Excerpt:

The big news right now is a press conference city councilman and mayoral candidate Frank Matarrese held on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday. A few weeks back, Matarrese was the subject of a nasty four-question robocall that asked whether recipients of the call would vote for Matarrese who the call claimed, among other things, “allowing over 100,000 of our taxpayer dollars to target a female city council colleague at a time when our government services are being cut and schools are being closed for lack of funding.” (The council had no formal input in that decision.) A poll conducted by Magellan Strategies that was widely broadcast on the Web also showed Matarrese lagging behind dais-mates Doug deHaan and Marie Gilmore in the mayor’s race.

So who’s responsible? Matarrese thinks it’s SunCal. He said SunCal’s chief operating officer, Frank Faye, had threatened to sue the city if officials didn’t vote to extend SunCal’s stay on the Island, and that Faye also threatened to get involved in the election if things didn’t go SunCal’s way. Matarrese’s campaign also sent reporters press clippings showing SunCal had targeted an opponent on the Albuquerque City Council in a 2009 election. SunCal had hoped to build a new community on tens of thousands of acres there.

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Council and mayoral candidates contacted by The Island on Tuesday vehemently denied Matarrese’s claim that they’d bring SunCal back to town if elected and expressed disappointment over Matarrese’s claim (Matarrese conceded the claim was speculation).

“His claims about me are paranoid and wrong,” Gilmore said. “The SunCal experiment in Alameda is over. The only issue that remains is defending ourselves against SunCal’s lawsuits so that we can move on.”

Fellow mayoral candidate and former councilman Tony Daysog also said he wouldn’t let SunCal come back to town if elected, while Councilwoman Lena Tam, who is seen by many as the developer’s staunchest supporter on the council, said she will “vigorously fight” the company’s lawsuit. Council candidate Rob Bonta said he voted against Measure B, SunCal’s ballot measure, in February.