Is it possible for a person, or a politician, to have LESS THAN ZERO regard for the truth? To have a NEGATIVE regard for the truth, to actually VALUE LIES OVER TRUTH on principle? I think we do see that sometimes, and we’re seeing it now with 40th-district Congressional candidate “Poseidon Joe” Kerr, who is the most dishonest DEMOCRAT candidate in recent memory. Donald Trump’s jaw would drop in admiration!

I had already thought the shameless whoppers two of Joe’s people slathered onto the comments section HERE were newsworthy enough for their own story, but that’ll have to wait a few more paragraphs. Because, on the very same day, CA-40 voters were treated to THIS stiff Charmin of a mailer:

“Paid for by Kerr for Congress,” like all his lying mailers – this cannot be blamed on some unaccountable I.E. So, CA-40 voters, stand by for the lowdown:

This is first of all an attempt to imitate something coming from the official state Democratic Party, and to make you think Joe was endorsed by the Party. FACT: Joe barely got 40% of the Party vote, but did manage to keep Allyson Damikolas half-a-percent under the 60% required to get the Party endorsement. The fact remains that SHE, not he, was the choice of 3 out of 5 in that vote, and he barely hung on to 2 out of 5. Joe is NOT the choice of the Party. (And when I hung out at the County Party, right after he’d announced, I heard plenty of insiders express relief that Allyson would be coming along and offering a better choice.)

Then, on a roll, Joe doubles down on the lies he has already told, lies which I had refuted a week earlier in the Register, in a thoroughly fact-checked piece that drove Joe and his folks batshit crazy. All those bad, bad things he accuses Allyson of “personally funding?” She didn’t and doesn’t. Joe’s Republican consultants i77Strategies came up with those by cherry-picking through the countless little investments managers like Vanguard and Fidelity make with people’s IRA/401k accounts – yours would look the same if somebody poked through them, and so would Joe’s.

Allyson does NOT “personally fund” any “anti-choice and anti-gay politicians.” But you know who literally DOES personally fund anti-choice and anti-gay politicians? Lying Joe Kerr is who.

As I already mentioned, during the high point of his career, which is when he led the OC Firefighters Union for 17 years, he gave generously to MANY anti-choice and anti-gay Republicans, as long as they’d vote more money to his firefighters. “Van Tran. Todd Spitzer. Ken Maddox. The list goes on.” Really, the list does go on, and it must have been nice to have such a close Republican friend (Spitzer) gliding into the DA position just as Joe was illegally lying about his residence during his 2018 Supervisor race. I guess Joe thinks he’s rubber and Allyson is glue, but now is not a time for childish games.

Then, what’s this “believes in rightwing QAnon conspiracy theories?” Why that’s the old “chemtrails” canard again – from when Joe’s folks took 6 or 7 words out of context, from an answer Chemical Engineer Allyson was giving about fossil fuels and flight paths. Of course she doesn’t believe in the “chemtrails” theory, and Joe knows she doesn’t. But till now, he could claim that this lie came from some shadowy I.E. called “Flipthe40th” – now he is proudly OWNING that lie. Sir, have you no shame? No. No, he doesn’t.

How DID Joe end up using the consultants i77Strategies anyhow, inquiring minds have been wanting to know – a group that till now has always worked for the most extreme MAGA Republicans? I can help out with that: All the reputable Democrat consultants TURNED JOE DOWN, believing him to be a rotten candidate… and hearing that, i77 snatched him up! We can only theorize why they did that, but it makes sense that they’d like to help a bad Democrat win in the primary, just so Young Kim can whip his lying butt in November.

Speaking of i77, they did write to the Register after my scrupulously fact-checked piece was published there. And what did they have to say? Only that it’s ironic that *I*, a DUI felon who’d been “kicked out of the Democratic Party” could have the nerve to say “Voters can’t trust Joe Kerr.” (Actually I wasn’t “kicked out of the Party,” I agreed to resign my position as Club VP so that I could keep spewing my opinion here when I think my Party has made bad choices.) THE LETTER DID NOT DISPUTE A SINGLE FACT IN MY PIECE. Of course the Register didn’t publish such a stupid letter. But I’ll have i77 know that in this country a cat may look at a king. Or even at a truth-challenged “fire hero.”

Why “Poseidon Joe?”

As I keep reminding people, Joe Kerr was installed onto an important water board – the SARWQCB – just to smooth the path forward for the Poseidon Desalination project – something that the Coastal Commission later killed and good thing – it woulda been an unnecessary $1.5 BILLION taxpayer boondoggle as well as an environmental catastrophe. And he followed his orders there, along with crooked Republican Kris Murray, doing their best to make sure that when approved Poseidon wouldn’t have to do any environmental mitigation.

Well, in this comments thread, Joe’s wife China, in her herculean efforts to dispute EVERYTHING I’d written, started claiming that “Joe voted NO” on the project – and when I blew a gasket over that claim, she ran and got Joe’s old right-hand man Tony Bedolla to back her up. And Tony showed up with a PDF of that water board’s vote, exclaiming, “LOOK! HE VOTED NO! IT’S RIGHT THERE! JOE VOTED NO ON POSEIDON!” [Update – China says she didn’t “run and get Tony” so maybe she didn’t. That’s just how it looked.]

You’re not gonna believe this: What Joe and Kris actually voted NO on was on putting conditions on Poseidon that Poseidon didn’t like, that would have cost them money, that would have forced them to do some MITIGATION that would have partially made up for the mess they were so eager to create. Far from voting NO on Poseidon, Joe voted NO on making things difficult for Poseidon. And his apologists are now claiming that he was voting NO on Poseidon.

Think about this for a minute, and tell me it’s not positively ORWELLIAN in its audacity.

I’m actually gratified that it’s now considered so embarrassing, and a political liability, to have tied yourself to that doomed boondoggle. But soon enough this Bedolla fellow had segued smoothly from claiming his buddy voted NO, to listing the reasons that it was a GOOD thing Joe supported Poseidon. It reminded me of when Anaheim Council candidate Mitch Caldwell told a huge crowd that he’d always been a supporter of District Elections, and then when Daniel Robbins raised his hand to remind Mitch that he had actually SIGNED HIS NAME to the argument AGAINST District Elections, without missing a beat Mitch started to explain WHY he had always opposed District Elections. These fucking politicians.

Or, better yet, it was like when Rick James insisted to Dave Chappelle, “Hell no I never rubbed my muddy boots on Eddie Murphy’s couch, why would I do that?” And then moments later he blurts out, “OF COURSE I rubbed my boots on Eddie’s couch, because Eddie could afford a new one!”

Think about it.

CA-40 voters, do you want a guy like this as your standard bearer against Young Kim? Do you want a guy like this as your Congressman even (if he beats her) – probably for decades or as long as he wants? Someone who lies as easy as he breathes?

We’re sure Joe knows that his mailers and ads are chock-full of demonstrable untruths about himself and about Allyson. We’re sure that he tells himself “Everybody does it.” Sure, it’s only natural that political ads are gonna have some exaggeration, some omissions, some mischaracterizations. But this is at a level of mendacity that we haven’t seen from an OC Democrat. (At least since Danny Fierro ran the campaigns of Jordan Brandman and Mitch Caldwell.)

When I made a list of “winners and losers” in the wake of Jessie Lopez’ splendid victory against the Police Union recall, my first “winner” was “THE TRUTH” over “lies and big money.” We hoped that was a sign of the times, of voters getting smarter. We still hold out that hope.

If Joe beats Allyson Tuesday, he’ll have learned, and proved, that lying works.

Many others, observers, will have learned, once more, that lying works.

If Joe beats Allyson Tuesday, the world will have become a little bit worse.

Vote Allyson!