Politics

Donnelly campaign, Hollywood star stand their ground after theater blacklisting

Patrick Howley Political Reporter
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“The conservative woman in America is the most endangered species” Republican gubernatorial front-runner Tim Donnelly’s strategist Jennifer Kerns told The Daily Caller in the campaign’s first public response to the Maria Conchita Alonso controversy. “If you support a conservative candidate you are immediately attacked.”

The Donnelly campaign is getting hit with a lot of phone calls but isn’t bending over amid left-wing attacks brought on by actress Conchita Alonzo’s support for the conservative candidate.

Conchita Alonso, who is set to appear on Fox News’ “The Kelly File” Monday night to defend herself in the brouhaha, resigned from a Los Angeles production of The Vagina Monologues after her appearance in a campaign commercial for Donnelly sparked boycott threats from Latino theater-goers. Donnelly, whose wife is Filipino and whose five children are all of mixed race, has taken a tough stance on illegal immigration.

“We really can’t have her in the show, unfortunately,” said Eliana Lopez, producer of Brava! For Women in the Arts’ production of The Vagina Monologues. “Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we’re in the middle of the Mission [District]. Doing what she is doing is against what we believe.”

“About a week ago today we released a new campaign spot that was about a two-minute video featuring Maria Conchita Alonso, a Cuban-born actress out here,” Kerns said. “She decided to support Tim. We have some mutual friends in common. As the conservative in the race, Tim has been accused of being anti-Latino or anti-immigrant and so she chose to stand with him on that.”

“Some of the left-wing progressive groups started accusing her of being anti-immigrant as well. She and her parents fled Cuba. She said, I know a thing or two about that.”

“It’s very interesting in this day and age, if you are a conservative or if you support a conservative candidate you are immediately attacked. The conservative woman in America is the most endangered species,” Kerns said. “And Maria Conchita Alonso is not even a conservative, just an openminded individual.”

“The media likes to control and divide us, and divide us by race,” Donnelly previously told The Daily Caller. “It’s not just the media. It’s the whole political class.”

Conchita Alonso, as Kerns noted, is not going through her “first rodeo,” either. In December 2011, she got into a screaming match with actor Sean Penn over then-Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, whom Penn supported and Alonso condemned. Alonso claimed that Penn called her a “pig” and that she called him a “communist asshole.”

Alonso supports Donnelly’s plan to “bring Hollywood back to the state of California” from its current location in Vancouver, Kerns said, referring to the scarcity of Hollywood films produced in the Golden State.

Alonso, 56, has appeared in films including “The Running Man” and “Moscow on the Hudson.”

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