For anyone wondering how ugly, brutal, and desperate politics in Orange County could get, we learned a yesterday with the attempted character assassination of Doug Pettibone, who two months ago became a candidate for Anaheim City Council with the support and endorsement of Mayor Tom Tait. Pettibone countered a vicious (and for all we know false) smear by his critics by simply rising above it — with a response that his critics may never have imagined and that, judging from the subdued reaction of paid thug Matt Cunningham, has caught them flat-footed.
Being smeared with a stream of unfair charges is messy — but the good news is that it washes off.
Pettibone yesterday sent this letter to the Anaheim City Clerk’s office — and if one ever wanted to judge his character, this would be a great place to start:
Subject: Doug Pettibone’s Withdrawal as Candidate for Anaheim City Council
Dear Madam Clerk and City Candidates:
It is with regret that I have decided not be a candidate for Anaheim City Council in 2014 and that I withdraw as a candidate.
I chose to run for what I believed were the right reasons and I believe I am withdrawing for the right reasons.
As you know I love Anaheim having been a resident here since 1964 and I want to see Anaheim become the best city it can be. I wanted to be part of that process.
As many of you know I am not a career politician and I was not fully aware that my life would become the subject of public scrutiny to the level it appears to becoming perhaps for others political gain.
Sixteen (16) years ago I was involved in a custody dispute with my now ex-wife. Although this was a time of brokenness in my life, since that time we have lived in harmony together and along with my current wife Claire we have jointly raised a fantastic son through all our combined efforts.
My ex-wife has enthusiastically endorsed my current campaign for Anaheim City Council. She even signed my nomination papers and currently has a yard sign for my campaign in her front yard. She has also assisted with the campaign in other ways.
Last night, for the first time, it was brought to my attention that certain matters that occurred during this custody proceeding sixteen (16) years ago will become public and will be used against myself and perhaps even the Mayor to attack our candidacies.
Please allow me to be frank. I have done some things and said something involved in that custody dispute which I am not proud of but which did occur and which I take full responsibility for. For some reason I believed these records were private and perhaps I was overly hopeful that these issues were so far back in time that they would not or even could not be used against me. I never dreamed they could have been used against the Mayor. In fact I did not even believe these records were made available to the public. Had I known these issues, which occurred sixteen (16) years ago, could and would be used against me in this campaign I would have disclosed them to the Mayor upfront before he made the decision to endorse my candidacy. In fact, as I informed the Mayor today I was informed all the claims made against me involving those proceedings had not only been resolved and dismissed but were not available to the public. I recall even attempting to get the records myself on line and was unable to do so. This was another reason I did not tell The Mayor about these events.
It is not uncommon when someone goes through a custody/dissolution proceeding that they rededicate their lives to their faith. I did just that. It was a result of this renewed dedication of faith that my faith grew so strong I even later entered the ministry as a hospice chaplain and a compassion volunteer. I know of others who have experienced this renewal following times of trial and tribulations.
I believed it was this rededication that gave me compassion to be a leader of Anaheim along with my sense of justice as an attorney and my dedication to those in need. In the end, I believe the Mayor endorsed the man I am today and not the man I was sixteen (16) years ago.
Unfortunately, like some of us who did not align themselves to be a career politician I have a past I cannot shake although perhaps an argument could be made it has made me the person I am today.
I simply cannot allow all these old issues to be brought to the surface again and to be relitigated. To allow this to happen and for me to have to spend most, if not all of my energy on setting the record straight, while all the while knowing how these types of things can be used against me is something I must now come to terms with.
For those who brought the issue forward, I at least owe them the respect of allowing me to withdrawal gracefully when I am sure other more vicious means could have been used. For that I suppose I am grateful in many respects.
But in the end it is my family I am most concerned about and the potential effect this would have upon them when we all thought this was behind us. So I must try to mitigate that potential damage to them. Withdrawing seems to be the only option.
It was a difficult decision and one that I had to make rather fast so if it is at all possible I would request our family be allowed time to heal from this issue.
Thank you.
Doug and Claire Pettibone
Orange County politics is for the most part sorely lacking in honesty, grace, and class. Reading Pettibone’s letter is almost physically bracing, because it brims with all three. It doesn’t seem like something that could emerge from the festering pools of Orange County politics — can you even imagine Kris Murray or Gail Eastman or Lucille Kring ever writing something this personal, self-critical, and deeply introspective? — and, of course, in effect it hasn’t. As Pettibone says, he is not a politician; he has not trimmed the story his life — or at least the perception of his life — to become one. (If he had, you’d expect hush money to be paid and God knows what else.) Here are some thoughts.
1. We have allegations from a political hatchet job — and they can’t even be verified as true
Because other bloggers — such as Cunningham and his friend Dan “Chumley” Chmielewski of once respectable The Liberal OC, have been running around brandishing this story gleefully — let’s address one point right up front: We don’t even know if the central allegation is true.
We know that Pettibone, in the middle of a custody battle with his then-wife over their infant son, said or did some things that he isn’t proud of and don’t meet the standards he has since set for himself. And, pretty clearly, he feels guilty about that lapse — especially because he and his first wife are now apparently on good terms and have jointly raised a fine son — and guilty as well over not informed Tom Tait about it before agreeing to run for City Council.
But we don’t actually know what that lapse is. Seriously — take a look at the reports and look carefully for any facts in evidence. The allegation is that, back in 1998, Pettibone was charged with domestic battery; if so, that charge was dropped. The further allegation is that he was charged with assault, and pleaded guilty — but we don’t even know if THAT is true! The record was apparently sealed or expunged or otherwise hidden away where not even Pettibone himself was able to locate it — and THAT is something that longtime Republican activist Lisa Lewis, whose letter ignited the character assassination attempt, can and should be asked to explain.
How and where did she obtain it? How do we know that it wasn’t tampered with? Pettibone’s signature is readily available on court documents; if I wanted to generate a signed confession of his shooting John F. Kennedy — no one suspects a four-year-old! — I could slap one together without much more work than the graphic you see above. Did he ever actually admit to assault — meaning something beyond the heated arguing that often accompanies acrimonious breakups and especially custody battles? Did he ever actually plead guilty to anything? How can this be verified? Pardon me, but having seen the lengths to which the Anaheim cabal will go to retain their position as, in Kris Murray’s terms, “Masters of the Universe,” I’m not going to take the word of some political apparatchik as gospel. Neither should readers or Anaheim voters.
2. But if Pettibone wasn’t guilty, why is he withdrawing from the campaign?
One reason — the lesser reason — is because, as a matter of pure politics, he can. When he was recruited for the race, it was not clear that Dr. Jose Moreno — the community leader, not the county employee who makes his living denying people their benefits — would be running for office. The best thing that Murray and Eastman had going for them in this campaign — aside from gazillions in “independent” expenditures from the Resort Vampires at SOAR-PAC — was the fact that Vanderbilt, Pettibone and Moreno were going to split the main opposition vote three ways, while they would only split it two ways. Now that has changed. Pettibone may still get some votes, but one robocall letting the public know that he has withdrawn and will now support Dr. Moreno and Tait Slate colleague James Vanderbilt and will cure most of that problem.
Tait is very likely to be re-elected as Mayor, but he needs two votes elected with him to stop the Curt Pringle-ordered boondoggles for which Lucille Kring and Jordan Brandman will continue to vote next year. Vanderbilt is likely to take one of those two spots — so Cunningham and others may be right that Pettibone’s withdrawal makes Dr. Moreno the de facto third member of the slate that will take on Murray and Eastman.
This isn’t the result of politics, but of simple process of elimination. Who else is could it be? Not the faker Jose “JoJo” Moreno #2; not aggressively reformist Donna Acevedo, whom I’d really enjoy seeing on Council if she had the ability to overtake Vanderbilt; not the eighth original candidate, who already withdrew. Vanderbilt and Dr. Moreno — already congenial School Board colleagues, let’s remember — are the only two remaining candidates who would oppose boondoggles and stand a chance of winning. That they’re of different political parties is unusual — but, hey, that hasn’t gotten in the way of the pro-boondoggle team of Murray and Brandman. So this isn’t how people expected this race to turn out — but if anything Pettibone’s withdrawal, by reducing the degree of his splitting the vote, will make the defeat of both Murray and Eastman more likely.
But if if it were simply a matter of political considerations, there’s no way that Pettibone would have withdrawn. He had made a promise to run.
Pettibone may not be a professional politician, but he’s a smart political observer. He knows very well that, with early voting set to begin in two weeks, this story about him would take up all of the oxygen in the room. Rotten scoundrels — that’s a euphemism — would try to hold his supposed deficiencies against Tait, not because they thought that they would beat Tait but because they wanted to reduce the potency of his endorsements for City Council. And his family — ex-wife, son, and second wife, would have to suffer through what he calls the “relitigation” of all of this Chumley-gratifying unpleasantness. His closing the door on his campaign means that while the boondoggle squad can still try to attack him this way, they will look ten times worse for piling on than they would have looked before. And, worse for them, it won’t even work.
Pettibone’s withdrawal is fundamentally because he did not inform Tom Tait, prior to agreeing to run, of this painful episode in his past. From the very moment of the letter containing the leak — twice in the first three paragraphs, in fact! — it was being used as a means of attacking Tait’s judgment. (We’ll get to that letter below.) By taking full responsibility for the lapse, he clears Tait’s record entirely. That’s so honorable that it may leave most observers of Anaheim politics rubbing their eyes, questioning if they really did just see what they saw. Pettibone is standing tall, taking his lumps, and showing himself to be an example of repentance and redemption. That his wife is standing by him — and that his ex-wife is supportive of him — says volumes about his character.
But let’s be honest about something else: if Pettibone erred at all, it was in trusting that a sealed court record would stay sealed — and that it did not is what really demands investigation at this point. (This presumes for the sake of argument that he did plead guilty — or more likely it would be “nolo contendre” — to assault.) That’s supposed to be a reliable promise — and it was apparently reliable enough that he couldn’t even get access to the records himself. If he actually didn’t accept a plea on the assault charge — alleged assault charge — then he really had nothing or almost nothing that he should have told Mayor Tait about.
But that wouldn’t matter, of course — and that’s the point. There’s a phrase that describes the situation in which Pettibone finds himself here: “Caeser’s Wife.” Julius Caeser dumped his wife Pompeia not because she engaged in wrongdoing, but because she acted in such a way as to make it plausible that she might have done so — and Caeser required his wife to be above suspicion. Pettibone is — rather remarkably — holding himself to this same high standard.
3. And the ghouls show their true faces
Of course, this sort of event also brings out the ghouls. For example here’s The Liberal OC’s Chumley, showing his overwhelming lack of grace and class:
The Liberal OC has learned that Tom Tait’s hand-picked city council candidate Doug Pettibone has withdrawn his candidacy for the Anaheim City Council’s race stemming from domestic battery charges in the late 1990s.
Not quite, Chum. The letter by Anaheim resident Lisa Lewis, which I’m not reproducing here in full, says that battery and domestic battery charges against him were dropped; it alleges only that Pettibone pleaded guilty to a charge of assault — which does not require violent bodily contact — which was apparently sealed or expunged. Pettibone was and remains a member of the Bar in good standing and — to the extent that he did anything that could have violated any law — appears to be a model of rehabilitation. But, illegal or not, Pettibone is clearly remorseful about some aspects of his own behavior during his custody battle. My guess is that the Doug Pettibone of today would be the first to tell the Doug Pettibone of 1998 to get some help — and to the first to stand with him while he did so. This isn’t to minimize the seriousness of (alleged) assault, but only to note that people who offend can pay the price for their misconduct and come out the better for it.
Pettibone is very gracious, in his letter in not coming out swinging against Lewis, recognizing her right to make such charges against him without consequences. But thanks to Chumley, that cat is already out of the bag. What’s clear from the letter is that its real target is Mayor Tait — Pettibone is simply collateral damage, and the feelings of his current wife, his first wife, and their son are not even considerations.
Some political operatives — like hit men who can murder in cold blood — are celebrated for not letting human decency get in the way of their job as character assassins. I’ll pull my punches against Lisa Lewis here as well, in deference to Pettibone’s sentiments, but I sure would like to ask her some questions. Such as:
- How did she come to have the knowledge required to write this letter?
- Specifically, how did she get access to publicly unavailable court records — or whatever evidence she obtained?
- What if any steps did she take to verify the legitimacy of this evidence — or did she care whether she was being duped?
- Who helped her write her letter — as it completely stinks of Political Consultant?
- Who put her up to, or encouraged her to, releasing it?
- Can she point to anything she’s written, or any activity she’s engaged in, that suggests that Domestic Violence is a major issue of interest to her? Maybe she can. It would be nice if she could. Given that half of her letter is taken up with a discussion of football player Ray Rice, misapplied statistics regarding spousal abuse, and noting that we’re soon entering Domestic Violence Awareness Month, it would be VERY UNFORTUNATE if she simply latched onto these things as the hook for a political attack against someone else. As a Domestic Violence advocate, if she is one — rather that simply regurgitating points cynically prepared by someone else — she should certainly agree that it diminishes this cause for it to be used cynically for political gain.
Enough about question 6. We shall refer for now to the identities of the people that are answers to questions 4 and 5 as “The Lowest of the Law.”
The first thing I note about Lewis’s letter is that it appears on The Liberal OC as an image PDF, which makes it impossible to copy and paste selections of its text into another file — and the bother of retyping it is (apparently) too much for some to contemplate. It’s impossible, that is, unless one has OCR capabilities, which I do. So that means that I can present you with this first sentence of the first paragraph:
As an Anaheim voter, as a wife and mother, and as a woman, I would like to bring to your attention to a very serious matter regarding Doug Pettibone, your neighbor down the street whom you personally recruited to run for Anaheim City Council.
The boldface emphasis is mine, but it might as well be hers. The letter is aimed at Tait. Just wait — it gets better.
First sentence of the third paragraph:
Mr. Pettibone is your neighbor and you personally recruited him to run for our city council …
“HEY! ANYONE HERE NOT GET IT YET?”
And then there’s this:
What kind of message does it send to the women of Anaheim if on one hand our mayor preaches for us to be kind to each other, while on the other hand asks us to vote for a man who has pled guilty to assaulting his wife?
And to give the Mayor ample time to determine whether PERHAPS LEWIS IS A LIAR WHOSE DOCUMENTS, IF ANY, MAY BE FORGED, she concludes with:
Anaheim voters like myself deserve your swift response.
(There’s a good little character assassin! Have a cookie.)
Well, someone — ideally everyone — is welcome to pass this along to Ms. Lewis: I post six questions to you up there that are pretty important to understanding how and when this well-timed swipe against the Mayor by smearing his friend came about — and Anaheim voters deserve your swift response. This is not to accuse you of wrongdoing; it is simply to seek clarification of pertinent facts.
And this brings us back to Chumley, who headlines his story “Another Tait Campaign Disaster: Pettibone Withdraws from Anaheim Council race” — and the excitement with which he wades in to slaughter innocent and guilty alike can almost be smelled through the monitor.
Since Pettibone and James Vanderbilt were hand-picked by Tait, it calls into question how thorough the Mayor was in vetting his hand-picked ticket and Tait’s judgment.
REALLY NOW, Chumley? What else should the Mayor have done, in vetting Pettibone, that he failed to do? (Please put far out of your mind the contemporaneous big question of how much Lorri Galloway vetter Pastor Stieler before handing you her accusations against the Tait campaign. It’s not like that’s relevant, after all, oh no….) Perhaps we can agree that, whatever the Mayor did or didn’t do, it’s nowhere near as bad as Lucille Kring’s “Saved us the cost of a trial” remark, right?
According to court records, in early 1998, Pettibone and his first wife separated. In June, Pettibone was charged with four misdemeanor counts of battery, battery against a spouse, assault and harassment. A jury cleared him of the threats and battery charges in November 1998.
Pettibone said that he couldn’t get these court records. WHERE DID CHUMLEY GET THEM?
Let’s presume that they’re accurate, though. I’d like to point out that if a jury cleared him of threats — that often what “assault” would involve — and battery charges, it seems a bit unusual that he’d plead guilty to assault charges — as that sort of plea deal would generally be accepted in order to AVOID a jury trial at all. So is the argument here that a jury convicted him — and therefore all of the statements are wrong? Or is the argument that Pettibone pled guilty, and THEN went on to a criminal trial? (WHY???) Or is it that Pettibone went to a criminal trial — AND THEN PLEADED GUILTY TO A LESSER CHARGE? WHYYYYYYYYYYYY would he do THAT?
Something stinks here — and one of the main offensive odors is coming from Chumley’s judgment.
In a comment, Chumley THEN tosses out this bon-bon:
According to the Pastor, the Tait campaign knew about this two weeks ago. Perhaps that is one of the reasons she was sick to her stomach about the campaign….
Now put aside any questions about Pastor Stieler’s credibility — which I guess Chumley REALLY wants us to investigate. (Choose your “friends” more wisely, Pastor.) Did she ever say that “she was sick to her stomach about the campaign“? Not in what I’ve seen. What we do know, though, is that she left the Tait campaign around Sept. 3 — which isn’t “two weeks ago” — which raises the question of how the Pastor would have possibly had this information to begin with, if — as seems doubtful — it’s true.
Here’s the next fun exchange, naturally involving an anonymous commeter, because LibOC:
I don’t buy Tait’s “I didn’t know” act. This story has been making the insider rounds for a couple of weeks. Tait probably didn’t want to deal with it or hoped it wouldn’t come out. Great leadership there.
I haven’t heard a single thing about this before yesterday afternoon — and I doubt the word of an anonymous hatchet person. (This is where I usually say that I feel sorry for Chris Prevatt.)
And then — wow — real news. My fault for not getting this posted last night, but after a trial I was then swamped by other business and went to bed early.
Dan:
The charges that you reference in your email were all dropped by the District Attorney. Even the “assault” charge you claim I plead guilty to was dismissed in the interests of justice by the District Attorney.
I am trying to track down the source of this misinformation and these half-truths. These things were not disclosed in the Lewis letter nor does she say where she got this information.
Did you just publish contents of the Lewis letter or did you conduct your own independent investigation?
This was a long time ago and any assistance would be greatly appreciate.
Doug Pettibone
To which Chumley replies:
Doug — Thank you for commenting. If you read the entire story through, please note this paragraph: “According to court records, in early 1998, Pettibone and his first wife separated. In June, Pettibone was charged with four misdemeanor counts of battery, battery against a spouse, assault and harassment. ****A jury cleared him of the threats and battery charges in November 1998.****
Just because a jury cleared you of the charges doesn’t mean they weren’t brought forth in the first place.
I have friends who are on their second marriage; others where the couple has someone who is in their first marriage and the spouse is on his/her second marriage, and sadly other friends going through the pain of a divorce. But I know no one on their third marriage. Tait was sloppy in not asking you what happened during the first two marriages and I’m told Tauit and his consultant threw you under the bus and demanded your withdrawl which clearly tells me Tom Tait is not a man who can be counted on in a storm.
My records show you or your wife (not sure which one) filed for a restraining order in February 2006 — can you comment on that in as much detail as possible. Was it against the first ex-wife or the second ex-wife? Or which ex-wife took one out against you?
I stand by my story.
Oh my God. My emphasis, in paragraph 2, because that sentence is just so telling.
Paragraph 1 is interesting because Chumley apparently thinks that this is about libel. No, Chum, you may be in a totally different pot of hot water.
So we what do know from this?
- Chumley doesn’t know anyone who is on their third marriage. (Readers, want to help him out?)
- Chumley thinks that prior to an endorsement, a candidate should ask intimate questions about the end of all prior marriages.
- Chumley claims to have a source capable of telling him that “Tait threw [Pettibone] under the bus.” I suspect that he’s lying — and that if he has a source, that the source is lying, but most of all that Chumley doesn’t give a damn who is or isn’t lying.
- Chumley has “records” showing a restraining order — but not who was involved and who requested it. I suspect that Chumley is lying again.
- Chumley stands by his story because Chumley always stands by his story — being impervious to evidence.
(This man is married to a Los Angeles Times journalist, by the way. It’s not like he can’t get help on journalistic ethics and practice.)
It seems pretty likely to me that Chumley is working with Kris Murray. He also seems to be working with Galloway. Does it follow that Galloway’s character assassins are also Murray’s? Is Murray’s presumed running-mate Lucille Kring involved? Perhaps Chumley can invite another anonymous commenter to his site to explain it all.
4. The BEST part is that is all blew up in their faces.
Here’s what’s really funny: the attempted character assassination of Doug Pettibone has completely blown up in the faces of Lisa Lewis, Chumley, Cunningham, and whoever else was involved.
Tait is in no worse of a position in the Mayor’s race than he was before — and for reasons I’ll get to in the next paragraph, may be in a better one. And the two remaining candidates that — endorsed or not — are friendliest to the Mayor’s agenda are now going to have many fewer votes siphoned off by a third candidate. The big winner here is Dr. Jose F. Moreno — who has had nothing at all to do with any of it.
Despite Chumley’s insanely “heroic” efforts in his reply to Pettibone to tie any deficiencies in the latter’s background to Tom Tait’s judgment, and his wild and threatening McCarthyite claims to have damning documentary information that he won’t produce, he apparently has got nothing. None of this sticks to Tait; none of it sticks to Pettibone; the only political figure really harmed at all is the one who has placed her divinely directed faith in Chumley — and that is Lorri Galloway.
Some candid, Tim Whitacre-like advice to Ms. Galloway — Chumley is going to be an anchor around your campaign that will drag you down into the brackish deep. You do not want this. Repent, repent, repent, publicly repent.
Simple scenario. Kurt Pringle’s Krew dug up the “dirt” (such as it is), planted the seed via some nasty little conduit named Lisa Lewis who officially put Tait on notice, and then they leaked the story to Galloway, knowing the bubblehead would give it to Chimpanzeeski who would gleefully pass it along.
The beneficiary? The serial liar, Lucille Kring.
I wasn’t sure if I was even going to vote for Pettibone in the first place, but now I wish he’d reconsider and keep fighting.
P.S. I doubt if Cunningham and “Anaheim Insider” (a Pringle employee) were caught flat-footed at all. In fact the usually idiotic commentary by the frogs at Cunningham’s little swamp has been unusually restrained – suggesting that the strategy was to let Galloway do the dirty work and keep the Kleptocracy’s fingerprints off the deed.
Just for yuks, let’s take a hypothetical….
If every single person who looks at Chumley’s blog in the week after this “scandalous revelation” (including you, me, Vern, etc.) were an Anaheim voter who would go over from Tait to Galloway, how many is that? Do we have any idea?
That’s a damn good question. And it goes to the cheapness of Chimp’s basic decency – and his stupidity.
Nobody would go from Tait to Galloway. Of course that wasn’t the point of the whole klepto scheme. The point was for them to go over to Kring.
You can see the Lib OC’s readership data here – http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s20liberaloc&r=6.
They don’t average many readers at all – somewhere between 400 to 700 visits a day. My New Santa Ana blog averages over 52,000 views a month by comparison.
You can see their top posts here – http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s20liberaloc&r=38
First of all, Lisa Burnett Lewis is indeed a political operative in league with Kris Murray and Lucille Kring. Not exactly an unbiased opinion here. Now it is possible that Lewis is to the Murray/Kring effort nothing more than the same kind of wholly dispensable envelope-stuffer that “pastor” Stephanie was to the Tait campaign, someone flitting around the fringes that the insiders’ cabal found conveniently handy for throwing a word bomb into the Tait camp. But there is no question that she is connected to their campaign, is distributing materials and yard signs for the campaign, is openly advocating for Murray and Kring, and it is hard to believe she came across this information from some spontaneous inspiration which allowed her to find private documents not even available to those involved in the case. It is even harder to believe she took it upon herself to use the information without the involvement and knowledge of the candidates and their consultants. Seriously, if YOU found this type of garbage against the opponents running against your friends for office, would you take it upon yourself to use it, or would you take it to the candidates and/or their consultants to see if and how THEY might put it to use during the campaign?
But what is the WORST part of this disgusting behavior, is the claim that this person is somehow advocating for abused spouses with this action. The issue of battered women (both wives and girlfriends) is a HUGE problem in the United States, as has come to headlines lately with the NFL scandals. I don’t know if Americans have mastered the art of beating on their mates or if the practice is considered culturally acceptable elsewhere and therefore under-reported outside the US, but it seems to be a very American form of evil, certainly not indicative of us as a beacon shining in the night for the world to follow.
The horror of KNOWING that as we read this post, safely plugged into our computers at home or work without genuine fear of harm to ourselves, there are women in our own communities who truly are cowering in real, justifiable fear, waiting for the day when the ex-boyfriend, former husband, or baby-daddy gone wrong will find and hurt them, their children, or the friends and family who may be helping them to hide. That is real, that is evil, and that is behavior that we should all be working to prevent and punish in every way we can.
The former Mrs. Pettibone clearly had a bad time of it during the divorce, I won’t diminish what Mr. Pettibone may or may not have done, because Doug himself is clearly remorseful for having done or said something 16 years ago that is not indicative of the man many of us know him to be today, and I needn’t know the details to respect his stand on this subject.
But despite the ready acknowledgement that the former Mrs. Pettibone had a frightening time in the past, it is clear that she is not now cowering in fear of her ex-husband finding and harming her, indeed she put her home address on the Nomination Papers she signed to enable her ex-husband to run for Anaheim City Council. The former Mrs. Pettibone has not only forgiven the transgressions of the past, she has requested as an Anaheim voter that her former husband represent her at City Hall! There is NO JUSTIFIABLE COMPARISON of this current relationship in the Pettibone family with the genuine evil that engulfs too many women in today’s society, and it is exploitative, and-I will say it-indicative of the lowest form of BITCH for Lewis and/or her favored candidates to use the fear that our battered sisters endure as a prop for their own political gain!
Lisa Burnett Lewis and the campaigns of Murray and Kring, have used this past tragedy for their own selfish purposes, and with it they diminish the VERY REAL terror experienced daily by those battered women who DO live in fear of the ex finally finding them. Their disgusting exploitation reduces public abhorrence we SHOULD feel, for the evil of men who use their greater physical strength, financial resources, or influence and power in the community, to bully and terrorize the women they once pledged to love, honor, and cherish.
Those women who are suffering real abuse at the hands of men they once trusted deserve real protection, real healing, real compassion from the community. It is disgusting to me as a woman to see other women, in a position of power to HELP these abused spouses, instead treat them as political pawns, comparing a 16 year old issue in which nobody was found guilty, to the terror they live with on a daily basis.
That behavior from the campaigns of Kris Murray and Lucille Kring, whose clear allegiance with Lisa Burnett Lewis prompted these allegations to surface, victimizes real victims a second time, and it is unacceptable, and indicative of women too wrapped up in their own selfish cocoons, to be seated as civic leaders of any kind.
If Doug Pettibone is going to quit the race for an unknown issue from 16 years ago that is clearly NOT the issue his opponents want to force our imaginations to believe it to be, then Kris Murray should be dropping out of the race as well, for her outrageous abuse and exploitation of the issue of battered women for her own selfish gains. And when the dust has settled, and Lucille Kring comes in fourth in the race for Mayor, we need to investigate having her recalled from the “safe seat” she believes she holds.
These woman will eat their own in an effort to keep their stranglehold on power in Anaheim, and they give all women a bad name by being held out as an example of female leadership.
This is disgusting, and sadly it is standard operating procedure for those completely lacking in moral compass or ethical boundaries. It is time to clean house at Anaheim City Hall, and that begins with demanding the resignation of the “leaders” involved in this exploitative behavior.
https://www.facebook.com/lisaburnettlewis?fref=ts
Lisa Burnett Lewis
Lisa Burnett Lewis added 2 new photos.
September 1 at 3:41pm · https://www.facebook.com/lisaburnettlewis?fref=ts
Kris Murray is a woman of her word. Her campaign slogan, “Promises Made, Promises Kept” could not better describe her time on Anaheim City Council. Please take a moment to read a bit more about Kris. She has my support for Anaheim City Council.
Lisa Burnett Lewis added 2 new photos.
September 1 at 3:41pm · https://www.facebook.com/lisaburnettlewis?fref=ts
Kris Murray is a woman of her word. Her campaign slogan, “Promises Made, Promises Kept” could not better describe her time on Anaheim City Council. Please take a moment to read a bit more about Kris. She has my support for Anaheim City Council.
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Tina Hatchett Sorenson I thought she was going to run for mayor. Who are you supporting for mayor?
September 1 at 4:07pm
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Lisa Burnett Lewis I am supporting Kris Murray and Gail Eastman for City Council and Lucille Kring for Mayor.
September 1 at 4:08pm · 1
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Tina Hatchett Sorenson I am voting out most incumbants- but I do like Gail Eastman.
September 1 at 4:24pm
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Carol Rhodes-Rice Why is she not running for Mayor?
September 1 at 4:26pm
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Lisa Burnett Lewis Kris would be a great mayor. Kris Murray, Council Member, City of Anaheim would you like to answer this question yourself?
September 1 at 4:27pm
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Carol Rhodes-Rice I mean, the two choices are kinda lame? Right?
September 1 at 4:28pm
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Lisa Burnett Lewis We have three choices. Tom Tait, Lorri Galloway and Lucille Kring. There is no question how I feel about Tom Tait as mayor and he does not have my vote. Of the other two, I feel as though Lucille will do the best job for Anaheim and its residents.
September 1 at 4:30pm · 1
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Lisa Burnett Lewis Carol Rhodes-Rice if you would like a Kris Murray yard sign just let me know and I will drop one off for you this week.
September 1 at 4:31pm
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Lisa Burnett Lewis Tom Dupuis this is the information that you asked about earlier today.
September 1 at 4:31pm
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Carol Rhodes-Rice I’m sorry, I’m not registered to vote here yet.
September 1 at 4:31pm
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Lisa Burnett Lewis You still have time….
September 1 at 4:32pm · 2
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Linda Newby She is phenomenal; has all of my support too!
September 2 at 8:15am
“Kris Murray is a woman of her word. Her campaign slogan, “Promises Made, Promises Kept” could not better describe her time on Anaheim City Council.”
You really have to admire the chutzpah of someone who in one sentence says something like the above, and in the next endorses Kring for mayor.
True enough. However the Kleptocracy is not known for self-reflection or any sort of scruples, either.
Kring: Promises made, promises unmade.
BTW, just exactly to whom did Murray promise what? Just askin.’
“Promises made to Curt Pringle, Promises to Curt Pringle Kept .”
Kring’s could be: “Promises made to Lucille Kring, Promises to Lucille Kring Kept.”
“Promises klept”
Damn, that’s good.
I’m using that.
Worse, that tired slogan was ALSO used for Jordan Brandman, and originated with Measure M renewal, another of Curt Pringle’s babies, which amassed the money pot he now dives into on behalf of clients. Oh the irony. Welcome back Zenger, some of us kept the fight alive until you were frozen out of your cabin, feel free to step in at any time.
I guess there was a point to my question. Let me explain.
When I pick on a pitiful (or not-so-pitiful) character who writes nonsense, if I name them by name, it’s normally a somewhat bigger fish; someone who qualifies for the “public figure” designation. If I’m picking on a humble blogger with no pretensions, I leave the name out.
I might use their material as a starting point for a rant on my blog, but know from the start that engaging them on their own blog is pretty pointless. Whatever audience and influence they have just isn’t worth the bother, and my comments will be under his control. Adding comments could also support an illusion that it’s a blog of some significance.
So, this Chumley, do you think he actually has any audience or influence?
Chumley seems to be the spokesperson in the local political blogosphere for the current regime of the DPOC, which you can think of as mostly reflecting the Building Trades, the circle of people around Jordan Brandman, although the real loyalty seems to Brandman’s fundraiser and campaign manager, former DPOC Executive Director Melahat Rafiei, who works for progressive Democratic causes that rarely win and business Democratic causes that generally do. Melahat recently moved back to OC from Long Beach.
That DPOC leadership is a “bigger fish” than me — and its ties to Chumley would make most of the people in the party projectile vomit if they knew of and understood the implications of them.
Chumley is (and I’m happy to use this analogy) a large finger puppet for these people. He may seem ill-suited to his task, but his audience is actually quite narrow — the people who determine the composition of the Democratic Party leadership. So yes, if you don’t want the Democratic Party to be filled with looters rather than stewards, it’s a VERY useful fight to have.
Ah, so this goes back to those people who thought it had some great value to kick you out of that Vice Chair position. You probably miss it about as much as I miss my old official position in the GPOC. (the glamor, the private limousine, the groupies…)
Hey, I never said that there wasn’t a silver lining…. 😉
NOTICE these statements and actions are mine and mine alone as an individual citizen of Anaheim, I am not on the payroll of the campaign of any candidate nor do I have an official role in any current campaign (Other than helping one candidate set up a facebook page which they then took over)
Murray and Kring have campaign events coming up. I would like to protest these events to bring awareness to the issues of battered and abused women, who deserve to have their fear taken seriously, and who should not be exploited as campaign props. Who would like to join me in protesting public events at which Murray and Kring will be appearing? They both need to resign from their campaigns and apologize to the entire Pettibone family for abusing and exploiting a painful time in their personal lives, and also the invasion of privacy of the first mrs. Pettibone and their son, two individuals who are NOT public figures but whose pain has been dragged out for the world to see. Contact me directly for meet up details. http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?ca=8c9783ca-c2f2-4db5-9421-c0f3d66fd68e&c=172a7110-2065-11e3-a746-d4ae5292c4dd&ch=177cfde0-2065-11e3-a75f-d4ae5292c4dd
Boy, it was so hard to find Pettibone’s guilty plea. It must have taken at least 5 minutes.
https://ocapps.occourts.org/CourtIndex/case_details_criminal.jsp?cn=98NM05442&pi=3514861#ocDetailsA
So: he’s supposedly found not guilty of criminal threats and spousal battery by a jury == except that Pettibone says that there was never a jury trial.
Then, 50 days after the “jury trial,” in mid-January, he supposedly pled guilty to assault (attempted battery.)
Then, almost a year and a half after THAT, he supposedly pled guilty to the misdemeanor of “maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] another person by loud and unreasonable noise.”
Yeah, I’d say something is wrong here — and it’s not merely the fact that we’re over 7-1/2 years after the disposition date of 02/15/2007 and almost 4 years after the destruction date of 12/14/2010 — which raises the question of how you got access to this AT ALL. I believe that Voice of OC looked for this information as well yesterday but could not find it online. Do you know when it popped up?
It looks like, being charitable, it is a whole bunch of clerical errors that are now being used to torment someone who was running against candidates supported by the DA. Too bad you’re anonymous, so it’s impossible to find out what you know.
Greg I admit I thought the same thing. Doug said even the dates don’t match up. His divorce was 16 years ago. When i went looking for info on him (I admit it, I checked him out, I’d be stupid not to before supporting him) NONE Of this was online. Would our District Attorney and/or his buddies do something like this? Hmm…jailhouse informants so bad they have to let bad guys go, looking the other way on Pulido while Tony has lunch at Papi’s table for State of the City, and of course the always popular District Attorney making a statement disparaging the Mayor of Anaheim for failing to help him violate the civil rights of his own citizens. So his beloved Murray is the most likely to benefit from this crap, and it is HER campaign operative that sends the info to the Mayor as a “warning?” Anyone else smell rodent droppings?
Oddly enough, and much as with the “going after Webster Guillory for a minor bit of perjury” thing, the sort of manipulation of records we’re talking about here may escalate things to an entirely different level of seriousness. So I’m going to treat it that way and I do not think that I’ll be discussing it online.
In fact, I had deleted half of my previous comment, after the paragraph that starts with my “being charitable.” One needn’t BE charitable about all of this.
[Special to the comment author: Just wanted you to know that we did get this defamatory secretion of yours and read it before wadding it up into the trash, you miserable creature.]
This is going to be used in discussions between candidates and campaign consultants for decades to come. Most serious campaign consultants, that I know, have a candidate fill out a questionnaire asking for disclosure of any issues like this that can come up and bite the candidate during the campaign. Not sure who Team Tait is using but big blooper on not doing that. Issues like bankruptcies, DUIs, any arrests, any domestic problems will ALWAYS come back to haunt you. Much better for everyone to know about it and figure out what the response will be. My confusion on this and never having met Mr. Pettibone is why Mayor Tait isn’t coming to his defense. If he is the same guy today that he was when asked to run, why have him quit? It’s not like this is going to go away if he isn’t a candidate?
Pettibone had already decided to quit. Tait didn’t have to ask; he didn’t have to offer.
I think that without Dr. Jose Moreno in the race, we might have seen a different result. But having spoken to Moreno and Pettibone about each other, they have great mutual respect and admiration. I think that Pettibone believes that the second seat will be in good hands if Dr. Moreno wins — so if he would have fought to the bitter end in his absence he had no strong reason to do so given his presence on the ballot.
I’ll have another big long piece about this in the morning; I’ll look forward to your take on it. I think that Pettibone wouldn’t have disclosed it — because (with good reason) he sees any plea as having been undone. Without the understanding that a plea would be undone after counseling (ordered not by the criminal court, but by the family court) it’s doubtful that he would ever have given the plea, as he didn’t think that they could prove guilt. But if he’s having counseling anyway, why should anyone bother? The guilty plea is only a placeholder and once counseling is finished, it is dismissed as if it never happened.
An example from my teaching days: I had a student for whom English was not her first language. As I originally graded her final, I gave her a D in the class. She talked to me about her difficulties with following my sometimes rapid speech, etc. — and I decided that it was just, given her effort and that obstacle, that she receive a C grade. I changed the grade within the period in which I was allowed to do so.
Now, let’s she had to fill out a form for graduation saying that she had never received a grade of lower than a C in her major. Can she honestly answer “yes, that’s true”? I think that she can — because the grading process at this school does allow for students to consult with their professor prior to a final grade. So yes — she received a grade of lower than a C, but then she UN-received that grade and received a grade of C. The D grade existed, as a provisional grade contingent on no change within the allowed period, but there was such a change — after which it is treated as if it never did exist.
Pettibone’s case is even more compelling because the equivalent of his “exam” — a look at the facts with an eye towards whether they could prove guilt — never even occurred. He had a provisional guilty plea that everyone expected and hoped would go away when he completed counseling. And he did, and it did, and he could have filled out a form saying that he had never been convicted entirely in good faith.
The outrage of his critics seems a little overblown after that, doesn’t it? Let alone the fake outrage against Tait!
Except we are talking about an election, not the real world. Very different. Elections are all about impressions and voter perception. Again, there are just some steps and bumps along the way of what makes up life that when held up to the microscope of the voters are always going to be an issue. When a candidate says “I believed those records were private” and “the issues where so far back that I believed they would not or even could not be used against me” there is something that the voters are probably going to take issue with. If it wasn’t that bad or big of an issue, why isn’t Team Tait standing up for their guy?
“…why isn’t Team Tait standing up for their guy?”
What for? He quit.
Seems like when the person you recruited to be one of your running mates volunteers to throw himself off the train for the good of the team you might want to wish him well. Especially when now it seems like he didn’t have jump if the documents are questionable.
He didn’t “have to jump” because of the documents. Again, take Dr. Jose Moreno out of the race and I think he would have gutted it out. But, as anyone who listened to at least one of the miscreants on KABC 790 knows, he and his family were going to be savaged by the worst sorts of jackals — which has been happening even though he didn’t stay in the race. Imagine what would happen if he had stayed in! He made a reasonable choice.
Tait has done more than just wished him well. His doing so openly, though, would just invite additional attacks on Pettibone — which neither of them wants.
“Seems like when the person you recruited to be one of your running mates volunteers to throw himself off the train for the good of the team you might want to wish him well.”
1) It wasn’t for the good of the team as much as the good of the family
2) Prolonging public discussion of any kind probably doesn’t help 1)
3) Anything that needs to be said probably has been, privately
Nipsey, well said. Plus I agree with #2. They are going to wait it out as quietly as possible.
What would you have Team Tait do? At this point, Pettibone just wants to be out of the news — for the well-being of his family, current and former. It’s not Tait’s place to forgive or condone his friend’s actions, especially given that Pettibone is challenging the very premise that the documents are correct.
It is bizarre that the Pringle Ring is continuing to attack Pettibone — sticking to the original plan, it seems — except that, of course, they are simply using Pettibone as a proxy to attack Tait. Blood sport.
That’s why the sudden appearance of this questionable document in the record is so politically important: without that, there’s no argument at all (not that there’s much of one anyway) that Tait was at all negligent in vetting Pettibone. The important thing about the document legally is: how can it possibly be legal for someone to order that this happen, so as to influence an election result?
i am so happy i live at the beach