Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: In email, Bono Mack laughs at Coachella as 'third world toilet'

Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here. Leading Off:

' CA-36: Huh, interesting. A years-old email from GOP Rep. Mary Bono Mack that had, in fact, been publicly known is only now coming to light'and it's not making her look very good. Here's the background:

Rep. Mary Bono Mack joked about a description of squalor in the east valley as a "Third World toilet," according to a 2006 email she sent to a talk radio host after he had interviewed a Coachella councilman.

The email to then-talk radio host Gary Stone came to light Thursday as Democratic campaign challenger Raul Ruiz accused Bono Mack of having "a pattern of disdain for her constituents."

"I heard some of your remarks with the councliman (sic) from Coachella. You were great!!!!!!" Bono Mack wrote in the email later published on the left-leaning political blogsite Daily Kos.

"Unbelievably great!!! Third World Toilet? That was too funny."

I found the post in question, written by Daily Kos user John Chapman back in 2006. The email was actually first published in a Spanish-language newspaper called El Informador Del Valle; it doesn't have much of a web presence, but Chapman managed to obtain a scan of the article which included Bono Mack's email. It's not clear why the email, which has been lying in plain sight for years, is only now getting some traction, but I'd guess that Ruiz's oppo team did some good digging and shot this around to local press.

I should also point out that there are some nasty racial undertones here, given that Coachella is almost entirely (96%) Hispanic. That's why Bono Mack is denying that her remarks were about Coachella, which seems like an extraordinary stretch, particularly since her campaign claims she was talking about some unspecified sort of "corruption" in a trailer park right near Coachella (because that's much better). Stone, the radio host, is also back-pedaling, and he's blaming the leak of the email on an unnamed colleague who supported Bono Mack's 2006 challenger, David Roth. (For what it's worth, Stone was fired from the radio station in 2008 after his co-host called Ginny Foat, a Democrat who was then Mayor Pro Tem of Palm Springs, a "murderer.")