Two County GOP Insiders Urging Party Reforms

COSTA MESA — Two local Republican officials will fight an uphill battle Monday night to revamp the county party’s ethics committee in the wake of the scandal surrounding Assemblyman Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach).

David Leland and June Cerruto, both members of the county GOP Central Committee from San Clemente, have authored a wide-ranging, controversial resolution. It acknowledges that the party’s image has taken a beating in the Baugh affair and proposes reevaluating the makeup and mission of the ethics committee.

The resolution specifically asks party officials to prevent government employees or political professionals from membership on the committee from now on. Several have been charged or convicted in connection with the GOP campaign to capture an Assembly seat in a special election last year.

“We believe the strength and high ideals of our conservative political philosophy . . . should be the fundamental foundation of our Republican campaigns in Orange County, and not illegal campaign tactics,” Cerruto and Leland wrote in their nearly three-page resolution.

The resolution adds that the party “has a moral responsibility . . . to work to ensure that election tactics advanced by Republicans are ethical, lawful and better monitored; and that illegal tactics are identified and publicly criticized by the party when they occur.”

The resolution, which the pair hope to discuss Monday night at the monthly Central Committee meeting, also calls for all current ethics committee members to resign. That move would allow the party to start fresh with a new group, one that would not include political professionals who might have an inherent conflict of interest, Leland said.

Each election year, all Republican candidates are asked to sign an ethics pledge promising to run their campaigns in an honorable and aboveboard fashion, without unfairly attacking their GOP opponents. If a candidate believes an opponent has violated the pledge, he or she can bring a grievance before the ethics committee, which will convene quickly, listen to both sides and issue a ruling.

Since last November, Republicans have been hit by a variety of charges brought forth by the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Baugh has been indicted on four felonies and 18 misdemeanors for alleged election law violations during the Nov. 28 special election campaign to replace Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress) in the 67th District. His chief of staff, Maureen Werft, faces two felony charges for allegedly voting illegally in that election.

Rhonda J. Carmony, campaign manager for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), also faces three felony charges for allegedly orchestrating a GOP plan to place a decoy Democrat on the ballot for that election, in an effort to siphon votes from the other Democrat on the ballot with three Republicans. Three young GOP political workers have already pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of fraudulently circulating nomination petitions for that candidate, Laurie Campbell, a longtime friend of Baugh’s.

Despite the indictments and guilty pleas involving GOP aides--who included a former staffer for Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove)--attorney Howard Klein of Irvine, who currently sits on the 11-member ethics committee, called the proposed resolution unnecessary.

“There has always been some sentiment, although it’s been a minority sentiment, that legislative staffers have too large a role,” Klein said. “I don’t see it as major issue, however.”

Klein acknowledged that “the situation with the Scott Baugh campaign” gives additional credibility to the question of allowing legislative staffers to be the arbiters of ethics issues. Ultimately, however, targeting staff members is “painting with too broad a brush,” he said.

“There are some fine and capable members of the Central Committee who work for a legislator,” Klein said. “Saying categorically that they should have second-class status is not fair. I think we need to look at people as individuals.”

Carmony and her grandmother, Norma Bastanchury of Fullerton, are members of the ethics committee as is Todd Nugent, a Baugh aide. The committee also includes Chairman Chuck Devore, Emily Sanford, Frank Ury, Alexis Pringle, Mike Simpson, Greg Haskin and Rosie Avila.

They are selected by the Central Committee, the party’s governing body, which is made up of six elected representatives from each of the county’s seven Assembly districts.

Haskin, who works for Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), is the only other member besides Nugent who works for an elected official. But Pringle is the wife of the Assembly speaker and Ury and Avila are publicly elected, albeit nonpartisan, school board members in the Saddleback Valley Unified and Santa Ana Unified school districts, respectively.

Nugent and Carmony could not be reached for comment. Thomas A. Fuentes, the longtime chairman of the county party, said “it would be premature” for him to take a position on pending resolutions.

But Fuentes said that, generally, “the most active and dedicated volunteers in the party oftentimes eventually become legislative staffers. It would seem unlikely to disenfranchise that very vigorous part of the party faithful.”

Most party officials, including Leland and Cerruto, say it is a long shot that the resolution will even be heard. It comes at a time when some prominent Republicans, particularly Rohrabacher, have charged that Baugh and the others are being unfairly targeted by Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi, who, they say, wants to shift attention away from what they describe as his failures in Orange County’s municipal bankruptcy.

While that sentiment probably will prevent the proposal from making it to the floor, it is, nonetheless, “a simple matter of common sense,” Leland contended.

“Our real objective is just to bring attention to the fact that we’ve had some problems,” said Leland, 43, an accountant just elected to his third two-year term on the Central Committee. You have to ask, ‘Is there something that we as a body are doing wrong here?’ ”

Chuck Devore of Irvine, the ethics committee chairman, disagrees with Leland and predicted a lively debate over the proposal. But Devore has distributed a four-page rebuttal to the resolution.

“I took issue with everything they said,” said Devore, 33, an aerospace industry consultant.

Both parties could use some soul-searching right now, Leland added. County Democrats are in the midst of their own controversy involving Chairman Jim Toledano’s unilateral decision to spend a $10,000 campaign contribution on behalf of a congressional candidate, perhaps violating campaign finance laws.

“It’s not just us. Look at the Democratic Party,” Leland said.

The party has a strict process that allows a resolutions committee to first study proposals such as these, Fuentes said. If that committee determines the resolution has merit, it will be heard by the full Central Committee and “both sides will have their say.”