Guest Commentary: Out-of-State Mailers Amplify Mai Vang’s Misrepresentations
From Matsui campaign manager Mr. Bill Wong
By Bill Wong, Matsui for Congress
We want to thank the Elk Grove News for allowing us this opportunity to set the record straight on misleading allegations included in the super PAC mailer with a Washington, DC return address that was recently received by voters and reported on 09/22/26 in the article titled, "Vang Mailer - Matsui is 'The Face of DC Corruption.'"
The article states that "Vang accuses Matsui of supporting regulations that have aided her billionaire husband."
The claim by Vang is untrue.
Representative Matsui and her husband did not and currently do not hold any shares of the company inferred by the mailer to benefit from the vote in question. The shares in the company referenced had been sold prior to their marriage in 2020 and well prior to the cited vote that occurred in 2022.
The mailers also claim that Vang is stopping corruption and getting “corporate money out of politics.”
In fact, Mai Vang took nearly $60,000 from corporate and business interests as a member of the Sacramento City Council. These interests include utility companies, card room casinos, and developers. She also accepted tickets to music festivals and sporting events at the same time as voting against critical funding for the community.
More troubling is her use of an establishment tactic called “redboxing” that law professor Rick Hasen who directs the Safeguarding Democracy program at UCLA called “a way of technically complying with the law while still helping super PACs craft their message”. The Campaign Legal Center, a non-profit democracy advocacy group, calls this tactic “a ploy that openly flouts this coordination ban, giving wealthy donors more influence”.
Vang uses this tactic to spread more misrepresentations about Doris Matsui with coded instructions for targeting voters that are hidden on an obscure page on Vang’s campaign website where her super PAC allies have been waiting for signals.
Included on that page are the misleading claims that Matsui traded millions in stocks that the DC-based mailers copied and distributed to thousands of unsuspecting voters in the Sacramento Valley. The trades in question are the purchase and sale of common US Treasury Bonds that help pay for American infrastructure, defense, and public services.
Furthermore, Vang’s page speciously suggests that Doris and her husband have profited from an energy company that he divested from before they were married and far before it provided energy to the controversial technologies that have emerged in the last three years.
Mai Vang claims to be a leader for the next generation, but she is using the same deceptive political tricks of the “corrupt” establishment that she claims to differ from.
Voters should beware of Vang. If she can’t be trusted with the facts in this campaign, can voters trust her to be their voice in Congress?
