Republican PAC: "We Sling Mud, but Not That Kind of Mud"

I have friends active in the San Diego Republican party. You might know that the Democratic mayor there had to resign recently amid sexual harassment charges. This gave Republicans an opening to reclaim the mayor's office, an office they've dominated in San Diego's history. There was a special election held last night and the Republican won.

The Democrats played the race card, claiming a local pro-business PAC, the Lincoln Club, had distributed racist brochures tarring the Democratic candidate as a gang member. The claim is that the brochures employ "dog whistle racism", supposedly a subliminal method of communicating racist ideas to voters. In this case the claim is that the PAC in San Diego used gang hand gestures in the brochure that link the Democratic candidate, (hispanic) David Alvarez to gangs. The head of the Lincoln Club replied, "“Look, we’re a pro-business political action committee. We sling mud, but we don’t sling that type of mud”.

See the brochure here:

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2014/feb/05/whistling-race-card-san-diegos-mayoral-election/