Is it time for the OC GOP to toss Mike Schroeder in “la basura“? O.C. Register editorial writer Steven Greenhut explained today that perhaps it might be time to do exactly that. Here are some excerpts from his editorial:
In March, two local GOP heavy hitters, Keith Carlson, treasurer of the California Republican Party, and Mike Schroeder, former state party chairman and well-known O.C. lawyer and political adviser, filed a lawsuit against Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook, a Democratic candidate for the 46th Congressional District seat now held by Republican Dana Rohrabacher. The lawsuit tried to stop Mayor Cook from designating herself as the city’s mayor on the ballot even though she is actually the mayor. Apparently, voters are more apt to vote for a “mayor” than a mere councilwoman, so the GOP operatives decided to challenge her title based on a picayune argument. When you view politics as a game, this sort of thing makes sense.
They pointed to the election code section stating that the ballot designation must reflect the office to which a candidate “was elected by vote of the people.” In most Orange County cities, including Huntington Beach, candidates are elected by the people as council members, then fellow council members vote among themselves to name the mayor for the year. Two local Republican mayors are now using the “mayor” designation in their races for Assembly even though they became mayor in the same way, but no Republicans challenged those designations for the obvious reason that this is partisan gamesmanship toward the end of assuring Rohrabacher’s re-election.
The election code also states that the ballot label can refer to “current principal professions, vocations, or occupations of the candidate.” The Secretary of State’s office, which makes ballot determinations, agreed with Cook that she spends most of her time as the city’s mayor and so allowed her to list herself as such.
The Republicans challenged this in court.
Well, Carlson and Schroeder were smacked down hard by the state Fourth District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana. The court dismissed the case because Schroeder filed in the wrong court and didn’t name the right people in the lawsuit. The justices took an almost mocking tone here: “Given the Secretary of State’s statutorily required role in the process of congressional primaries, we have here an almost textbook case where she is an indispensable party. Can ‘complete relief’ be given in her absence? No way. Regardless of what the local
ROFLMAO. That thing. You know, where you’re laughing and then your ass falls off because you’re rolling around on the floor too hard. You know what I mean.
Schroeder, Carlson, Scott Baugh, Bucher and their fellow creeps on the OC Central Committee are doing a fine job of destroying the Republican Party.
I hope everyone also saw the article in the April 6 Register about Bucher’s meddling in a school district in South County. Public schools are in enough trouble without the Education Alliance trying to wage a holy war over teaching creationism.