Voter alert Some of the nastiest hit mail coming out of Gavin Newsom's campaign doesn't have the campaign's name on it. That's the result of some complex and fascinating politics. But make no mistake: it's Newsom who's behind the nasty, misleading mailers.

Two anti-Matt Gonzalez flyers that arrived in mailboxes last week – one featuring harrowing images of homeless people and accusing the Green Party candidate of supporting "failed homeless policies," the other blasting him for supporting a pay raise for supervisors – came from an under-the-radar group called the California Urban Issues Project.

While the organization has a local address, it's not registered as a political action committee or as an independent expenditure committee with the California Secretary of State's Office. According to the secretary of state's files, it's a corporation created August 2003, and Thomas A. Willis, an attorney with Remcho, Hohansen and Purcell, serves as the processing agent. Remcho's office has long helped Mayor Willie Brown on campaign issues. Indeed, his law office fought the successful legal battle to get the city's limits on independent expenditure spending thrown out so Brown could use an unprecedented amount of soft money to secure reelection in 1999.

Other pro-Newsom flyers are coming from the California Democratic Party – an outfit that normally doesn't get heavily involved in local, nonpartisan races. Why is the state party involved? Put simply, Brown didn't want to see a lot of money go the local party operation – because local party slate mailers would support not only Newsom but also District Attorney Terence Hallinan.

Brown is pulling out all the stops to elect Hallinan's challenger, Kamala Harris.

Several sources told us that Brown, state party chair Art Torres, and Assemblymember Mark Leno pushed hard to keep political money from flowing through the local Democratic County Central Committee – because they didn't want to do anything to boost Hallinan's chances.