In the final days until the Nov. 4 general election, questionable mailers have been appearing in Kitsap County mailboxes — especially those focused on the 26th Legislative District races for the House and Senate.

A recent mailer aimed for the state representative race for the position 1 between Rep. Jesse Young (R-Gig Harbor) and Democratic challenger Nathan Schlicher, also of Gig Harbor.

A mailer sent out by the Washington State Democratic Central Committee stated that Young “bragged in an interview with the Kitsap Sun” that he helped save his company money by sending more than 1,000 jobs to India as an information and technology consultant for Kaiser Permanente.

Beth Whelihan, campaign manager for Young, said the statement was false.

“Jesse never said anything of the sort,” said Whelihan. “He talked about how jobs were riffed after he took a sabbatical to serve in the House. He found out about this riff after the fact and in no way had any involvement. For them to claim otherwise and cite the newspaper as a quasi-endorsement of that false statement is libelous.”

A recording of the interview is posted on the newspaper’s website.

Young said that after his appointment to the Legislature, the company he is contracted with laid off 1,000 contract workers and that 95 percent of that work went over to India.

Young’s comments were in reference to a bill he proposed this year to create tax incentives to bring information and technology jobs to communities where military bases are located, specifically Kitsap County and Gig Harbor.

“If we’d had our bill, that would have made these jobs more competitive for our district,” said Young in the interview.

The mailer also refers to Young’s job with Rose International is “IT Outsourcing Specialist.” Whelihan said Young’s role with Rose is “Strategic Technologies PeopleSoft Subject Matter Expert.”

“Jesse is a software engineer and technology consultant, and his positions have always been technical in nature,” she said.

Also, the mailer references “companies like his…” which is factually inaccurate, said Whelihan.

“The company Jesse works for is a consulting company,” she said.

Young said it wasn’t even the company that he’s employed by was laying off these people.

Another false mailer

According to an Oct. 30 story published in the News Tribune of Tacoma, Schlicher has been a subject to attack ads in recent days.

A mailer — paid for by the Quality Communities Committee which is funded by the Reagan Fund, a political action committee associated with House Republicans — claimed that Schlicher “will make you pay $1 more per gallon” as part of a plan he and Gov. Jay Inslee have for a carbon fuel tax.

It cites the Oct. 6 News Tribune as the source.

There are is not records of an Oct. 6 item about Schlicher’s support for a carbon tax in the newspaper, reported the News Tribune. Schlicher said the claim was a “complete and utter lie.”

Kevin Carns, political director for the Reagan Fund, told the newspaper that the reference to a News Tribune story was a “typo.” Instead, the mailer should have cited a Sept. 29 story that ran in The Columbian of Vancouver. Schlicher is not mentioned in the story.

The News Tribune reported that Carns pointed to Schlicher’s vote in 2013 for a Senate bill that created a bipartisan legislative work group to study the best way to meet state targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Schlicher was joined by 13 Senate Republicans in supporting the bill.

Another mailer from the same group stated that Schlicher made it easier to raise taxes when he voted to overturn the voter-approved two-thirds legislative requirement to raise taxes. It also says that when moderate legislators “overwhelmingly passed” a bipartisan budget with no tax increases in 2013, Schlicher voted no.

The News Tribune reported that the Legislature never voted to overturn the voter-approved two-thirds legislative requirement during the 2013 legislative session. In 2013, the state Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional.

Caldier vs. Seaquist ads

The News Tribune also reported untrue facts in mailers that focus on the race between District 26 State Rep. Larry Seaquist (D-Gig Harbor) and Republican challenger Michelle Caldier, for the Pos. 2 seat.

The newspaper reported a mailer sent by a political action committee supported by Democrats and unions reproduced images of court documents and a list of 10 cases involving Caldier. The mailers cite “court cases, lawsuits, police reports, and even (being) charged for failure to obey law enforcement” as evidence that Caldier “thinks she’s above the law” and that she has a “record.”

The News Tribune reported that only one of the cases mentioned in the fliers involves anything criminal — a misdemeanor charge that was later dismissed. That charge, which dates back to 2000, was a charge of failing to obey a peace officer or flagger. Caldier told the newspaper that the charge stemmed from her driving past Husky Stadium in Seattle, when she followed a green light and didn’t see a police officer who was directing traffic.

The implication that Caldier has a criminal record is false, reported the News Tribune. Caldier has never been convicted of a crime, though she has appeared in court on civil matters and was charged with a misdemeanor 14 years ago. The images on the ads have been altered to make her record look worse than it is.

Caldier’s campaign has criticized her opponent’s work on college tuition and ads paid for by Caldier state that Seaquist “doubled in-state tuition while serving as the Chair of Higher Education from 2006-2012.”

The News Tribune reported Seaquist has only been chairman of the House Higher Education Committee since 2011. In his first year as chairman of the committee, he and a majority of the Legislature voted for a budget that allowed tuition increases of about 34 percent over two years. Since then, tuition has been frozen to stay at the same level.

Tuition did not double while Seaquist served as chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, but has roughly doubled for students at the state’s largest public universities during Seaquist’s time in the Legislature, the newspaper reported.