Matos, Regunberg trade accusations in increasingly testy CD1 race

Secret, disappearing web pages. Illicit push polls. Debate-stage deception. The Sabina Matos and Aaron Regunberg campaigns Monday traded new accusations of political chicanery in the increasingly testy 1st District special election primary.

A few days after filing a campaign finance complaint against Regunberg, accusing him of coordinating with a family funded Super PAC, Matos' campaign said it had found online evidence of a hidden web page it says was used to communicate with that PAC, whose donors are Regunberg's father-in-law and mother.

The page, recovered from an online archive after being removed from Regunberg's website, includes talking points similar to those used in mailers from Progress Rhode Island calling Regunberg a "progressive fighter." The mailer uses photos of Regunberg that are different from what is publicly available, the Matos campaign said, and may have come from a now-disabled drop box behind the hidden link.

It is illegal for campaigns to coordinate messaging with Super PACs, which operate outside political contribution limits.

"This discovery shows Aaron Regunberg’s directions to his family-funded Super PAC appeared on a secret link with the heading 'Communicating to Voters,' the Matos campaign said in a news release. "Regunberg’s instructions include specific voter targets and messaging that was followed word-for-word in the mailers distributed by his family-funded Super PAC."

Matos, whose campaign has received the most help from outside groups in the race, first accused Regunberg of coordinating with Progress Rhode Island in last Thursday's Roger Williams University/Association of City and Towns Chair debate.

She asked him if his website has or had a "red box," the term for online messages to Super PACS communicating the message a campaign would like help getting out to voters, which in the recent past were literally outlined by red rectangles.

Regunberg said he does not and did not employ a red box, but the question did not tease out whether messages without a literal red box count.

The day after the debate, the Matos campaign produced screen shots of a tiny, difficult-to-read "overview" link at the bottom of Regunberg's website. It has since been removed, but Matos campaign said the archived web pages it published Monday contain information directed at Super PACs.

"Voters should see and see while on the go that while there are many candidates in this race, Aaron Regunberg is the only proven progressive with a record of building an economy that works for everybody," the archived web page said.

"As early voting begins, medium-to-high propensity Democratic primary voters, particularly liberals, women and 50+ voters across RI-01 need to read the following":

"Aaron Regunberg is the only candidate with a track record of fighting against special interests like Big Pharma and Exxon to give our working families a fair shot."

"These are blatant voter-targeting instructions that go far beyond what the Regunberg team has hypocritically criticized others for doing," Matos campaign manager Brexton Isaacs wrote. "Clearly, Aaron’s campaign thought they could get away with hiding their coordination from voters."

In response, the Regunberg campaign accused Matos of sending lightly coded messages to Super PAC supporters in a memo released after last Thursday's debate, which the Regunberg campaign believes triggered a poll with Matos attack lines.

"On Friday, the Matos campaign released a memo to her Super PAC clearly calling on them to attack Aaron and turn this into a negative smear campaign," Regunberg campaign spokesperson Matt DaSilva wrote. "And those Super PACs responded instantly, with a poll out within 24 hours exactly mirroring all the different lies and bad-faith attacks from the lieutenant governor’s flailing campaign.

"That is a shockingly brazen level of coordination from a candidate who seems desperate to distract from the fact that her campaign, which is under criminal investigation by our Democratic attorney general, is spiraling," he added, referring to the investigation into falsified nomination signatures.

Asked if he had any evidence the poll came from a Matos aligned Super PAC, DaSilva said "the poll tested every negative that Sabina's team put in their memo on Friday, so we feel pretty safe in our assumption that it's from the Matos [independent expenditure] groups."

The Matos campaign has a link to its own "overview" page at the bottom of its website.

"Democratic primary voters need to see Lt. Governor Sabina Matos’ strong record of leadership protecting people’s rights and freedoms," the page says before listing Matos talking points.

Has Matos at any point in the campaign employed a red box?

"Nothing on our website instructs an outside organization to communicate in the race," Matos campaign spokesman Evan England wrote The Journal.

With a little over two weeks until the Sept. 5 Democratic primary, Matos has benefited from roughly $801,000 in spending from outside groups including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Bold PAC, $400,353; the Latino Victory Fund, at least $975; Women Vote (an affiliate of Emily's List), $249,932; and Elect Democratic Women, $149,931.

Progress Rhode Island has spent about $118,840 so far on mailers touting Regunberg out of the $130,000 it has raised ($125,000 from his father in law and $5,000 from his mother).

The PAC controlled by the Working Families Party, which has endorsed Regunberg, is getting involved in the race and on Friday reported $150,000 in spending for the former Providence state representative.

The only other Democrat to have outside help in the race is Gabe Amo. Democrats Serve has spent at least $46,463 so far to help the former White House staffer.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Matos campaign says it found secret Regunberg 'red box' web page