A Tustin City Council candidate is apologizing after a video posted online showed him swearing at and shoving a man during a home tour earlier this year.
Lee Fink, running to represent District 1 on the Tustin council, said Thursday the interaction was “unfitting for anyone, much less someone running for public office.”
Ring camera footage posted this week by the OC Independent, a site run by Matthew Cunningham, who’s written for decades about politics in the county, shows a man telling Fink’s wife that their daughter broke some coral and asked that she not play with any more items.
Fink then approaches them and says his daughter didn’t touch or break anything. Fink then gets closer to the man and shouts, “We either have a problem or we don’t have a problem” before shoving him with one hand and swearing at him.
Fink is then asked to leave and told he was out of line.
“I was wrong,” Fink said in an apology video, shared by him Thursday “I saw someone scolding my wife and daughter, and I overreacted.”
Fink added that he apologizes to the man and the homeowners and anyone else he let down.
“My only goal in running is to make Tustin a better place, and I failed that day,” Fink said. “But I hope to do better every day from now on.”
Fink is running against Tanner Douthit, a member of the city’s planning commission.
