the news conference where she elaborated that the city was not cutting money for law enforcement.
“Unequivocally, I will say we are not defunding the Police Department,” De La Isla said in the recording of the news conference.
De La Isla noted in the August news conference that the city added money to the Police Department while cutting budgets in other departments.
De La Isla on Tuesday said the city has added $5 million to the Police Department’s budget since she has been mayor.
The LaTurner campaign stood by the ad and immediately turned its attention toward De La Isla’s travel expenses to Hawaii, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., during 2019. Together, the trips cost about $3,300.
The travel spending is now featured in a new television ad that replaced the previous ad featuring the mayor’s comments from last summer.
“While Mayor De La Isla said that she supports the defund the police movement and has been working on doing it in Topeka for the past two years, she has never lifted a finger to defund her taxpayer financed travel budget,” LaTurner spokeswoman Kara Zeyer said.
De La Isla’s campaign said LaTurner is only trying to turn attention away from the ad.
“Let’s be clear though. Treasurer LaTurner is trying to distract voters,” campaign manager Stephanie Houghton said in a statement.
“Kansans want to talk about health care, they want to talk about working our way out of this crisis,” Houghton said in a statement.
“Mr. LaTurner wants people to forget that he voted against Medicaid expansion with his boss, Gov. Brownback. Kansas voters won’t be fooled,” she said.
A recent poll conducted by a Republican consultant showed LaTurner leading by 11 percentage points in the 2nd District race.
However, De La Isla has enjoyed healthy fundraising throughout the campaign, hauling in more money than LaTurner in the third quarter as well as the two previous quarters.
She’s received support from a line of leading Democrats, such as former presidential candidates U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
She had about $945,000 in cash as of Sept. 30, compared to about $485,000 in the bank for LaTurner.
“Jake LaTurner has been lying about me for months. That’s what candidates do when they have absolutely nothing to say about their opponent,” she said.
“He’s called me a socialist when he knows I am not,” De La Isla said.
“He’s called me a radical when my record for the last eight years in the city of Topeka has shown the absolute opposite,” she said. “He loves to call me Nancy Pelosi’s puppet when I haven’t even met the lady.
“Basically, he knows he has crossed the line.”
