Brett Daniels was one of three candidates that ran for Sacramento County Sheriff on the June ballot. He also is a former member of the Citrus Heights City Council. He is running again for a City Council seat in Citrus Heights and sought the endorsement of the Sacramento County Republican Party (SCRP). The SCRP met for their regular meeting last Thursday (September 9th). The main agenda item was endorsement for non-partisan races.
The way the endorsement process worked was that a committee of five people—one from each supervisorial district—met and voted their recommendations. The full body then treated the recommendations as a consent calendar unless someone wished to consider a recommendation separately. Mr. Daniels was pulled from the list and on a separate vote; he failed to get the endorsement. This was based solely on his recent endorsement of Sheriff Candidate Jim Cooper. Cooper—a Democrat—is running against Republican Scott Jones. Jones got the SCRP endorsement over Daniels prior to the June election.
In fairness to Daniels, he was at the SCRP meeting and not allowed to speak. I can understand that he was frustrated by this and that he did not prevail in a group that would normally support him. Anyway, when I awoke on Saturday, I was greeted by the message below. It was sent not just to members of the SCRP but to other candidates and elected officials. It was addressed to the chairman of the SCRP.
Daniels began his lengthy email by criticizing the endorsements process and the fact that he was not allowed to speak at the meeting. Further frustrating him was the fact that one of the people leading the effort to block his endorsement is involved with the Scott Jones campaign. I think this individual should have kept his mouth shut and let others go after Daniels but he doesn’t even consider this a problem. (It is and just not in this instance but that is beyond the scope of this entry.)
Daniels claimed that he had inside information on Jones that caused him to change his mind. Below is that portion of his email. (Note some spelling errors in the emails below have been corrected but they are otherwise unchanged.)
Because a few vocal hypocrites have decided it’s ok to put party over principle, I have decided to share the information the I shared with the Endorsement Committee with the remainder of the central committee and have attached it to this message. This contained document clearly shows that Scott Jones engaged in an on-going criminal relationship with known ex-felons to provide confidential information for financial gain. Since the document (mainly the Affidavit for a Search Warrant, pgs 14-22) can be somewhat confusing to the general public, I offer to explain it to any one that cares to ask.
In talking with the Endorsement Committee, I didn’t even get the chance to explain another troubling fact about Mr. Jones that I became aware of during the primary involving another deputy who was convicted of a misdemeanor trespass charge after he lied about a 911 call to get into the home of a woman he hoped to pursue romantically, where her two daughters were alone. A federal civil case that resulted in a more than $200,000 settlement charged the deputy with rifling the woman’s dresser drawers after ordering the two girls – then 8 and 12 – to stay in the living room. The deputy’s conduct was so egregious that the judge issued a stern rebuke as she handed down his sentence. “You traumatized those two children,” she said, calling the deputy’s actions a violation of “public trust.” Mr. Jones was a close friend of the deputy, indeed previously lived with the deputy’s wife, and it was Mr. Jones who was in Legal Affairs that lobbied to keep the deputy on the department. It is widely known that Mr. Jones plans to have his friend serve as his Legal Affairs Officer.
Daniels concludes his letter with one last complaint. Namely, others endorsed that night endorsed Cooper so why was he singled out?
Lastly, an attachment was sent with the above email. The attachment is from the Sacramento County Deputy Sheriff’s Association—the union that gave Jim Cooper about $200,000—and can be found here Pages_from_100428_FILED_Motion_to_Unseal_Search_Warrant_Affidavits_PART_1.pdf
When people push my button on something, I’m not shy about firing off a response. Brett Daniels got such a response from me. I have nothing against Brett, but Jim Cooper is on my list of bad guys that need to lose elections. Here are few exerts from my response.
The disciplinary records of Scott Jones have been released to the public. The disciplinary records of Jim Cooper have not and never will be.
Mr. Cooper has subjected other Council members to the wrath of the Sacramento County Grand Jury because they dared to publicly disagree with him on Council issues. He has used bully tactics on other Council members both publicly and behind the scenes. He is a bully with a badge that abuses his public trust. In July, Mr. Cooper tried to remove Sophia Scherman as Mayor because she called a special meeting about a group home for juvenile sexual offenders that happened to be the same night he had a scheduled fundraiser for his Sheriff campaign. I know, I was at the Council meeting.
Mr. Cooper has been chastised by the Sacramento County Grand Jury on multiple occasions for his behavior on the Elk Grove City Council. I am confident from what I have seen and know of him that if his disciplinary records as a law enforcement officer were released that we would not be having the email exchange.
The document that you emailed us today is a political hit piece on Scott Jones that was filed in April of this year to try to influence the outcome of the June election. The Deputy Sheriff’s Association has pumped about $200,000 into the election and this document was filed at the same time their contributions began to flow into Cooper’s campaign. This is not coincidence but part of a carefully coordinated election campaign.
Mr. Daniels fired off a lengthy response. I want to focus on the first paragraph.
I am in complete agreement with you that Mr. Cooper has not handled himself properly in certain situations. He should have recued himself in all matters that involved the Sacramento Sheriff’s Dept, which he did eventually but should have from the beginning. I also agree that Mr. Cooper has at times not handled matters in the manner that I would. And specifically to the Ms Scherman issue, that issue was the result of Ms Sherman on several occasions stepping outside her boundary as a Mayor of a “strong-City Manager” form of local government and culminated when she called a “Special Meeting” with 24-hrs notice outside the parameters of recognized legitimate “Special Meeting” guidelines, regardless of the topic of concern (which I agree was a serious one nonetheless). Somehow, I think you know these things already but refuse to acknowledge them.
The comments on Elk Grove Mayor Sophia Scherman were curious to me. They are almost verbatim what Jim Cooper, Steve Detrick and Gary Davis said when trying to oust Mayor Scherman. The phrase “strong mayor” was used many times to describe her calling of special meetings. I suspect that Daniels had been in communication with Mr. Cooper in the course of these exchanges. The assertion that Scherman did not have the power to call the meetings is a lie as I will illustrate in a moment. Cooper definitely found them damn inconvenient.
My final response to Daniels began:
As Mayor of Elk Grove Sophia does have the right to call a special meeting with 24 hours notice.
The City Council procedures manual clearly states under the heading for Special Meetings that “Special meetings and emergency meetings of the City Council may be called by the Mayor or majority of the City Council and held from time to time consistent with and pursuant to procedures set forth in the Ralph M Brown Act.”
The Brown Act states:
SPECIAL MEETINGS:
Twenty-four hour notice must be provided to members of legislative body and media outlets including brief general description of matters to be considered or discussed.
Brett Daniels was wrong to endorse Jim Cooper. In the June election he was the spoiler that prevented Scott Jones from winning. This forced a run-off in November. Daniels stated publicly that if he lost in June that he would endorse Jones. He has been around the block more that once as a politician and a deputy sheriff. For him to play dumb about the obvious “hit piece” by the Deputy Sheriff’s Association that was posted on their website back in April with much press and fanfare is unbelievable. Daniels was promising to support Jones after these documents were posted on the Internet and published in local media. Why is it dismissed as a “hit piece” in April and the silver bullet that slays Jones in July? There is more to this than Daniels has admitted.
To prove that I am right on all points stated here try these exerts from the debate held April 30th between Jim Cooper, Scott Jones and Brett Daniels. All quotes below and audio of the debate can be found here. http://hoguenews.com/?p=9976
As it relates to their resume, Bret Daniels was fired over his incident years back, while Jim Cooper and Scott Jones have been cleared of any wrong doing after extensive internal investigations more recently.
The scuffle has been Captain Scott Jones’ investigation – Cooper’s crew has been stating publicly that it was a cover-up, and Jones was never vetted properly by the department and the FBI.
While Jones has been taking the brunt of these shots from both Cooper and Daniels, Scott’s camp had asked for the personal records of Jim Cooper to be released for the public eye.
The first response from Cooper was no; doing so would be a violation of the union protection clause. Then, surprisingly during Friday’s 1380 KTKZ radio debate, Cooper made the announcement that he would be releasing his records.
The immediate complaint from Daniels and Jones was the limited release. Cooper was releasing some of his records, but he was holding back all of his internal investigation records from open review.
With Cooper’s news on Friday, it may tone down some of the rhetoric, but both Daniels and Jones believe his limited released is nothing more than window dressing.
As you can clearly see, Brett Daniels is lying about his July epiphany of Jones’ record. Further, when he says that Cooper has nothing left to release that he is lying. Daniels was the one leading the charge to get Cooper to release his records—including the internal investigation records.
Too bad Brett didn’t stay out of making any endorsement in this race if he had a change of heart about Jones. I would respect that a lot more than having him make a bunch of bald-faced lies not only to the Sacramento Republican Party but to a plethora of candidates and office holders in the county.
