Jeremy Cohen, the Communications Director for Pleitez for Congress, sends along a comment to me about the negative mailer sent by Gil Cedillo’s campaign:

Emanuel is running for Congress because people here are being severely affected by the economic crisis.  It’s sad that the Cedillo campaign wants to surf Facebook while families are being kicked out of their home and people are losing their jobs.

We also think it’s unethical that his campaign would use the photos of these women for a political smear without any form of consent.  Many of them are highly educated professionals — teachers, non-profit directors, nurses — who would be horrified to find that their picture had been mailed to tens of thousands of voters.  Cedillo is not only smearing the name of Emanuel, but defaming dozens of women who have no involvement with the campaign.

Seems to me that Gil Cedillo probably did Pleitez a favor here.  As this story an the controversy around it grows, Pleitez has an opportunity to increase his name ID and deliver his message to more voters.  And Cedillo comes off looking really, really bad.

See also this comment.  Cedillo’s people knew exactly what they’re doing by using pictures of Pleitez with non-Latina women.