Covington Police Chief Adam Easterbrook was surprised — not pleasantly — when his photo showed up recently in political mailers backing U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier's reelection campaign.
The mailers, from a Democratic-aligned PAC, feature Easterbrook in full uniform standing next to Schrier, D-Sammamish, in May, when she met with him and other town officials and did a police ride-along.
That visit was made in Schrier's official capacity representing the 8th Congressional District. But the mailers arriving in local mailboxes before the Nov. 8 election left the impression that Easterbrook is endorsing Schrier in her reelection bid against Republican challenger Matt Larkin.
"I am not OK with that. I don't want to be involved with the politics either way. I was drug into something I shouldn't be a part of," Easterbrook said in an interview Tuesday. He said he emailed the PAC asking them to stop using the photo, but got no response.
The city of Covington also objected to the ads in a statement posted last week on its website.
"Chief Easterbrook and the City were shocked to learn that photo and quote was taken by a third-party campaigning group to develop a campaign mailer promoting Rep. Schrier for the upcoming election. Chief Easterbrook did not give his authorization, nor was he asked for permission, to use the photo and quote in any campaign materials," the statement said.
The pro-Schrier mailers were paid for by Shield PAC, the political arm of the center-left think tank Third Way, which has been defending Democrats in swing congressional districts from Republican attacks on issues of crime and police funding.
The group plucked the photo from a May news release sent by Schrier's official office, after her meeting with Easterbrook. The PAC mailer also included a statement from Easterbrook — also from the news release — saying Schrier "listened to our issues and desires to improve public safety in our community."
Matt Bennett, a spokesperson for Shield PAC, said Tuesday the organization hadn't seen Easterbrook's email request until it was contacted by The Seattle Times, blaming "a technical problem" with the PAC's website.
"As we just told him, we will of course comply with his request to take him out of our ads going forward," Bennett wrote in an email. "It's important to note, however, that we got the photo and the quote from the Congresswoman's website, so we were using things that were in the public domain."
Three rounds of the mailers already have been sent, with several thousand in each round, according to Bennett.
Bennett also noted that as an independent political committee, it was not allowed to coordinate with Schrier's campaign. He added "we have never claimed that the Chief (or anyone else on the force) had endorsed the Congresswoman in her campaign."
Schrier, a pediatrician elected to Congress in 2018, has been working to combat Republican attacks accusing her of failing to support police and attempting to link her to disorder in Seattle. Her opponent, Larkin, a businessman and attorney, is making concerns over public safety a central theme, adopting the campaign slogan "Make Crime Illegal Again."
In a statement, Courtney Parella, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, called Schrier "another anti-police Democrat whose allies have to lie to voters to try and get them to believe otherwise."
Schrier spokesperson Hana Tadesse said in a statement the ad had come from an outside group acting without the campaign's knowledge. "Congresswoman Schrier has enjoyed working with and supporting local law enforcement officers throughout her time in Congress, including helping to secure record funding for law enforcement and public safety measures in Washington state," Tadesse said.
Ballots for the general election will be mailed this week and must be postmarked by Nov. 8 or returned to drop boxes by 8 p.m. that day.
