A California sheriff was less than pleased to learn that he was featured in a new Kamala Harris political ad promoting border security, which he said distorts reality.
“In light of a recent political ad released by Kamala Harris featuring Sheriff Boudreaux and other local law enforcement officials, the Sheriff wants to make it very clear that his image is being used without his permission and he is NOT endorsing Harris for president or any other political office,” Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said in a statement released to Fox News Digital.
Boudreaux, who worked for the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office for 37 years and is currently president of the California State Sheriffs’ Association, described a visit by Harris to the Central Valley in 2013 when she served as California’s attorney general.
The video shows Boudreaux and other local and state law enforcement officers present when Harris was in the Central Valley under circumstances he could not remember, but he could recall their behavior during the visit.
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Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux holds a press conference in Vasalia, California on January 17, 2023. (Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“In fact, I want to point out the misleading information being spread in the same political ad. In the ad, Harris claims she spent decades fighting violent crime as a ‘prosecutor in a border state.’ In fact, ‘then-California Attorney General Kamala’ came to the Valley in 2014 touting a years-long investigation into a multinational drug trafficking operation with ties to Mexican drug cartels and prison gangs,” Boudreaux said.
Boudreaux said 11 people were arrested in this particular case, including suspected drug lord Jose Magana of Dinuba.
“The truth is that Harris never cared about the cartels and did nothing to stop people from crossing the border illegally,” Boudreaux said.
Boudreaux added that Harris’ performance was nothing more than a “sham.”
“We were in the green room. She never came in and said hello to us. She went to the front, did her press conference, literally walked back out and never said hello to any of us,” Boudreaux said. “I’m disgusted because she didn’t shake our hands. She didn’t say hello. And she took credit for all the work the locals do.”
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Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said he was outraged after his image appeared in a new campaign ad for Kamala Harris. (Golden State Judge)
Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward, who also appears in the complaint, echoed Boudreaux’s reaction to the video.
“The hypocrisy knows no bounds. She is disingenuous and her campaign ad somehow portrays her reputation as a prosecutor as something positive, when she was the attorney general during three of the worst tragedies that have struck the citizens of the state of California,” Ward told Fox News Digital.
Boudreaux’s political action committee, Golden State Justice, also issued a statement about the new campaign ad.
“As Attorney General, Kamala Harris undermined California law enforcement efforts to stop criminals from flooding our state with guns and drugs across the border,” the statement said.
“She has repeatedly defunded and shut down forces meant to protect our residents, leaving the Valley and our state vulnerable,” the statement continued. “Kamala’s sad attempt to portray herself as hard on the border by implying my support – and the support of neighboring police chiefs – is pathetic.”
The statement ends with the statement: “A politician who pushes himself onto the podium at a press conference has clearly not solved our border crisis. And neither has Kamala Harris.”
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Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux says a new political ad featuring an old video of him from 2013 is disturbing. (X/@MediumBuying)
The new ad, which promotes Harris’ work as a prosecutor in a border state, claims she will “hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.”
“How can you go in there and say you have tight control of the border when all the troops are coming across the border and you’re literally disbanding all of these forces? That made us so angry,” Boudreaux said.
Boudreaux said there were a lot of layoffs at the time and many people were looking for work because the Justice Department was cutting jobs.
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“If you see this ad and do a little research, you’ll see that what she (Harris) is promoting is completely contrary to what was happening at the time. So when she posted that picture with me in it, I was really upset. This ad is all just a smokescreen,” Boudreaux said. “I don’t support it.”
Ward agreed with Boudreaux, saying it was merely a matter of professional courtesy to tell them they would be appearing in a campaign commercial.
“We are not difficult to find or contact. It would have been enough, purely out of professional courtesy, to warn us that the photo was going to be used. And I think we have the right to clear the records,” Ward said. “Just as Sheriff Boudreaux said, I do not in any way want the use of this photo to be construed as an endorsement of her (Harris), either for her candidacy, her current candidacy, or her tenure as Attorney General of the State of California.”
