OC Political

Senate Candidate Josh Newman

Cross-Posted to OC Daily

To hear 29th State Senate District Candidate Josh Newman tell it, he’s the most misunderstood guy in the world.

A female apparel executive he hounded for dates while working in the San Francisco Mayor’s office apparently misunderstood him.

Tens of thousands of unwilling customers improperly charged on their phone bills with unwanted services by SendMe Inc., his high-tech cellphone ring-tone venture, apparently all misunderstood him.

He says more customers who found their privacy invaded during his tenure as an executive at RealNetworks also apparently misunderstood him.

And San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan must have misunderstood him when he accused Newman of misappropriating confidential police files and using them in a smear campaign against Jordan.

Is Josh Newman simply misunderstood?

• A female San Francisco intimate apparel executive didn’t think so, after Newman openly admitted that he forged Mayor Jordan’s signature on the Mayor’s stationery in order to get a date with her while working for Jordan. An associate of the executive circulated the letter without her approval.
   
• San Francisco Supervisor (and future Senator) Carole Migden didn’t think so, saying “Josh Newman has left a trail of bloodletting. The phones ring off the hook from allegations from him.”
   
• The courts don’t think so. SendMe, Inc. was the defendant in one county-level and six federal lawsuits filed between 2008 and 2014 for so-called “cramming,” a deceptive billing practice of adding charges to customer’s phone bills without their authorization or knowledge. A $63-million settlement resulted. Newman was Senior Vice President of Business Development.
   
  RealNetworks was the subject of 15 county-level and over 55 federal lawsuits over copyright infringement and interference in customer licensing relationships over DVD movies and songs between 1999 and 2005, resulting in a $20-million settlement. Eventually RealNetworks was forced into involuntary bankruptcy proceedings. Newman was Director of Marketing.
   
• Former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan didn’t think so, accusing Newman of unethical behavior and possible theft after his resignation.  Jordan referred the matter to the San Francisco District Attorney for further investigation.

The public record suggests that Newman may not be misunderstood at all. Rather, he may have a self-destructive personality that makes him particularly unsuited to hold public office, especially in the California State Senate.