This is going to seem like a small thing, but it isn’t, because whoever gets a sign put up first on public property has protection from it being legally removed throughout the course of the election. So there’s an incentive for candidates to “jump the gun” if possible — at least if they’re corrupt enough or negligent to hire corrupt contractors for whose mistakes they are held legally responsible but it’s rarely caught on video. And yet here you have it. Nine candidates (four on an apparent slate) snuck in the day before the starting date for signs to be posted on public property — and the video from which I snagged this footage was taken at around 2 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 18. It’s just a matter of luck that I happened to get onto Facebook and see it before it could be proven to be illegally jumping the gun.
As the great Dinah Washington famously sang: “What a difference a day makes!” Well, in election law, it makes a huge difference! Try smuggling a ballot in a backdated envelope into the system the day after an election and see what difference that one day makes! If this were a track meet, it could lead to an automatic disqualification. (Well, the might have to do it twice — but my guess is that this is not an isolated occurrence, and ALL signs on public property before midnight tonight should be confiscated and dropped into one of the city’s toxic waste dumps.
(If you’re unfamiliar with this fantastic singer and her remarkable voice and phrasing, take a couple of minutes! Skip the ads.)
Most of the people list above are probably just negligent dupes — all of them conservatives, coincidentally or not (hint: not) — but the inclusion of one of them is an absolute travesty. And that is the megalomaniacal City Attorney, now up for re-election — Michael Gates. Gates has long been a terrible choice for his position based on his deportment and pig-ignorance — and that was before he informed the City Council that he was the sole arbiter of the meaning of the City Charter, and if they wanted to challenge his “ruling” then they had to use either his office or an outside attorney that HE found acceptable and was under HIS OFFICE’S SUPERVISION, which is why I sometimes call him a tyrant who attempted a coup against his own Council — but this violation by the guy who is supposed to be enforcing the city’s election laws is INCREDIBLE! He should disqualify himself from ALL Election Law enforcement regarding this year’s elections in favor of someone insulated against his oversight — yes, probably an outside council reporting directly to the City Manager and Council — because ignorance of the law is especially no excuse for the person tasked with enforcing the law! I hope that the candidates in this election will file not only with the Fair Political Practices Commission over this attempt to muscle the people he doesn’t like out of prime public throughway real estate — but also ask the Attorney General to join in a motion to bar him from making any decisions about this election.
Every City Council candidate who jumped the gun — especially those in the two conservative slates listed — Burns, McKeon, Strickland, and Van der Mark; and Burley, O’Connell, and Clifford — should identify immediately who put these signs up and where! Their vendor may be held responsible, but they can also explain why they thought that this was OK and who if any candidates made the suggestion. (The two City Council slates suggests at least two vendors.) If they agree to indemnify the candidates for their own mistakes, that’s a problem: unless they face jail time or something else that can’t just be written off as a business expense, it allows candidates to contract with people who will shield them from responsibility. This attack on the political process is something for the Grand Jury to investigate, but for now election lawyers (not me, probably the Democratic Party-affiliated ones from LA) can get election matters heard on an accelerated schedule — before more “just the cost of business!” abuses take place.
But whatever penalty might be imposed on the negligent-at-best City Council candidates, City Attorney Gates should get one, two, maybe three orders of magnitude more of it. There is just NO excuse for his campaign breaking this law — and you know that if someone were found taking down these Illegally posted signs before Code Enforcement does, he’d come after them for the strongest crime he could find.
Meanwhile, I’ll suggest three things:
(1) Huntington Beach residents (no one else) should be complaining to the City Code Enforcement department about this.
(2) If you’re in the area and seeing this before Monday begins at midnight — take photos with a digital camera with an actual timestamp and email them to yourself before midnight so you can prove the violation.
(3) If you see a bunch of signs on public property before midnight, after you take a photo you can come back here and send us links to those photos. We’ll publish them in comments below.
This is being published, by the way, at 1800 hours on Sept. 18.
Since this event is now over, those who witnessed this are able to call for a DA and Attorney General investigation — and anyone who knows about it is, from here or elsewhere, is welcome to call HB Code Enforcement.