[UPDATE: If you’re interested in this story from Tuesday, you’ll probably also want to read our follow-up from Wednesday, where OJB asks the questions that apparently do not occur to others.]
As predicted in the OJB story “Vote Lopez for Assessor, Because Whether by Guilt or Guile, Guillory’s Goose is Cooked” back before the June primary, Orange County Assessor Webster Guillory is being charged with felonies due to his turning in falsified nomination papers on March 7 — in the last hour of the last day of filing for that position. The charges were raised by his former whistle-blowing employee and challenger for the position of Assessor, Jorge Lopez.
And, as also predicted here, in the OJB story “JORGE LOPEZ Complaint on Guillory Sigs: the Final Pre-Election Word from the DA is … Silence!,” OCDA Tony Rackauckas did not take any action on those charges prior to the election, when it could have given voters a choice between Lopez and former Board of Equalization member Claude Parrish, and now has taken action on the charges in time to help the campaign of the OCGOP-endorsed Parrish.
As it is, despite his being underfunded, Lopez’s presence in the race prevented Guillory from beating Parrish by less than 10% of the vote for a second time in June. (As Lopez endorsed by the Democratic Party and Parrish by the Republican Party, with Guillory an independent, it’s likely that Lopez’s votes would have gone disproportionately to Guillory.
* WEBSTER GUILLORY | 135,210 | 46.4% |
CLAUDE PARRISH | 128,839 | 44.2% |
JORGE O. LOPEZ | 27,658 | 9.5% |
(That low vote total for Lopez is largely the cost of his being unable to afford Orange County’s huge, competition-deterring, ballot statements for countywide races — something that, as the saying goes, “is no accident.”)
Guillory is no longer the issue here. Win or lose the November election, his goose is now entirely cooked. The issue now is Rackauckas, who time and again just happens to ignore wrongdoing among Republicans and to focus on wrongdoing among those that challenge them. (For the purpose of this statement, certain favored Democrats — see the current fracas surrounding Miguel Pulido — are treated as “honorary Republicans.”)
So what does one do in the upcoming election? That’s easy: vote for Guillory! He’ll probably never take office again (if he even lasts until the end of this term), but the OCDA’s machinations that always seem to work out helping Republican electeds and insider aspirants are intolerable.
If Guillory wins, we have a situation similar to what we had when Tom Daly left the City Clerk’s office for the State Assembly. The Board of Supervisors had to replace him — and was under substantial scrutiny as they did so. After a process in which highly connected Republicans from all over were considered — Dick Ackerman, Chris Norby, Bruce Peotter, Renee Ramirez — they chose someone with a reputation for both honesty and competence: Hugh Nguyen, who was re-elected this June.
That — rather than anointing Parrish because his competition got whacked — would be the best way to ensure that the most qualified, competent, and honest County Official is appointed. I have no idea whether Lopez would submit his name — but the longtime Assessor’s Office supervisor would stack up well against Parrish, who may be a bit chummy with big real estate holding interests in the County. And there may be others as or more qualified than Lopez who are interested in the job as well. If Parrish can compete with them on competence, rather just connections, then I wouldn’t feel like the County got jobbed by his election. But, if he gets appointed despite his relatively lower experience to serve, compared to Lopez et al., then the Supervisors will have to personally own the results.
That would not be some huge Success Story of Democracy — but it’s as close as we can get sometimes in Orange County. So vote for the guy who’s been indicted — without worrying about his continuing to mess up the office — until and unless we manage to get a political system that doesn’t smell.
Here’s the press release that just came out today:
September 9, 2014
Case # TBA
ORANGE COUNTY ASSESSOR WEBSTER GUILLORY CHARGED WITH FILING FALSE NOMINATION PAPERS IN PRIMARY ELECTION
SANTA ANA – The Orange County District Attorney has charged Orange County Assessor Webster Guillory with filing false nomination papers in a re-election bid for County Assessor in the March 2014 Orange County primary election. Webster James Guillory, 70, Newport Beach, is charged with three felony counts of filing false nomination papers and faces a possible sentence ranging from probation up to four years and four months in jail if convicted. He is expected to be released on his own recognizance and arraigned Friday, Sept. 12, 2014, at 9:00 a.m. at the Central Justice Center, Santa Ana. The Department is to be determined.
At the time of the incident, Guillory was the four-term elected County Assessor for the Orange County Office of the Assessor.
Background Information
To appear as an Assessor candidate on the ballot for a primary election, a person must file required paperwork, including nomination papers, with the Registrar of Voters by 5:00 p.m. on the filing deadline date. A nomination paper is a petition that can be signed by Orange County registered voters to support the candidacy of/nominate the candidate. Each petition page has space for 10 voter signatures. For the Office of Assessor, a candidate must submit 20 valid signatures of registered voters on nomination papers to qualify as a candidate and appear on the ballot.
Nomination papers cannot legally be accepted by the Registrar of Voters unless an affidavit is signed at the end of each page by the signature collector stating that he/she personally circulated the nomination paper and witnessed the signatures being written. The signature collector does not need to be the candidate, but the actual signature collector must be the person to sign each affidavit.
Circumstances of the Case
The filing deadline for the 2014 Orange County primary election was March 7, 2014, at 5:00 p.m.
On the afternoon of March 7, 2014, Guillory collected signatures on two petitions, nine on the first and two on the second. Guillory is accused of also receiving petitions circulated by his associate, who gathered and collected three full pages of 10 signatures each.
Knowing that he had not personally collected the signatures or witnessed them being written, Guillory is accused of signing his name on two of the 10-signature petitions collected by his associate under the affidavit that reads, “I circulated the petition and witnessed the signatures on this section of the nomination paper being written.” He is accused of requesting another colleague to falsely sign the third petition.
Shortly before the end-of-day filing deadline, Guillory is accused of fraudulently filing the three nomination papers at the Registrar of Voters, knowing the information each contained about who had personally circulated the petitions and collected the signatures was untrue.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation received a confidential complaint and investigated this case.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Brock Zimmon of the Special Prosecutions Unit is prosecuting this case.
Parrish should be grateful for Lopez’s presence in the race — and for Lopez’s expertise, if (as one hopes) Parrish plans on running an honest and competent office. Maybe he should be willing to let the uniformly Republican Board of Supervisors have the last say. He won’t, of course — which is why the voters, if they want to see any real debate over how the Assessor’s Office is run, will have to do it for him.
I am voting for Parrish. The only responsible one of the bunch. Just because you are too poor (or cheap) to pay for a ballot statement, doesn’t make it wrong.
Heres a clue: get a job, a donation or save your pennies (or charge by the word), if you can’t play in the majors, stay out and SHUT UP.
GULLUORRY IS CHEATET.
Um, what?
I think this is pure retaliation on Webster due to his action of correcting the property value that got Pulido in trouble. Be that as it may, if Parish gets appointed the VOC is gonna be on his ass like white on rice till they catch him red handed doing some shady shit with property values.
Oh God, I agree with Paul Lucas. Mimi can commit perjury and no problem, Dennis Bilodeau can threaten county contractors and no problem. If Claude Parrish is elected as Assessor he will probably be in jail himself for a “you pay me, I’ll assess your property at whatever you want” style of leadership. Webster Guillory has been a fine Assessor for Orange County, this really is very sad. Greg, my fear is that Denis Bilodeau will get the appointment if it ends up going that way.
And how would you expect Claude Parrish to land in jail even if he did such a thing? You think that the OCDA would step in? Kamala’s pretty busy and Sacramento views OC as just a very large rural Georgia or South Carolina county, pointless to clean up.
Denis Bilodeau was going to run, then failed to complete filing at close to the last minute, which is when Guillory showed up. Whoever dragooned Guillory into the race like that did him a real favor, huh? Maybe he should be allowed to give state’s evidence on that.
Guillory may or may not be better than Parrish, but he had serious problems as Assessor. The whole computer system fiasco, for example, was rotten doings. If Bilodeau runs for an appointment, at a time when no one is busy with other elections, then all attention will turn to him — and some of it would no doubt splash onto his patron Shawn Nelson. I don’t see it as Bilodeau — and, if it is, then maybe Kamala will get much more interested in OC.
why do you guys continue to pick on my friends
BECAYSE YOUR FRIENDS IS CHEATET!!
but their friendship helps to pay the neiman’s bill which keeps the people in the shoe department and the dolce gabanna department employed which helps the economy
Uh, what sorts of cargo do you carry in those trucks of yours, mike?
Why are your friends all whistling weenies?
Didn’t DA Tony Rackauckas ENDORSE Guillory? Is that part of the legerdemain of the conspiracy too? Master distraction? Really? And by the way, the DA probably didn’t want to charge Guillory himself, which is why he went Grand Jury. Then it’s their fault, not his political issue.
I don’t recall Racky endorsing Guillory — the light that this race sheds on GOP politics in OC is so interesting — but let’s say that he did. In that case, the original complaint about his inaction still stands — but then it would not be a two-step way to elect Parrish. That does raise the question of why, if Racky prefers Guillory, he allowed the trigger to be pulled at all now.
Generally, if a prosecutor does something like that, it’s because he has no choice. What would give him “no choice”? It could be the FPPC or the AG’s office stepping into this — unlikely as that seems. Or there’s one other possibility: isn’t there supposed to be a new FBI Public Corruption Unit in the county? And isn’t Rackauckas supposed to be on some joint task force (or some such) with that unit? If so, then interest by the FBI in what happened — perhaps the more significant events that I noted — could have forced his hand.
You seem to know a fair bit about this, Reza — what else do you have to add?