McClintock rival stretching truth about her résumé

By Emily Cadei, Sacramento Bee

Managed half of America’s foreign aid budget. Rewrote the U.S.-India defense strategy. Adviser to a four-star admiral.

Jessica Morse

These are some of the highlights of Jessica Morse’s career that the 35-year-old Democrat likes to emphasize on the campaign trail. They are also some of the talking points that are drawing fire from critics, many of whom support a Democratic opponent in the race for California’s 4th Congressional District, which is centered in Roseville. They accuse her of “taking credit for things that she did not do.”

The truth is somewhere in between. A deep dive by The Sacramento Bee into Morse’s background and America’s foreign relations bureaucracy found that Morse, the front-runner among three Democrats bidding to unseat Republican Rep. Tom McClintock, built a serious and successful career within the military, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).