Constituents in Congressman Devin Nunes' district may find a curious campaign mailer on their doorsteps or in their mailboxes this week.

That mailer isn't attacking his opponent in the November election or promoting the eight-term congressman's accomplishments, though.

The glossy 38-page, full-color magazine titled "The Fresno Bees: The dirty little secrets of the Valley's propaganda machine" contains criticisms of the McClatchy-owned newspaper's coverage of Nunes.

The first sign the mailer isn't your normal political advertisement: Its cover depicts a cartoonish sinking ship full of Kool-Aid-swilling bees — the sea littered with "Resist," "Socialism," and "Antifascist" signs.

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Nunes campaign officials have confirmed that more than 100,000 copies of the mailer were printed and sent out to Nunes' constituents who "have shown an interest in the campaign."

That's compared to the Bee's 63,000 daily circulation.

It is unclear how the campaign gauged this interest or how much the hefty publication cost to print and distribute.

Estimates from an industrial printing service, however, suggests the sum likely exceeded $65,000.

This means war

The September mailer comes as the latest in a long string of attacks that Nunes has levied against his district's largest newspaper, including alleging a reporter harassed the congressman's grandmother.

The Bee has printed several repudiations of Nunes' claims, writing that "The real ‘fake news’ is Devin Nunes’ ad about The Bee."

Bee editor Joe Kieta says he doesn't like to use the word "feud" or "battle" to describe the saga.

"We're just doing journalism, as we have since 1922," Kieta said.

But the congressman and his staff remain unconvinced.

"Voters deserve to know the truth and seeing the Fresno Bee with such a blatant agenda is unprecedented," Chief of Staff Anthony Ratekin said. "I’ve known Devin for many years and when the left attacks him with outright lies, he pushes back and will set the record straight."

One Bee story — about a lawsuit filed against a winery that Nunes has invested in —has particularly irritated the congressman. That lawsuit alleged that an employee of the winery was forced to work at a charity event where drugs and prostitutes were present.

The Times-Delta/Advance-Register did not pursue the story because editors decided the lawsuit's ties to Nunes were tenuous. There were no allegations that Nunes was involved in any way with the charity event, aside from being an investor in the winery.

'Creeping Bees'

Much of the rest of the publication's vitriol is directed at "Creeping Bee Reporters" who, the mailer alleges, harassed "Devin's 98-year-old grandmother on her family farm."

One of the so-called "Creeping Bees" is Lewis Griswold, a veteran journalist who has covered Nunes' political career since he ran for College of the Sequoias' Board of Trustees in the late 1990s.

(Full disclosure: Griswold is a former Times-Delta employee. A Times-Delta editor, James Ward, is a former McClatchy employee as well.)

Griswold insists he would never harass anyone on or off the job, least of all a nonagenarian grandmother.

"It was a standard story," Griswold said. "Nunes burst onto the national scene, so we wanted to know what local folks thought of the Valley's Son. If I went to Devin's Grandmother's house it was completely by accident. (The Bee) hasn't contacted Nunes' grandmother since he was first elected to Congress in 2003."

Griswold says it's ironic that Nunes would accuse him of journalistic malpractice.

"No one from Devin Nunes' office called to check the facts or get my side of the story," he said.

Griswold had just returned from a vacation when the first batch of mailers arrived. Some of his colleagues have taken to jokingly calling him "The Creeper" since Nunes' anti-Bee ads began.

"Devin used to ask me about my family and I would ask about his," Griswold said. "I'm trying not to take it personally."

'An unprecedented attack'

Griswold's editor at the Bee, Joe Kieta, is similarly flummoxed.

"Nunes has tried to paint us as part of the 'biased liberal media,' but our editorial board has endorsed his reelection since 2003," Kieta said. "I'm baffled that a local politician would decide to attack his local newspaper, instead of his political opponent."

The mailer's back cover even singles out Kieta: "'There are some people who, [sic] you're just never going to convince them.'" The mailer says, with this quote, "[Kieta] reveals The Fresno Bee's agenda to turn their readers against Nunes."

Kieta says the quote was taken out of context from an interview with Vice News reporter Alexandra Jaffe, who covered Nunes' previous Bee criticisms.

"There will always be people who don't agree with opinion pieces or our Nunes coverage," Kieta said. "That doesn't mean we have an agenda against Nunes; we stand by our reporting completely."

Kieta is proud that the Bee hasn't issued a single retraction surrounding its Nunes coverage and that the congressman's mailer has served to "galvanize" the newsroom, he said.

"We get at the truth — we're journalists," Kieta said. "Nunes is a politician. He doesn't care about the truth, he cares about getting reelected."

Lisa Bryant, a political science professor at Fresno State who has studied campaign advertising extensively, calls Nunes' mailer an "unprecedented" attack by an elected official on a local newspaper.

"I have never seen anything of this magnitude," she said.

Bryant says a colleague who works in direct mail agreed that "a campaign mailer of this size and focus is unusual, and maybe even novel."

According to Bryant, the mailer is also unique because "we expect candidates to attack other candidates, not necessarily media outlets."

Nunes' rhetoric echoes President Trump's on "fake news," Bryant said.

The key difference: The President's attacks are usually directed at national outlets and cable news organizations, not local newspapers that have a history of endorsing him.

"The strategy seems to be if you can get people to question the intent of the newspaper itself, then you can get people to question the reliability of the content, including articles that might not paint elected officials in the most flattering light," Bryant said.

Time will tell if the strategy will pay off for Nunes' in the voting booths.

Nunes' opponent reacts

In the meantime, the mailer wasn't lacking for criticisms of the eight-term incumbent's opponent, Fresno prosecutor Andrew Janz.

"It would have been much cheaper to simply talk with community members and actually campaign than sending a 40-page mailer full of lies to mailboxes across the Valley," Janz said.

The mailer also contains three pro-Nunes articles from noted conservative publications the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, and the Weekly Standard. Ratekin asserts that the campaign received permission to reprint the stories in its literature.

Since news outlets — even those with a partisan bent — licensing material to political campaigns is a highly unusual practice, the Times-Delta has reached out to the publications for independent confirmation and will update the story accordingly.

However, it seems that the mailer did not follow the Wall Street Journal's policy in reprinting its articles by not including a credit to the publication.