The election is over, but a negative campaign leaves a bitter taste.

Someone asked my opinion of the press conference held May 31 in Salinas during which women from local political and legal spheres took Monterey County Board of Supervisors candidate Regina Gage to task over her negative ads aimed at Supervisor John Phillips’ conservativism and perceived record on women.

I thought about it for a second and said: “You know that scene in Game of Thrones where Queen Cersei has her hair chopped off and is forced to walk naked from the castle through the city while peasants pelt her with rotten fruit and vegetables and yell, ‘Shame! Shame! Shame!’”

It was like that, without the queen, peasants, nudity, head shaving or rotten produce.

Gage, executive director of Meals on Wheels of the Salinas Valley, had run a normal campaign against Phillips, focusing on her nebulous goals of solving the county’s homeless and hunger issues, until late May. That’s when her team put out a tone-deaf ad describing Phillips, a retired judge who founded nonprofit Rancho Cielo for at-risk kids, as “an arrogant and out of touch politician, opposed by women leaders and in the pocket of special interests.”

And – bonus! – the ad shows a picture of Donald Trump that morphs into an image of Phillips.

Phillips may be conservative, but he’s not exactly Trumpian, even despite the fact he cast the lone dissenting vote in 2017 when the Board of Supervisors designated Monterey County a welcoming county for immigrants and refugees.

After Gage’s first ad, Phillips’ campaign sent out a press release quoting local politicians, including retired Democratic Congressman Sam Farr, who wrote, “The morphing of the image of Donald Trump into Judge John Phillips is dirty politics. Regardless of party in this nonpartisan office, Judge Phillips is an honorable man.” That release also quoted Dennis Donohue, Salinas’ former mayor who ran a mighty negative campaign in his failed quest to unseat County Supervisor Jane Parker, and who wrote that Gage’s ads are evidence of her “poor judgment and character.”

Pot, kettle.

The public ire against Gage might have petered out weeks before the June 5 election, except her campaign sent out a print ad that read, “If something happened to your mother or daughter wouldn’t you want them to get fair treatment?” and added, “John Phillips is OPPOSED by women leaders and advocates because of the way he treats women. He used his position of power to berate and silence women and is unfit to serve.”

That’s when Team Phillips lit the torches.

At their May 31 press conference, five days before the election, defense attorneys who’d appeared in front of Phillips when he was a judge and politicians who have worked with him defended him and took Gage to task. County Public Defender Susan Chapman and private defense attorney Juliet Peck, former Salinas Councilwoman Phyllis Meurer and current Councilwoman Kimbley Craig all spoke, referring to Gage’s ads as shameful and desperate and described Phillips as a decent man of integrity. Craig launched into an electrified diatribe in which she stated to Gage: “You have lost your damn mind.”

“I hope candidates who go negative in this campaign can face their decisions to win at all costs, resulting in ruining their personal and professional reputations for the sake of trying to get elected,” Craig said.

I don’t know that Gage feels her personal or professional reputation has been ruined by her campaign. I reached out, and while her campaign staff acknowledged my request, they didn’t answer questions. While I am fond of Gage personally, she has followed some colossally bad advice from her campaign team.

And it is her team, so the buck stops with her.

Plasha Will, Phillips’s campaign director who has worked campaigns for everyone from Sam Farr to Jimmy Panetta, hopes candidates will consider what they’re doing with their ads in the future. She wants the Weekly to help by sponsoring a forum on the topic, and to get party leaders to hold candidates accountable.

“If we’re not going to have good behavior on the local level,” Will says, “how are we ever going to change anything nationally?”

MARY DUAN writes The Local Spin for the Weekly. Reach her at maryrduan@gmail.com