Chamber pulls Jerry Brown ad off the air

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The California Chamber of Commerce has pulled an ad off the airwaves after objections from Jerry Brown and Brown’s allies in the business community. Brown was instrumental in pulling the ads by exerting pressure through board members on chamber President Allan Zaremberg to take the ad off the air. Numerous sources confirmed that Brown and his wife, Anne Gust, who once served as chief operating officer of the Gap, made calls to chamber members Wednesday imploring them to put pressure on the group to take the ad off the air.

‘We’re ready to move on to the next phase of our paid media campaign,’ Zaremberg said by way of an official explanation of why the ad was being pulled. ‘We believe we’ve accomplished what we tried to accomplish with the first ad, which is bring attention to these important issues. We probably got a little more attention than we expected.’

When asked about Brown and Gust’s roles in getting the ads off the air, Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford said, ‘This campaign has worked very hard to make sure the chamber’s misleading ads are taken off the air.’ He did not dispute claims that Brown and Gust had personally been involved in lobbying chamber members.

Zaremberg said he had no communication with Brown directly, but said ‘I am aware that he called members of our board.” Brown and his campaign “were engaged with some of our members,’ he said.

The chamber has maintained the ad is not an attack on Brown. Rather, they call the ad an ‘issue ad’ aimed at educating voters on key issues.

The decision to take the spot off the airwaves comes after a letter from four chamber board members to Zaremberg criticizing the ads.

‘To any reasonably minded person this is nothing more than a typical political attack ad. It undermines the chamber’s credibility to justify it as anything other than that,’ the letter states.

Zaremberg said Thursday that the ad has been replaced with one touting the chamber’s campaign website, promising information about the candidates and ‘facts and answers about our future.’

The ad mentions none of the gubernatorial candidates by name.

--Anthony York