Hotel operator Edward Thomas Management Company said that it pulled off the air the cable TV ad featuring a Santa Monica man apparently attacking City Councilmember and reelection candidate Kevin McKeown after that man claimed the commercial unfairly edits his statements and misrepresents his views. But the ad has nevertheless continued to air.
Tim McAlevey, the man featured on the ad, attended a McKeown fund-raising event Thursday evening, October 26, where he said that Geoff Milar, the videographer who shot the tape in Palisades Park, told him by telephone that the ad was being pulled.
Seth Jacobson, spokesman for the hotel company, which owns and operates Shutters on the Beach and Hotel Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica, confirmed to the Mirror at noontime Friday, October 27, that it had discontinued broadcasting the ad featuring McAlevey “because it was distracting from the [company’s] message,” but said that two other TV commercials sponsored by the company targeting McKeown will continue to be aired.
This reporter saw the McAlevey ad on ESPN twice during the half-hour between 11:30 and midnight Friday night.
Jacobson had also told the Mirror Wednesday morning, October 25, that Edward Thomas Mgmt. Co. would that afternoon release a complete chronological transcript of the session with McAlevey that would “bear out” the message on the commercial and that the company would send a copy electronically to the Mirror. A transcript was received from Jacobson’s office on Friday afternoon, October 27, that was represented to be complete and in real time order. That office acknowledged that another person who participated in the session with McAlevey was not included in the transcript, but insisted that the transcript was complete as to the statements of McAlevey. The Mirror has requested but has not seen the raw tape from which the transcript is said to have been prepared.
The 2,700-word transcript corroborates statements McAlevey has made to the effect that he initially blamed the homeless situation on “end results of policies put into effect in the 80’s under the Reagan administration,” but it also implicates McKeown more strongly than McAlevey has previously acknowledged: “Okay, all politicians have a time limit to taking care of problems. Kevin McKeown has been with the council in Santa Monica for 10 years. Visibly I can tell you that the homeless population has at least tripled in the last 10 years, so whatever solutions he’s come up with, up ‘til now, are obviously not working.”
