Longtime Santa Clara County Assessor Larry Stone accused his political opponent Gary Kremen on Thursday of acquiring his non-public e mail checklist and attaining out to workers at his workplace — all so that you can solicit marketing campaign beef up for the June number one election.
“Santa Clara County can’t manage to pay for to elect an Assessor with one of these cavalier solution to the legislation and private privateness,” Stone mentioned in an e mail blast despatched out Thursday morning.
Stone, who has overseen the assessor’s workplace for 26 years, will probably be dealing with Kremen and native qualified accountant Andrew Crockett in his re-election bid.
Kremen, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who serves because the director of the Santa Clara Valley Water District, is the founding father of the web courting carrier Fit.com and won popularity within the Nineties for registering the area title intercourse.com. Amongst a myriad of alternative tasks, the county assessor’s workplace estimates assets values within the area, which totaled $576.9 billion remaining 12 months, in step with a record launched in December.
Stone says Kremen bought an e mail checklist of “loads of buddies, circle of relatives, trade friends and elected officers” and despatched them requests for marketing campaign beef up. “Even my sister in Seattle won his request for beef up,” Stone wrote.
As well as, Stone alleges that previous this 12 months, he had turn into conscious that Kremen was once attaining out to contributors of his personnel and asking for his or her political beef up, calling the transfer “questionably moral” if the workers “may just doubtlessly be reporting to (Kremen) sooner or later.”
When requested about proof to beef up his claims in opposition to Kremen, Stone mentioned Thursday that he have been notified by way of more than one individuals who had won Kremen’s solicitations — and that a few of his workers have verbally instructed him about Kremen’s alleged habits.
“I believe it’s unfair to place the workers in that place,” Stone mentioned, including that he’s contacted the county suggest to seem into Kremen’s habits.
In accordance with the accusations, Kremen stated he won Stone’s e mail checklist and used it to ship out marketing campaign contributions.
However he famous the one explanation why he was once ready to retrieve the contacts was once for the reason that county assessor carbon-copied the massive checklist in an e mail that was once later equipped to him by way of a public professional within the county. Kremen equipped the e-mail checklist of contacts to this information group however declined to call the general public professional who despatched it to him.
“He’s accusing me of hacking, which is loopy and ridiculous,” Kremen mentioned. “He despatched out (the emails) to a host of public officers, and while you ship issues to public officers, it’s a public document. Somebody forwarded it to me.”
“In his seven phrases of being assessor, he obviously doesn’t know the way CC or BCC works,” Kremen mentioned. “We want to be on this planet of Amazon, now not on this planet of Sears, Roebuck.”
However Kremen flatly denied Stone’s different accusation about attaining out to workers for political beef up, pointing out that they in reality had reached out to him for my part as a result of their dissatisfaction with the assessor’s management. He additionally mentioned that with the 1000’s of marketing campaign supporters he sends communications to, it’s most probably that an worker of the workplace may just finally end up at the receiving finish of 1.
“However did I dial non-public numbers?” Kremen mentioned, “No.”
The county suggest didn’t straight away reply to a request for remark.
