Ah, the sorrow. Ah, the pity. Has there ever been a political couple in Orange County that has suffered more than Duane Cave and Carol Gamble? Just in order to SERVE their COMMUNITY? Barely a year after our cruel DA prevented Carol from running for re-election to Rancho Santa Margarita Council (just because she lied on her nomination paperwork), he makes Duane resign from his beloved water board (just because, in that same election, he lied about where he lived which was actually outside the water district with his lovely Carol.)
I mean, these are two longtime powerful Republican South-OC insiders, exactly the kind to whom laws are SUPPOSED to be no more meaningful than cobwebs – at least that’s how it’s been all our lives.
I dare you to watch this with dry eyes, the positively Shakespearean spectacle of Duane having to give up his decade-old water board seat last Thursday. King Lear, stand back!
Seriously though, what pathetic shit. Crying because he has to leave the water board (which was paying him $34k+ as well as $24k in benefits, for what that’s worth.) And using his own attorney as a character witness: “My lawyer says I’m innocent” and “my living with my wife was only temporary” – when it turns out he’s been renting out his Aliso Viejo home for THREE YEARS while pretending to live there, just to stay on the Board. 17 months ago I wrote, in “True and Amazing Tales of Aliso Viejo,”
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Who is this Mayor-Marrying
DUANE CAVE
and why does he hate the Boys & Girls Club?
This Duane Cave cat seems like perhaps AV’s most influential citizen – President of the Moulton Niguel Water District, 45-year executive with both gas and electrical utilities, OC TAX bigwig, close friend and confidante for some reason with Madcap Mayor Mike Munzing, ref and umpire for youth football and baseball teams, and UNTIL RECENTLY on the Board of Directors of the Boys and Girls Club of Capistrano Valley.
And there is something irresistible about Duane to female Mayors. Who can forget the comely Carmen Vali-Cave, Aliso Viejo’s very first and five-time Mayor, wedded to the Cave man. More recently Duane set his Mayor sights a little further inland, and hitched up with Rancho Santa Margarita Mayor Carol Gamble (though it’s unclear if she lives with him in AV in which case she shouldn’t be RSM mayor or if he lives with her in which case he shouldn’t be on that water board.) [Emphasis added Nov. 2025.]
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… and I went on, last year, to talk about Duane’s apparent involvement in the persecution of the Boys and Girls Club over some “DEI” nonsense in their charter, although he seemed to distance himself from that controversy later, and the jihad against South County kids was pursued more fervently by the more ideological MAGAts Tony Beall of RSM & Mike Munzing of AV.
But on the topic of Duane’s mayor-marrying career, his current mayor wife puts him to shame with her past political love life, as Shawn Gordon documented this week in “The Sordid History of RSM Founder Carol Gamble.” It is nice that these two restless souls eventually found each other, but not so nice that they feel entitled to lie when they run for office.
Let me now squeeze out a LITTLE bit of praise for our District Attorney Todd Spitzer, for FINALLY holding some powerful OC Republican politicians accountable to the law, halfway through (Todd’s) second term. Maybe it was a little embarrassing that it took the feds to come in and bust his old friends Harry Sidhu and Andrew Do (for much worse transgressions.) And I don’t think we can count on the Trump DOJ to go after political corruption, any more.
Also we have to say that the real credit goes to the muckrakers who did the real investigative work and the real pestering-Todd work, Shawn Gordon in this case, Tony Bushala and Arthur Sanchez in other cases (will the Beall shoe drop next?) Interestingly, all three of these muckrakers are disaffected Republicans.
Now, as promised:
Why do so many OC politicians lie about where they live?
This has been a bipartisan plague here for decades, and never punished till recent years – I created this collage (off the top of my head) back in 2018, before Todd got elected and threw the book at Democrat Roman Reyna (and that was about it). So many more cases since, and only just now are there starting to be consequences, for any Republicans at least! Maybe I’ll finish this story later, or write a new one, I’m just enjoying this collage too much…
Not “carpetbaggers” but OC residence-liars, 6 Republicans & 5 Democrats: Paulette Marshall Chaffee, Mimi Walters, Harry Sidhu, Lorri Galloway, Michelle Steel, Linda “Ackerwoman” Ackerman, Jose Solorio, Steven Choi, Joe Kerr, Vincent Sarmiento (disputed), and “Doctor” Kimberly Ho of (not) Westminster. As of 2018, many more since.
Vern out, for now – and Congratulations Shawn Gordon!
“…laws are SUPPOSEDLY no more meaningful than cobwebs”
Brilliant. I wish I’d said that.
Did you say that? I thought it was a variation on … something going way back to Anacharsis, sez Google.
But you reminded me of a great Monty Python sketch featuring Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler and George Bernard Shaw.
“I wish I’d have said that, James.” “You will, Oscar, you will.”
No, I never said it.
Vern, your support documenting that event when Todd visited my office for a “press conference” when he commitment to prosecuting carpetbaggers who lie about their residency was invaluable to secure Todd’s pledge to take action if he won that election. That “press conference “ was key in finally ensuring a little bit of accountability and bringing integrity back into OC’s political system. My hats off to you!
You don’t have a hat.
He does often don a skull cap though, and that is what I am envisioning, doffed.
If you include Kim Nguyen in your photo collage, you must consider Dave Penaloza. She was on the Garden Grove city council while he was on the Santa Ana city council. One would assume, since they were newlyweds with a child on the way, they resided under one roof, in either city.
And back when folks actually read TheLiberalOC, before Chumley joined and took over, Lawson got in some hot water for pointing out the hypocrisy of Tom Umberg, who claimed to reside in a small one bedroom apartment in south Santa Ana while the rest of his family resided in a large comfortable home in Villa Park.
Yeah, like I said that collage was made back in 2018 (and apparently it shoulda included Umberg, who was stalked by Cunningham just as Chmielewski stalked Choi.) – AND I mentioned that there had been plenty more cases SINCE then, and only recently (with the exception of Roman Reyna) did they face any consequences. There will have to be a newer bigger collage.
A couple are mentioned in this story of mine from last February:
https://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2025/02/west-oc-councilwoman-crime-docket-introducing-seal-beach-mayor-lisa-landau/
Seal Beach’s Lisa Landau who went unpunished;
And Stanton’s Hong Alyce Van, who did get busted after strenuous detective work by Cunningham (Alyce was a Dem.)
Since then, Irvine’s Tammy Kim was a biggie who Todd threw the book at!
(Oh ps that wasn’t Kim Nguyen in the collage, that was literally a Westminster Councilwoman named Kim Ho, a cosmetologist who called herself a doctor and many people believed actually lived in Yorba Linda. Eventually Amy Pham West came along and made Kim Ho look serious.)
The best stalk of all was Tony B. investigating Hairball Sidhu’s fake address at the beautiful Calabria Apartments and then his visit to the fraudulent Lucky Way house where Mrs. Hide N’ Seek actually happened to be.
A close second has got to be Lorraine Galloway who coughed up THREE fake addresses in succession.