A Fresno nonprofit says it has been flooded with angry calls from voters who blame it for AI-generated political attack mailers aimed at Fresno City Council District 1 candidate Naindeep Singh — mailers the nonprofit says it never sent. The mailers were paid for by a political committee with a nearly identical name, Fresno Healthy Communities, and the dispute has become one of the sharpest fights of the final days before Tuesday's November 3 election, KFSN-TV (ABC30 Action News) reported from Fresno.
Source: KFSN-TV / ABC30 Action News
The mailers reached voters' mailboxes after Singh was exonerated following his arrest on suspicion of DUI — an arrest for which Fresno Police Chief Mindy Casto later apologised after toxicology results cleared the 48-year-old school board trustee, as Awaaz Punjab reported earlier in this race. One mailer used the arrest itself against Singh; on Friday, Singh showed Action News two additional AI-generated mailers from the same committee, one of which he said pushed a racial stereotype against him.
Who is behind the mailers, according to the filings
Campaign spending records name Solomon Verduzco as the committee's controlling officeholder and Alena Pacheco — wife of Fresno County Supervisor Brian Pacheco — as its treasurer, KFSN reported. The committee is sponsored by another PAC, Central Valley Council, which Pacheco confirmed was founded by Fresno political consultant Alex Tavlian. KVPR and Fresnoland have likewise reported that Central Valley Council is a PAC started and run by Tavlian. Neither PAC has a website, KFSN noted, leaving many voters unable to tell who is behind the messages arriving in their mailboxes.
Singh, in his own words to Action News, said: “To me, it really shows Alex Tavlian's deceptive, you know, deceitful and really sleazy techniques that he's been doing in Fresno for a long time.” That is Singh's allegation and characterisation, made as a candidate under attack in the race's final week. KFSN said it reached out to Tavlian about the mailer and he responded with “no comment.” Campaign spending documents also show Tavlian's groups paid for ads opposing Singh and Joaquin Arambula as city council candidates; Arambula beat officeholder Solomon Verduzco in a race for the state assembly in 2024.
What the newest mailers show, as Singh describes them
Singh told Action News the second round of mailers went further. “That one was more just racist dog whistles, saying that I would want to open smoke or liquor stores across the street from elementary schools,” he said of one. “The second one I saw was last week, where he put a picture of me and President Trump. I've never met President Trump.” A picture placing a candidate beside a president he has never met is exactly the kind of fabricated image AI tools now make cheap to produce, and it is why this Fresno fight is being watched as a test of how far synthetic campaign material can go in a local race. The committee did retract the earlier mailer that used Singh's arrest after his exoneration, KFSN reported.
The nonprofit caught in the middle speaks out
Fresno Building Healthy Communities (Fresno BHC), a longstanding 501(c)(3) nonprofit, published its own statement making clear it “did not create, pay for, or distribute the political mailers recently sent to Fresno voters about City Council candidates” and has no connection with the committee that paid for them. “We pride ourselves in government accountability and transparency. And when folks called and thought that we were behind some of these mailers, it really does hurt our reputation in our community,” CEO Sandra Celedon told KFSN. In the nonprofit's statement, Celedon added: “Our name means something in this community… when a political committee uses a name that sounds almost exactly like ours, and people start calling us upset about mailers we never sent, that's a problem. Voters deserve transparency.”
Source: Fresno Building Healthy Communities
Celedon told KFSN the similarity of the names is no coincidence, pointing to a pattern: in 2025, the same consultant introduced “One Fresno Coalition,” a name nearly identical to Mayor Jerry Dyer's “One Fresno Foundation,” and the mayor said he had no connection to it. “They use names that have positive connotations, or that will help convey right messages, so that people don't actually look any further into it,” Celedon said. “That's the other piece that I think people really need to ask themselves: What are they hiding from?” Fresno BHC stressed that as a nonprofit it does not endorse or oppose any candidate, and that it is speaking out only because its name is being confused with the committee's.
Fresno BHC's statement lists earlier cases it links to committees tied to the same consultant: in the 2025 District 5 special election, a committee called Fresno Future Forward sent mailers attacking a council candidate without first filing required disclosure forms; the Fresno City Attorney fined it $1,000, later filings named Tavlian as treasurer and principal officer, and his firm Park West Associates paid the fine. In a 2024 county supervisor race, another committee paid Park West Associates for mailers Fresnoland reported falsely tied a candidate to MAGA Republicans using a photoshopped image. GV Wire has reported that California's Fair Political Practices Commission has an open investigation related to the 2025 mailers. These are the nonprofit's documented claims, drawn from filings and local reporting; Tavlian has not commented on the latest mailers.
Not just District 1
The same committee has been active in at least one other Fresno race this cycle. GV Wire reporter David Taub reported on October 23 that voters in City Council District 7 — where Ariana Martinez Lott and Nav Gurm are running to replace termed-out Nelson Esparza — received negative mailers from Fresno Healthy Communities sponsored by Central Valley Council attacking Martinez Lott over police-spending comments and homelessness, made independently of Gurm's campaign. The pattern across two districts is part of why the nonprofit says the issue is bigger than one candidate: it is about whether voters can tell who is really speaking to them.
Why this matters to Punjabi readers in the Central Valley
Naindeep Singh is one of the most visible Punjabi-American candidates in Central Valley politics this cycle, and his race has already drawn in a wrongful-arrest apology from the city's police chief in its final fortnight. Fresno and the Highway 99 corridor are home to one of California's largest Punjabi communities, built around farming, trucking and small business. A campaign technique that pairs a look-alike committee name with AI-generated images does not stay inside one race: the same playbook can be run against any candidate, in any community, in the next cycle — which is why election-integrity groups treat disclosure and naming rules as the front line.
What happens next
Fresno voters decide the District 1 race on Tuesday, November 3. Fresno BHC says the committee's filings are public on the California Secretary of State's Cal-Access website, and it lists where residents can complain: the Fresno County District Attorney's Public Integrity Unit, the Fresno City Attorney's Office (559-621-7500) and the California Fair Political Practices Commission (1-866-275-3772). Whether regulators act on the AI imagery or the naming similarity — and whether the mailers move votes in District 1 or District 7 — will be known first at the ballot box and then, possibly, in enforcement offices.