UPDATE: Busted Sign Thief / Carpetbagger Paulette Chaffee leaves Fullerton Council Race!

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I will not lie.  I will not cheat.  I will not steal.

Pretty simple, right?

This blog has a long track record of highlighting political sign crime in Orange County.

Click here to see past coverage.

Committing a crime to suppress political speech is a fundamental, selfish, and reckless attack on the First Amendment.

As you can read in our past coverage, it’s usually difficult to catch criminals in action and hold them accountable for battering our Republic.

It’s even harder to catch someone running for office.

Friends for Fullerton’s Future caught a sign thief red handed todayThey have incontrovertible evidence, the thief is readily identifiable, and video even shows she illegally parked to commit the crime.

This individual is not suitable for public service.  If you break the law to silence critics, you belong in jail, not public office.

So, what say you readers?  Take a look at the video.  Let us know what should be done with Paulette Marshall Chaffee.

I’m sure her husband, Mayor Doug Chaffee, who is currently running for Orange County Supervisor and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on his campaign, will have something to say.

UPDATE FROM VERN, 7pm

I swung by Tony Bushala’s place this afternoon for totally unrelated reasons, not knowing that these stolen signs (two of them, two incidents caught on security cams) were HIS signs stolen by Paulette from HIS property.  They were signs he had spent money creating and put all over town, and they have been DISAPPEARING all over town, so it’s fair to guess Paulette has stolen many of them.  And why?  Well, they are signs that Paulette wouldn’t like, because they are trademark Bushala anti-carpetbagger signs, such as this one, which is in the exact place replacing one of the ones Paulette stole:

Now what makes this whole thing so amazing, is, well, a lot of things.  This lady caught stealing signs that she doesn’t like is 1. probably close to 70 years old;  2. a lawyer;  3.  an “officer of the court”;  4. THE MAYOR’S WIFE;  5. the wife of a man running for OC Supervisor, who attacked his Democratic rival Joe Kerr for carpetbagging while his wife was setting up to do the same thing.  The woman certainly knew she was breaking the law;  she just feels entitled to do that.  I went with Tony to the Fullerton Police Department this afternoon where he filed a report with Officer Casares:

Really, this whole episode SHOULD make Paulette’s political aspirations as TOAST as Phil Bacerra’s!  Look, media!  Look, Register!  The Mayor’s wife, an elderly LAWYER running as a carpetbagger for Council, CAUGHT ON FILM STEALING SIGNS letting people know about that!  How will she wriggle out of this? 

Another tantalizing question – when does she move back shamefacedly shamelessly to the Chaffee Mansion? 

UPDATE 2, Oct. 9

It “comes around.”  From our Fullerton correspondent Matt Leslie we learn that Paulette has now left the Council race – read his excellent and merciless write-up here.  Check out her pathetic withdrawal statement which complains about mean locals picking on her for her age and race, while saying not a word about her sign thievery:

You think she used the word “community” enough times?

As Matt put it (along with other nice insights) – “She still seems completely unaware of, perhaps even incapable of understanding, how grossly offensive many voters found her expedient move from an expensive neighborhood up in the hills into a heavily Latino and less affluent district expressly for the purpose of running for office there.”  Read more…

 


About Ryan Cantor

Our conservative columnist, raised in North Orange County, works as an auditor.