Lawmaker Caught in Flap Over Letter

SACRAMENTO — Tripped up by his own telephone number, an aide to Assemblyman Jim Battin (R-Palm Desert) was caught this week using a false name in attacking a Battin political rival in a local newspaper.

Blaming “youth and inexperience rather than maliciousness,” Battin suspended Chris Brown, who heads the assemblyman’s district office, for two weeks without pay for a letter to the editor Brown wrote and signed “Jorge Rosa.”

The letter appeared in the Desert Sun of Palm Springs on Dec. 26 and accused Joey Acuna, a school board president active in local Democratic politics, of misrepresenting Battin’s position on a prison and school bond issue. Acuna had criticized Battin in an earlier letter to the editor.

Brown and Battin initially denied that Brown was the author of the “Rosa” letter. But after the newspaper, acting on suspicions raised by Acuna, matched a telephone number typewritten on the letter and signed by “Jorge Rosa” with that of Brown’s home telephone, Battin admitted that Brown was the real author.

The newspaper also hired a handwriting expert who noted similarities of the Brown and Rosa signatures, and published the findings Wednesday.

That afternoon, Battin issued a statement admitting that his aide wrote the letter without his knowledge.

“I am very disappointed that Chris would take the unauthorized action,” Battin said. If it happens again, the lawmaker said, Brown “understands . . . I will permanently let him go.”

Brown was unavailable for comment.

The incident could cause political trouble for Battin, said Tom Freeman, president of the Lincoln Club of the Coachella Valley, an influential Republican group. Facing a Republican primary election and a race in November against Democrat Steve Clute, a former assemblyman, “it’s not good timing” for Battin, Freeman said. “It plays right into the hands of the opposition.”

Besides defending Battin, the Rosa letter accused Acuna of instigating a student demonstration last year against Proposition 187, which is aimed at illegal immigrants. Acuna denied it and the Desert Sun story backed him up.

On Thursday, Battin issued a second statement “sincerely apologizing to Mr. Acuna for any problems this may have caused him,” but adding that he was “disappointed” that Acuna was politicizing the issue.

Acuna said “the Latino community was really insulted by this whole thing,” mostly for Brown’s use of a false Latino name in attacking a Latino.