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Former Alameda County Board of Education member Jerome Wiggins said he will file suit next week against County Superintendent Sheila Jordan, her husband Larry Cooperman and her campaign committee, alleging slander. 

Wiggins, who represented Berkeley and the surrounding areas before losing a re-election bid in March, charges that Jordan and Cooperman made “racially tinged” accusations that he is violent and falsely asserted that he was arrested for an alleged November 1988 assault. 

Wiggins, who is black, said it is too early to determine how much money he will seek in damages. 

Jordan said she has never mentioned Wiggins’s race, or used a photograph of the former board member, when accusing him of violent behavior and intimidation tactics. 

She said that by raising the charge Wiggins has created the link between blacks and violence. 

“He’s the one who makes it racially-tinged,” she said. “I find that totally offensive that somehow being a bully is associated with being African-American.” 

Jordan and Wiggins are bitter enemies. The pair engaged in a high-profile budget battle last year that was often personal, and this year, Jordan contributed $10,000 to the campaign of Jacki Fox Ruby, who ousted Wiggins in March. 

In the closing days of the campaign, Jordan sent out campaign literature accusing Wiggins of threatening the superintendent, fellow board members and Ruby supporters. 

The campaign piece quoted several Wiggins e-mails, including one that accused a fellow board member of “unethical, racist and despicable” behavior. The campaign literature also quoted a statement Wiggins allegedly made to another county staff member threatening to bring a baseball bat and destroy county computers during an appointment with Jordan. 

Wiggins said he never threatened Jordan in the phone call and was simply making an animated point about the computer system. 

In July 2001, Cooperman wrote an Oakland Tribune column stating that Wiggins had “a previous arrest for politically motivated violence” in November 1988. Cooperman asserted that Wiggins, then a member of the AC Transit board, was arrested for an alleged assault on a pair of opposition campaign workers. 

But Wiggins was never arrested for the scuffle, according to the Berkeley Police Department. 

“They never went and checked the public record to verify the (arrest) allegation and that’s slander,” Wiggins said. 

Jordan acknowledged that Cooperman made a mistake, but said he was simply relying on what was reported in an erroneous article that appeared in the UC Berkeley student newspaper. 

Jordan said Cooperman has not repeated the accusation since learning that Wiggins was not, in fact, arrested. 

But Wiggins noted that Jordan included a clipping of the newspaper’s headline, which read “Candidate held after early morning scuffle,” in the campaign piece she sent out this year. 

Wiggins said Jordan, knowing he was not arrested, improperly implied that he was. 

Jordan said she has tried to put the ongoing feud with Wiggins behind her. But if Wiggins files suit, the superintendent said, she may bring up several “counter-charges.” Jordan declined to elaborate on what those charges might be, but suggested that they could prove harmful.  

“Jerome really needs to think about jeopardizing himself and his family further,” she said. 

Wiggins dismissed Jordan’s warning, arguing that any counter-charges would be rooted in hearsay. 

“This isn’t about violent behavior,” he said. “You went and told people that I’d been arrested. ... All the rest is innuendo.” 

Wiggins’s attorney Steve Anthony, with Oakland law firm Anthony and Carlson, declined to comment on the specifics of the suit until he files the claim next week.