Anonymous Attack of the Ass-Clowns

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Yes, Driving Under the Influence is Bad. But an Anonymous Hit Over It is Chickenshit.

Yes, Driving Under the Influence is very bad. but an anonymous hit over it is chickenshit.  (Photo courtesy of Brian Chuchua at https://Chuchua2016.trade.

This photo was taken by Brian Chuchua early Friday evening; we’ve cranked up the brightness to make them more legible.  (Full disclosure: I’m helping Brian with his campaign, but this isn’t written in that spirit.)  Brian reports that these signs were posted along Lincoln and Santa Ana Canyon within and approaching Anaheim Hills.  He hasn’t checked out the rest of the district to see where else they are.

These are not from the Chuchua campaign.  Brian would rather run against Pauly than anyone else, largely because as friends — friends who disagree about some significant things, but still friends — they would have a peaceful contest of ideas devoid of dirty tricks.  We haven’t seen these signs up close, but at our highest magnification it seems like — once again, illegally — there is no identifying information on the signs.  It’s like a Cunningham-Chmielewski blog’s comments section come to life.

Brian doesn’t drink — something that was omitted in the section of his website contrasting his record with Pauly (and the other leading candidates because under the circumstances it would have seemed smarmy.  He is very negative towards DUIs — in part because his years of high speed racing have given him a healthy regard for the dangers of driving impaired — but he also has lived long enough to know that people make mistakes and only a real ass rubs it into their faces.  Rub it into their faces anonymously and publicly, like this, and one falls well below mere “ass” status.

It was dark enough when he was driving that it was hard to make out what the dark red-on-black portion of the signs said.  Once it was clear, Brian’s reaction was that he didn’t think that “Can’t Be Trusted Behind the Wheel / Can’t Be Trusted in Sacramento” wasn’t a compelling argument.  Transportation is different than legislation, and whatever lapse in judgment leads someone to drive under the influence has less to say about the trustworthiness of a legislator than, say, the lapse in judgment that leads someone on a dais to vote for an $180 million appropriation for an unnecessary and ill-conceived train station that supposedly would accommodate high speed rail but can’t because it’s not built high enough for high-speed rail trains.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we give you … ARTIC!, aka “Pringle’s Folly, for which the decisive vote was … Harry Sidhu.  Can’t be trusted on the dais to vote against humongous wastes of money, can’t be trusted in Sacramento.  And Brian will sign his real name to that, too!

Deb (and by the way, who calls her “Debbie”?) Pauley has publicly stated that a couple of Sidhu’s friends have donated $45,000 to a slush fund to attack her before the primary.  We’ll see how many signs there are, and what else happens between now and Tuesday, but that seems like an amount and style of payment that would lend itself to this sort of nasty attack.  (The only other candidate with the means to put up such an attack is Steven Choi — but he has little reason to attack Pauly, who is competing for votes in the northern part of the district with Sidhu.)

So: Brian denies involvement and condemns the attack in tone and method, even if not entirely dismissing its substance.  It’s unlikely that Sean Panahi, Konstantin Roditis, or Alexia from the school board would put their money into this attack on one candidate, rather than into promoting themselves.  So let’s hear from Choi and Sidhu about whether they had any inkling that such an attack was coming.

Note: it’s not that Pauly’s DUI history should be entirely off-limits — the likelihood of such attacks was one reason that Brian felt that he ought to run — but there are ways to discuss her mistake empathetically and there are ways to discuss it nastily and viciously.  If the attack had been up-front, matter of fact, sensible, and — most of ally– not anonymous, then it would not likely be worth commenting upon.  But instead, it’s the sort of thing that makes one want to support the opponent of the candidate who cooked this up in any runoff.

Readers can contact the Sidhu and Choi campaigns and see what they have to say about these signs — and pay attention to how they say it.  Either we have a new ass-clown in the arena, or the formerly identified ass-clown just got more assy and clownish than ever.


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)