Along with many others, District Attorney Summer Stephan was moved by Monday night’s vigil in memory of the Pittsburgh massacre victims.
Asked her takeaway of the Congregation Beth Israel service, Stephan said: “An incredible joining of the community against hate, united together for peace and for respect and dignity.”
She had a prime front-row seat with other dignitaries at the University City temple.
“I was multiple-invited,” she said. “We’ve been working with the ADL with our hate-crimes division and activated to make sure that our community is safe.”
But when shown an archived image of a website she used in her recent campaign — threattosandiego.com — she went silent.
“Do you regret putting up a website that labeled George Soros as a funder of your opponent?” Times of San Diego asked her.
Stephan stared, turned and walked away, with her security blocking a reporter — all recorded by a bystander who asked not to be identified.
Catching up with her moments later, Stephan was asked: “Why did you take down that website?”
Her bodyguard led her to an outside porch, saying: “We’re done here. This is a restricted area.”
Labeled “Paid for by Stephan for District Attorney 2018,” her site critical of DA rival Geneviéve Jones-Wright went offline in the wake of Soros being mailed a pipe bomb last week, the first of at least 14 such terror attacks.
Doug Porter of San Diego Free Press, the first to note the site being taken down, wrote: “My point … was to increase awareness of the fact that it’s just not Donald Trump who’s inciting wannabe terrorists. Republican campaigns all over the country have been using Soros as a boogieman, not because he’s rich, but by falsely claiming he’s tied to violent organizations.”
Porter said the “Soros mythology” employed by GOP candidates has its origins in anti-Semitic propaganda in Eastern Europe in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union as a “pushback against pro-Democracy organizations funded by his wealth.”
Also quoted was an Opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which said: “At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, ‘the Rothschilds’ served as the leading image of the greedy cosmopolitan Jew. At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the symbol is George Soros.”
Also upset was Eva Posner, a former spokeswoman for Jones-Wright.
Posner, who didn’t attend the vigil, tweeted: “Photos of Summer Stephan at the @BethIsraelSD vigil make me raging angry. You should not be able to campaign on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories & rhetoric and then stand in front of that crowd and act like you care at all about the rise of crimes against Jews.”
Photos of Summer Stephan at the @BethIsraelSD vigil make me raging angry. You should not be able to campaign on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories & rhetoric and then stand in front of that crowd and act like you care at all about the rise of crimes against Jews.
— Eva Posner (@evaposner) October 30, 2018
The deleted site — registered April 20 to Jason Cabel Roe’s political consulting firm Roe Strategic — can still be found on archive.org.
(Roe previously helped San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer win elections in 2013 and 2016 and served as deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign.)
Jones-Wright is labeled the Anti-Law Enforcement Candidate for DA in the deleted site featuring billionaire Soros, 88, shown leaning back under the heading “Anti-Law Enforcement $$$ is Coming to San Diego.”
The site describes Soros as a “Hungarian billionaire who has spent more than $15 million in the last three years to elect anti-law enforcement prosecutors throughout the United States. Soros has invested billions in left-wing fringe causes and anti-law enforcement campaigns.”
It quotes him as saying: “I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise I might end up in the loony bin.”
The rest of the site is devoted to links to stories about Soros, “What They’re Saying” quotes about him, and 14 candidates who got Soros money — totaling millions.
A month before the June primary, inewsource reported that a Soros-funded political action committee spent $402,000 on Jones-Wright.
“That’s more than double what the deputy public defender has fundraised for her own campaign,” said the report.
Appointed DA Stephan defeated Jones-Wright by 25 percentage points.
Michael Vachon is a spokesman and political adviser to Soros.
On Tuesday, he said: “We don’t have anything to say on the DA’s refusal to comment. I think her silence speaks for itself.”
Updated at 11:10 a.m. Oct. 30, 2018.