Republican candidate John Cox, who is running to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom in the upcoming recall election, was served with court documents in the middle of a debate in Sacramento as a private investigator threw them onto the stage, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The documents are apparently related to a ruling San Diego Superior Court Judge Daniel Link made in February that the Cox campaign failed to pay the Sandler-Innocenzi advertising agency almost $55,000 for political ads and some $43,000 in attorney's costs, interest and other fees from Cox's unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2018.
Founding partner Jim Innocenzi told the Times in May that he paid the California-based cast and crew for the Cox campaign ads out of his own pocket and was never reimbursed.
Despite the interruption, Cox continued his opening remarks. After the Tuesday night debate, he called the incident ''a garbage thing.''
He added that ''tt's one creditor who didn't get paid from the 2018 campaign, because he didn't deserve to be.''
Cox is one of 46 candidates running in the recall election on Sept. 14 against Newsom, although only he, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and state Assemblyman Kevin Kiley took part in the debate.
As in a previous debate among Republicans this month, the candidates harshly criticized Newsom and the Democratic policies they say hurt state residents. But the event also marked the first time that Larry Elder, the conservative radio talk show host who has topped recent polling and did not attend the debate, was targeted by the candidates from the stage.
Faulconer blasted Elder for previous derogatory remarks on women, including those in a 2000 column for Capitalism magazine in which he said that Democrats had an edge over Republicans because they were supported by women, and ''women know less than men about political issues, economics and current events.''
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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