Assemblywoman Laurie Davies Hits Rival for Vista Billboard Tying Her to J6 Felon

On a warm Saturday in early October 2020, Assembly candidate Laurie Davies, barefoot and wearing white shorts, stood on a sandy plot near the San Clemente Pier and denounced certain propositions on that November’s ballot.

Davies, a Laguna Niguel mayor who went on to defeat Democrat Scott Rhinehart in the 73rd District, said virtually nothing about Donald Trump despite her being at a re-election rally.

Her only eyebrow-raising statement at the event: “I truly believe COVID has been a blessing because we live in Southern California.”

But now her Assembly rival, Democrat Chris Duncan, is refocusing on the emcee of the rally — Alan Hostetter.

A billboard on South Santa Fe Avenue in Vista, part of Davies’ new 74th Assembly District, shows an image from the October 3, 2020, rally. The sign says: “Laurie Davies stood with a convicted January 6 felon. Literally.”

Hostetter was convicted in July 2023 of four felony charges, including carrying a dangerous or deadly weapon on Capitol grounds. But in October 2020 — three months ahead of the insurrection — he was known mainly as a former La Habra police chief who became an anti-lockdown activist.

This week, Hostetter reported to a low-security federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana, to serve an 11-year, 3-month sentence for his part in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. Inmate 49779-509, age 59, has a listed release date of Aug. 14, 2033.

Republican Davies defeated Duncan, a San Clemente City Council member, in 2022 and is tired of being linked again to Hostetter in a billboard seen as misleading by journalism and political experts. (Davies’ 5-minute appearance in a Facebook video starts about 53 minutes in.)

“This is such old news,” Davies told Times of San Diego on Monday after returning to Sacramento. “This is the fourth time that I ran against Chris Duncan and he’s used this every single time. … It’s kind of the same-old same-old.”

Davies, 61, noted her 2022 endorsement by The San Diego Union-Tribune, which brushed off her Trump rally gaffe and said Duncan answered too many U-T questions in generalities.

“This does not bode well for the former U.S. Customs and Border Protection attorney being the independent thinker Sacramento needs,” the editorial said.

In response to my billboard inquiries, Duncan, 48, depicted Davies as a MAGA extremist.

“It’s been three years since the attack on the Capitol, and Davies still hasn’t condemned Hostetter, Russ Taylor or the other violent insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow the United States government on January 6th,” he said via email.

• Related: Alan Hostetter sentencing memo filed Nov. 29, 2023
• Related: Chris Duncan press release on Santa Fe Avenue billboard
• Related: Alan Hostetter is quoted on eve of his imprisonment

“Instead of setting the record straight, she tries to hide her association with Hostetter and would prefer we all forget about the campaign rally and the insurrection. Given her refusal to condemn Hostetter, or even speak on this issue, it appears she still supports the convicted felon Hostetter and likewise still supports Donald Trump even after the 91 felony counts returned against him by a grand jury of everyday Americans.”

Duncan campaign strategist Dan Rottenstreich added: “There isn’t a responsible public servant in America who wouldn’t publicly and repeatedly denounce a supporter who was convicted for their violent role in January 6. He was labeled a terrorist by his own government and Davies can’t seem to find the words to denounce him.”

In a December news release, Duncan quoted San Diego County Democratic Party chair Becca Taylor as saying:

Laurie Davies’ political association with a January 6th capitol insurrectionist isn’t just disqualifying, it’s disturbing. Laurie Davies shared a stage for her election with this violent terrorist and has repeatedly refused to condemn him. The public needs to know that even as justice is meted out to the terrorists who stormed the Capitol, their political allies remain in office right here in our community.

Davies willingly addressed such issues with me, however.

“Without a question the bottom line is … anyone who commits violence of any kind should be prosecuted,” Davis declared in a phone interview, and said she didn’t even know Hostetter.

“That was a rally in San Clemente. … We go to a lot of those,” she said, “so that was the first time that I met him.”

She’s had no contact with him since, she said.

Does she have a preference for the GOP presidential nomination? 

“You know what? No,” Davies said the day before the New Hampshire primary put Trump on the glide path to a Nov. 5 rematch with Joe Biden. “I guess what I want to do is just see how it plays out in the primary — like buckle up.”

According to party registration records in Orange and San Diego counties, Democrats make up 35.4% of 74th District voters with Republicans behind at 34.6% in the coastal district stretching from south Orange County to Vista and Oceanside.

But at the October 2020 rally, before redistricting, Davies called her district “one of the safest in the country” for Republicans.

But Duncan isn’t safe from criticism over his billboard and wordplay.

“Yes, the billboard is misleading,” said Carl Luna, visiting professor of political science at the University of San Diego and director of the Institute for Civil Civic Engagement. “At the time, she was not standing with a convicted felon. The man hadn’t been convicted nor even participated in January 6 yet.”

Luna noted the nuance of the attack.

“What they were trying to say was that now three years later, she’s never distanced herself publicly from the man which could be construed to continue to stand with him,” he said via email.

“But when you’re paying by the word on a billboard, they went for brevity if not accuracy. And in an age where most of the members of one political party, and their candidates continue to say the election of 2020 was stolen and January 6 was not an actual insurrection, nitpicking over an ad showing one of their candidates hanging out with somebody who later went on to the Capitol is somewhat hypocritical.”

Longtime journalist Brooke Binkowski, a Times of San Diego contributing editor who formerly led teams of fact-checkers at Snopes.com and TruthOrFiction.com, said her sites probably would have labeled the billboard as “mostly true” or a “mixture,” since Hostetter hadn’t gone to the Capitol yet.

“Duncan could have just as easily said that she failed to distance herself from Hostetter, or that he was extremely problematic and a known racist well before he was at 1/6, which is also true,” she said.

“It’s unfortunate that was how he chose to word it because … it makes it easy to poke holes in.”

Located above a pawnshop at 546 S. Santa Fe Ave., the Duncan-bought billboard went up last Thursday but is seen only by westbound travelers — an average of 7,847 cars a day, say city records. (Eastbound traffic sees a billboard for North County attorney King Aminpour.)

Duncan has no other billboards up, but the California Democratic Party bought one visible to eastbound motorists on state Route 78 at the Vista-Oceanside border.

That one says: “When she had a chance, Laurie Davies refused to give police more tools to solve fentanyl crimes,” with small print saying: “AB 102, 6/27/23, $6,666,000 for fentanyl enforcement, Davies skipped the vote.”

On June 27, Davies was listed as NVR (no vote recorded) for the bill later signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. She was a “no” vote on March 23, 2023.

In a statement to Times of San Diego, the state Democratic Party said: “While fentanyl overdoses surge, Republicans like Laurie Davies skipped out on a key vote to step up California’s opioid emergency response. San Diegans should know about Laurie Davies’ failures hold her accountable in the Assembly, and ultimately at the ballot box.”

Davies describes AB 102 as a trailer bill added to the budget, “and I think we all know that voting for that was reckless when you look at a $68 billion deficit.”

“I let people know I have every single law enforcement in California’s endorsement and I’ve worked on two bills that we got past regarding fentanyl and we have another one that they are backing right now,” she said.

“So again, [the billboard is] just something to be able to put up there. But you know, the last thing we need to do is spend more money when we don’t have it.”