Politics – Page 53 – Really Right

Thoughts on Barbara Alby’s Legacy

Barbara Alby died earlier this month. Most people do not know who she was but her imprint was large upon California politics. She was an activist for pro-life and family values, a radio talk show host before Rush Limbaugh was a household name, and a member of the California Assembly. Her biggest claim to fame was authoring legislation known as “Megan’s Law”.

However, it can be argued that she and her cohorts that took over the California Republican Assembly and later the California Republican Party in the early 1990s are largely responsible for the demise of the State Republican Party and the fact that Democrats won a 2/3 majority in the last election before her death.

I was with her in those early days of the 1990s and was an eye witness to much that in retrospect I think was done improperly. Before offering my analysis I wish to say that I have been involved to varying degrees in “grassroots politics” for several decades. I have a degree in Government from California State University in Sacramento. I worked in and around the Capitol during my college years. Willie Brown was speaker when I had my first experience under “The Dome” working for then Senator John Doolittle. I also worked for the Sacramento Union when Joseph Farah was trying to make it into a conservative alternative to the Sacramento Bee. In short, I was at ground zero when Barbara and her army of evangelical Christians were taking over. I was one of them and viewed myself as a loyal soldier to the cause.

Barbara—like most Christians—viewed the world in very black and white terms. Much of Christianity views the world in such categories and usually rightly so. We are saved, those outside the church are “the Lost”. We believe in Heaven and Hell; Good and Evil; right and wrong. However, when you bring such a view into the political arena this worldview can become a pretext for “scorched earth tactics”. Unlike the Christian belief of loving the Hell out of someone, in the political world vilification is easier than persuasion and gets faster results.

I think this is what happened with Barbara and her followers. In CRA and later in the CRP, we found it easier the run people out than we did to persuade them that our views and values were better because they rested on the Truth of Christianity and better reflected Western values. It was easier to play Power politics in the same way we perceived that our opponents did.

The results over time were catastrophic. The California Republican Assembly went from a statewide membership of tens of thousands to less than 2,400 today. The CRA lost most of its membership; many soured on politics and went home. Some fought the Conservative/Christian CRA and lost; some that remained active in the political world formed the California Congress of Republicans in the 1990s while in a more recent battle, Karen England and her gang tried to form the Conservative Republicans of California. Both have smaller memberships than CRA and all are struggling to maintain their existence.

Most people that Barbara brought into the political world behaved in similar fashion to her example and experienced similar results. Besides vanquishing her enemies, she also vanquished the “farm team”. Democrats groom their underlings for succession while Republicans engage them in mortal combat. As a result, when Barbara and her team jumped to the California Republican Party, no one left in CRA was able to maintain the momentum and energy Barbara brought to the organization.

CRA has been hemorrhaging members and influence ever since. Her once formidable Sacramento-Sierra Republican Assembly chapter went from a peak of 700 members under her leadership to less than 20 in ten years. Currently they are doing well if they maintain 25 members. Alby quit the CRA many years ago but many assumed she was with still part of the organization.

In like manner, the California Republican Party was captured by Barbara Alby and company. Alby controlled not only the CRA but many county central committees and then took control of the CRP. They owned the California GOP for a number of years.

The CRA’s chief Republican opponent during this period was liberal Republican Pete Wilson. Much of the disagreement with Wilson was on social policy. Wilson was not only pro-abortion but was an advocate for more government funding and constitutional protections for abortion rights. Wilson also would appoint Democrats over equally qualified Republicans to posts in State government. All of this just riled-up Conservatives in the Party. While all this was happening, Wilson very publicly called the conservatives in his party “Fucking Irrelevant.” Conservatives called Wilson, “Diane Feinstein in drag.”

A few years after capturing the California GOP, Alby began running for State Assembly. Once she was elected, her grip on the CRP was released as she went on to other things. A succession of chairmen took the reins of the GOP that pretended to be card carrying CRA members until they were elected and then they took off the sheep’s clothing and ran things as the RINOs that they were. In later years, Alby ran unsuccessfully for both Congress and the Board of Equalization.

The differences between the CRP factions still remain to this day; although the CRA has in fact become irrelevant as Wilson looked-for the irony is that Wilson is equally irrelevant. Wilson’s camp was making a good living off of the political process before Alby and company came along and upset the proverbial applecart. After a while, most evangelical conservatives left and the liberal Republicans re-took their place as GOP leaders.

My complaint with this whole process is not just with the tone and tactics employed by Evangelicals (including myself) but something harder to quantify. Namely, how does the fact that I am a Christian affect how I should treat others in politics or other “secular” areas?

What I am advocating is that we as Christians need a different paradigm to bring to the public square. When we copy what others are doing then we have ceded the moral high ground and lowered ourselves to engaging in the same political games everyone else utilizes. When Christians embrace the power religion of the State then they have compromised their biblical values and the authority of Scripture.

I will offer one recent example to illustrate my point, numerous similar ones would not be hard to find.
A few years ago, a group of conservatives in Sacramento County that were part of Barbara’s old CRA chapter, got together and decided to take over the Sacramento County Republican Central Committee (again). They even created a political action committee for the purpose called “Support the Platform” (STP). STP solicited CRA members for contributions. A friend and I gave generously to the cause. That year, many of the slate were elected; enough that the coalition that we made was able to take control of the Central Committee. Once in office, the woman that we elected as chair started going her own way. She refused any suggestions to offer one or two board positions to folks from “the other side”. Only her most trusted friends or folks that would do her bidding were given any responsibility. Before long she was tripling the SCRP dues—she had refused to pay any amount of dues when she was in the minority on the committee since she argued that forcing elected officials to pay dues was illegal—and after a time she decreed that only dues paying members would be allowed to vote. She and her faction adopted San Diego style bylaws which removed all power from the membership and vested it in the governing board and did a bunch of other things to enhance her power.

In just over two years, she turned an elected body into a member’s only club that did things her way or else. The Republicans of Sacramento County that actually voted for these folks were never notified or invited to any meetings. They were purposely not given any opportunity to interact with the representatives that they had elected. All actions of this body are conducted in secret. In fact new faces were not welcomed except by invitation and they were not allowed to be part of the group unless they were willing to pay $100 in annual dues. While this farce was happening, the STP PAC ran candidates against my friend and I even thought we had contributed a substantial amount of money for the PAC in previous cycle—about ¼ of their total expenditures. That was our reward for challenging this march to tyranny.

I could go on but I have chronicled their exploits in other parts of my blog. The point is that once elected, the chair not only ran things in an even more authoritarian way than any previous leader in living memory but she took more power than her predecessors with barely a murmur of dissent. Those in her camp that were willing to call her out were steamrolled, pushed aside and ignored. (If this reminds you of President Obama’s attitude toward the constraints of the Constitution then you are starting to see my point.)

Clearly Christians in the public square have yet to figure-out that their faith should cause them to act differently. It is too easy for them to adopt the tactics of “the world” and follow the example of pagans and humanists. R.J. Rushdoony was a frequent teacher at the Central Committee chair’s old church and would roll over in his grave if he knew about such behavior. She was taught better than that; however, maybe that is why she now attends a different church.

Sadly, I doubt anyone will learn from examining Barbara’s record. I think the short comings of her generation of evangelical Christians set the stage for situation in which we find ourselves now. It appears that the Tea Party movement is following the same failed trajectory that Barbara and other evangelicals have blazed in the past. Truly “there is nothing new under the sun”. Where Barbara walked was much fire and heat but Light was a much rarer commodity.

I had hoped to have lunch with Barbara one day and talk with her about my feelings; but that will never happen now and in the life to come it won’t matter. Someday I will see her again and by then both of us will know exactly what parts we were given during our time on earth.

One final note, I am still waiting for apologies from Barbara’s lieutenants Johnson, Stoos and especially Hardcastle but it’s been over twenty years since I have seen or spoken to any of them. I’m sure they just scraped me off the bottom of their shoes and went on to their next political objective. Gentlemen I proudly bear the scares you left but I have not forgotten the tactics deployed against me. I vowed not to be silent when I see them deployed against others.

Mark Steyn Summarizes 2012 Election

Reality doesn’t need to get a majority. Reality can get 2% of the vote, and it will still trump everything else. And America’s rendezvous with reality is coming, and that doesn’t matter how many attack ads you make about Big Bird or binders or anything else.—Mark Steyn on Hugh Hewitt radio program 11/08/2012

http://www.hughhewitt.com/transcripts.aspx?id=060cec14-a4e2-4d02-8325-ceb4d3fad482

Wild Election Prediction: Romney by 5:30 Pacific

Ok, I have been feeling this way for about three weeks but since nobody has put this in print—at least that I have seen—I want to be the first to blog that it will be clear that Romney has won before the polls close in California. I expect that the main stream media will be throwing in the towel by 5:30 pm on Election Day. This will be the earliest call since Jimmy Carter was spanked by Ronald Reagan. This will result in a few close races in California going our way. At stake may be the 2/3 majority being denied to California Democrats and the fate of Prop 30 & 32.

Aaron Park’s Opposition to Prop 32 and Charles Munger

“Money is the root of all evil” goes the old saying. When it comes to politics in California, the biggest player and advocate of evil on the Republican side of the aisle is Charles Munger. Munger has decided to spend much of his vast fortune in an attempt to remake the California Republican Party as the Democrat Light Party. Munger clearly hates Conservatives—especially social ones—and wants the state GOP to be a secular group that embraces the power of government. He is for California what George Soros has been for Democrats on the national stage. If you look at Munger’s spending, it is clear that his main enemy is Conservative Republicans. Given the choice of defeating Democrats or Conservatives in his own party, he will fund the moderate Republican over the Conservative every time. He frequently avoids opportunities to defeat Democrats in seats that could be won by Republicans.

Munger’s win/loss record has not been that great in Assembly and Senate races but he has done better at the ballot initiatives. He is largely responsible for the top two primary in California. He is also one of the backers behind Prop 32. Given the mischief that can be traced to Munger, Aaron Park is rightly suspicious of Prop 32. Park wrote recently on his blog, “Passing Prop 32 would effectively eliminate the free speech of labor unions and corporations – thereby enabling powerful individuals with deep pockets to buy elections with no counterweight.” http://www.rightondaily.com/tag/no-on-prop-32/

I respectfully disagree with Mr. Park. While I am no fan of Munger, I must say that the public employee unions in California are a greater threat to liberty than Munger. I will attempt to explain some of my reasons for holding this position.
In the book of Samuel, after David killed Goliath the people shouted “Saul has killed his thousands and David his tens of thousands”. As I see it, Munger has spent his millions and the public employee unions their hundreds of millions. Recently the Sacramento Bee ran an article that unions representing state employees collects 10.5 million dollars a month in dues. The largest public employee union is the California Teachers Association and they collect more. It is likely that public employee unions in California are collecting over $25 million per month in taxpayer funds. Supposedly only a fraction of this amount is spent on political activity. Advocacy to members and lobbying in Sacramento do not count as political activity in the union world. Much of this political advocacy is instead called member communications. When they tell members or legislators how to vote, in my world that is political activity.

Doing the math for union influence in California goes like this. Public employee unions in our state are collecting more than $25 million dollars a month in dues. Elections are on a two year cycle; so 24 months times $25 million per month is $600 million per election cycle. Is it any wonder that these unions own everything in the state?

If Prop 32 passes, Unions would be crippled but not shutdown. Unions claim that only one to two percent of the dues collected go to political purposes. We all know this is a lie. By parsing the words, unions do not count most of their political activity as political activity. Instead they call it member communications. Lobbying legislation is also not counted as political activity. If this initiative passes unions would be forced to open their books to show members and taxpayers where all the public money goes that they have collected. This transparency is the last thing that they want but it will be the logical result of passage. Also folks like me that have money forcibly take out of our checks even though we don’t belong to the union will finally have the choice not to fund people and causes that they find morally objectionable.
California’s Prop 32 is Wisconsin light. While 85 percent of Wisconsin folks opted out of compulsory union dues for political purposes, I think the number in California that choose to remain in the system will be much higher. The funding of PACs and 527s will not be affected by this initiative.

A second line of argument against Park’s claim and in favor of 32 is that in the wake of the top two primary, party identification of candidates is not as important. This is especially true with the Republicans. The state party is broke and has been for many years. Their endorsement is almost meaningless. They have no money to help candidates or spend on their behalf. They are just a pass thru organization to funnel money to candidates by exploiting loopholes in existing campaign contribution laws. Nothing on our side of the aisle will change much.

If Munger wants to be king of the hill in our party so what? I can’t imagine a more inefficient use of money in California politics. Republicans are on the verge of going below the status of even being called the loyal opposition. We are functionally irrelevant to the political process. Elected officials in the party will only help Munger as long as the money flows. We have a name for folks like that … and you thought that was only legal in Nevada? At this stage in the decline of the Republican Party, donors will get more bang for their buck in supporting ballot measures than candidates. In the initiative arena, Munger has lots of company; he is not a lone actor as Park makes it sound.

Proverbs 13:22 promises that “the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous”. How this works is a mystery but I know that God is in charge of this world and is bringing his will to pass. He is using folks like Soros and Munger for his purposes. Mostly this purpose appears to be judgment for not obeying Him. If you look at Munger’s spending it is clear to me that his problem is not with Conservatives it is ultimately with God. I have comfort in the fact that he will fail at anything he does that is not for the glory of God.

Being a Conservative Republican in California is much like wandering in the wilderness for forty years without Moses to guide us. All we are left with is griping, complaining and fighting amongst ourselves. I don’t think much will change for the better until the current generation (i.e. baby-boomers) have gone to their eternal reward. As long as a majority of people look to government to provide their needs, our future will be filled with more tyranny and less liberty. If passage of Prop 32 can slow the trip down the road to serfdom then I count that a small victory and worth my vote.

How to make Joe Soptic Ad True

“I don’t think Barack Obama understands what he’s done to people’s lives since being elected.
I don’t think he realizes that people’s lives completely changed.
When Barack Obama and Biden were elected, I lost my healthcare, and my family lost their healthcare.
And a short time after that my wife became ill.
I don’t know how long she was sick and I think maybe she didn’t say anything because she knew that we couldn’t afford the insurance, and then one day she became ill and I took her up to the County Hospital and admitted her for pneumonia and that’s when they found the cancer and by then it was stage four.
It was, there was nothing they could do for her.
And she is close to passing away.
I do not think Barack Obama realizes what he’s done to anyone, and furthermore I do not think Barack Obama is concerned.”

Connie Conway Treads Where Fools and Angels Dare Not Go

Not to be out done by President Obama’s claim that “you didn’t build that”, elected Republicans in California have made their own entry into the 2012 lexicon of stupid political statements.

Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway sent out a letter last week to people that had donated to the campaign of Andy Pugno. As a contributor to the Pugno campaign, I was a recipient of the letter. I almost didn’t open it but I did. Wow!

July 30, 2012
Dear William,

As a donor to one of the candidates running in California’s 6th Assembly district, I wanted to make sure you were updated with all the latest information from that campaign.

You may know that conservative Republican Assemblywoman Beth Gaines is running for reelection in the 6th district and she was challenged in the Primary by a Democrat and by another Republican, Andy Pugno.

The Republican Party officially endorsed incumbent Beth Gaines, as did our Republican Caucus. Beth is a valuable and effective member of our team, fighting for lower taxes, spending reductions and
upholding policies that promote strong families. For instance, Beth cast two key votes against SB 48, (the bill requiring the teaching of gay history in our public schools).
During the course of the Primary, Pugno made a written pledge to voters that he would not continue his campaign unless he was the top Republican vote-getter. As it turns out, he barely made it
into second place, far behind incumbent Assemblywoman Gaines.

Now, unfortunately, local newspapers report that Pugno is considering breaking his pledge and launching an expensive and counter-productive campaign against a fellow conservative. I and other
Republican Party leaders have asked him to keep his pledge, but so far he will not commit, and he continues to raise money for a campaign. He may have even asked you for money again.

As the Assembly Republican leader, I hope you will join me in urging Andy Pugno to keep his pledge and suspend his campaign, so we can all come together and concentrate on restoring
conservative leadership to the state.

Thanks for your support.

Sincerely,

Connie Conway
Assembly Republican Leader

Several thoughts ran through my head.
• First, days before this letter was received, the media had widely reported that the California Republican Party was over $800,000 in debt. How could they be in debt? Conway and her crew never campaigned against a single Democrat during the June election. She only spent money protecting incumbent Republicans from more conservative Republican challengers.
• Second, much of that expense was borne by billionaire Charles Munger. What part of Conway’s soul that she had left to sell will never be publically known? It is safe to speculate that the price paid included a provision that CRP will not oppose Molly Munger’s tax hike proposal on the November ballot.
• Third, the whole premise that Beth Gaines was properly endorsed by the CRP is a sham. Gaines did not meet the requirements to receive the CRP endorsement and any claim to the contrary is a bald-faced lie. On this abuse of power alone, the state chair should be forced to resign.
• Fourth, Gaines rejected to offer that whoever came in second should endorse the top Republican and not campaign.
• Fifth, this was the stupidest thing that I have ever seen in politics. Trying to get Pugno’s donors to pressure him into doing anything is illustrative of Conway’s lack of principle and ignorance of people that are governed by principle. Andy Pugno is not another business as usual person. He is a man of great principle and cannot be bought. Politics is not his life. Andy cares about the future that his children will inherit. He wants California to be a petty place for the next generation. This makes him a statesman not a politician.

My first action after reading the letter was to scan it and send it to Andy and a few others that folks. I was mad and insulted. I thought I was done contributing this year but now I would gladly write another check to Pugno. Beth is clearly wounded and weak or Conway wouldn’t need to initiate this stupid pre-emptive strike.

Later, Andy passed my name to a reporter at the Sacramento Bee. I went thru the above reactions with the reporter but all he could do was try to relate this letter to the Boston mayor that slammed Chick-fil-A. (He interviewed me the afternoon of August first.) Personally, I didn’t see the connection. He pressed me on this point which was really peculiar. The only thing I could come up with was that in both cases the people in power thought they knew better. I told him all we need is leaders that follow the rules and treat everyone the same. I said that the market (or voters as the case might be) should be trusted with the decision.

Almost none of what I said made it into the article that he wrote. Frankly, it was a poorly crafted hit on social conservatives and supporters of traditional marriage. He just wanted to spank Pugno for his support of Prop 8. “But if Pugno were to win the Assembly seat, Democrats would make regular use of him to remind voters that the Republican Party is exclusionary, which would push the once-Grand Old Party further into irrelevancy in this state.”
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/08/05/4691334/bullying-by-pols-creates-a-backlash.html#storylink=cpy

I disagree. The California Republican Party is finding irrelevancy due to leaders like Gaines and Conway.

Reflection of the court and Obama Care

Writer and theologian Francis A Schaeffer (30 January 1912 – 15 May 1984) declared that we are living in the Post-Christian West. This was the impetus for his book How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture (1976). The Court ruling today has pushed us further down the road of Western decline to the era of Post Constitutional America. The phrase was popularized in the book Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America (2012) by Mark Levin. The premise of Ameritopia is that people will trade constitutionalism for utopianism. While I haven’t read the book, the contrast would seem to explain the environmental movement and parts of the welfare state. This would dovetail nicely with the Obama agenda.

Scoffers think that conservatives like me are way off base about the ramifications of today’s Supreme Court decision on Obama Care. I would like to use a few illustrations to express my view of what happened today. All analogies breakdown at some point but here are a few good ones to try to share my point of view.

I spent over two decades in various parts of the Episcopal Church. The last two years was with outcasts from ECUSA (Protestant Episcopal Church). In the 1979 Prayer Book, much of the theological heritage that would get in the way of theological liberalism was relegated to the section in the back of the book for historical documents. These documents contained ideas contrary or embarrassing to the atheists in robes that pretend to be representatives of Jesus Christ. In the same way, the Supreme Court has relegated the last shreds of the Constitution to the index in the back of the history books on the American experiment.

Another way to explain this decision is from the book that I just finished called Ben Hur. Written in 1880 by Civil War General Lew Wallace, the book bears little resemblance to any of the subsequent movies. Towards the end of the book, Judah—the character played by Charlton Heston—enters Jerusalem to find that Jesus had been tried and convicted in the dead of night and that the injustice of his arrest was upheld and compounded by both Pontius Pilot and Herod. Judah tries to rally his troops to stop the proceedings only to find his men were active participants in the crowd yelling “Crucify him”. In much the same way, the injustice of Obama Care was upheld by those sitting in judgment of the law when they clearly knew that they were partaking of a grievous evil for the sake of political expediency. Judge Roberts played both Judas and Herod in this tragedy.

Another illustration is the conflict between Jesus and the religious rulers of his day. The leader in the time of Christ had so distorted the Law that it no longer bore any resemblance to the writings of Moses. Jesus was the one that spoke with Moses in the burning bush but when he tried to explain the Law to the rulers of his day they tried to stone him for blasphemy. They had so distorted and perverted justice that they could no longer recognize it. They called evil “good” and good “evil”.

My last illustration to explain today’s ruling is lethal exposure to radiation. You can’t see it, smell it or taste it but by the time you know it happened you are already dead. Yes you may walk around for a few minutes, hours or days but the effects are irreversible because by the time you exhibit symptoms the damage has been done. The ruling today forever laid to rest the concept that the national government has any limits. The government now has license to tell us what to buy, what to eat, where to live, what to drive and to literally determine how long we should live. Today the State declared itself as our “god”. It will take a while for this new found power to manifest itself to much of the populous but the nanny government of Michael Bloomberg has been pumped full of steroids and granted a nationwide franchise. The ruling elites now have the tools to bring us the dystopian worlds of 1984, Brave New World and Atlas Shrugged. The Republic is dead and it will take a period of time before the mind of the populous notices the death of the body politic. (If they have their “bread” will they even care?)

We often have used the analogy of the frog in the boiling pot dying as the heat has been turned up ever so gradually over time. The frog is dead before it realizes that it is boiling. Well today the water evaporated out of the pot and much of our populous yawned.

The words of Deuteronomy 28 verses 15 thru 68 echoed in my head all day today. Verse 15 reads,

But if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.

Today’s decision may be an historic day but it is not one to be celebrated. The Rule of Law and the Constitution received an ignoble end.

CA GOP—A Broken Organization

It is clear to me that the California Republican Party is broken. What we learned from the leadership during the June election cycle is that they are not only unwilling to follow their own rules but think that the existing rules are a hindrance to power. The last vestiges of a bottom up organization were shed during this cycle. From this point forward, rank and file average voters will no longer have a voice directly or indirectly in determining who will bear the Party endorsement.

With the top two election structure that we now have in California, the Party chose not to implement an alternate system to allow voters that are registered as Republicans to vote on who will be their choice for nominee. After more than three years of inaction, direct representation was officially scrapped. Instead, a system that only those candidates endorsed by 2/3 of each County Central Committee that was included in a district could endorse a candidate and furthermore only when all counties in a district were in agreement would a candidate be called the Party nominee in the June election. The rules further stated that failure to meet this high standard would result in no nominee in the race. These rules were ignored at every opportunity where a current office holder did not achieve endorsement thru the established process. Instead a small group of unaccountable people within the State Party leadership just did whatever was expedient to get the result that they desired. The California Republican Party is now a top-down organization that has successfully insulated itself from any responsiveness or accountability to those that identified with the Party. They have rejected both direct democracy and representative democracy in favor of an elitist aristocracy.

The only issue remaining is why would anybody care to associate with an organization that not only doesn’t care about them but is openly hostile to their views and values? I didn’t leave the Republican Party but clearly they have left me—and many others as well.

The last hope we have of saving this state is thru the initiative process and if the Democrats prevail, that window will be closed to us soon. I’m rather pessimistic about our short term prospects for any positive change. I think that we will be wandering in the wilderness until the so-called “baby boomers” are taking a “dirt-nap” and a new generation comes along with a willingness to return to the bedrock values that made us a successful and prosperous nation. I believe this will happen one day but the likelihood of it being in my lifetime is clearly diminishing.

Adios California Republican Party

As a former political talk show host, my political rhetoric is usually saved for democrat elected’s and the Democrat Party, however what I witnessed in the days leading up to June 5th election have me furious. The CA Republican Party is broke, and very quickly becoming irrelevant in California politics. As a result they had to rely on financial donations from one Charles Munger Jr. a liberal financier from the Bay Area who has already tried to water down the state party’s platform.

The CA GOP in coordination with Munger spent over 100k on negative ads in the 6th Assembly district. The ads were used to attack republican Andy Pugno—a probate lawyer who was a lead counsel for prop 8. The ads included a quote from CA GOP chair Tom Del Baccaro who referred to Andy as a “trial lawyer” using “misleading tactics to attack incumbent Beth Gaines.” Not to be outdone Jon Coupal—Director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association—claimed Andy “called Beth a moderate republican.” Neither statement is true. The fact is Andy Pugno is an Estate and Probate Lawyer who very seldom is involved in trials and truthfully referred to Mr. Munger as the “moderate supporting Beth Gaines.”

One must ask why would Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway want to spend over 400k to support Assemblywomen Beth Gaines in a primary where she and challenger Andy Pugno have no major policy differences? Wouldn’t that money be spent more effectively in November trying to hold more than a 1/3 minority in Sacramento? Maybe the money could have been better spent helping Peter Tateishi win a primary against a complete nut like Barbara Ortega? No! Apparently Connie Conway ordered the hit pieces be sent attacking Andy Pugno. Well the legislature won the battle for Beth Gaines but at what price? We know their poor decisions resulted in a very wounded Peter Tateishi who likely will lose in the run-off in November, further hurting the GOP cause. The unknown factor in all this is what did the Republican leadership have to horse-trade with Munger to get him to bail-out Beth Gaines?
As a result of this week’s elections I have decided I’m done with “California Republican Politics”.

For those not familiar with me, I have walked more precincts and done more for the conservative movement than most in this county. If the Sacramento County GOP decides they want to nominate moderate candidates and spend donors’ hard earned money attacking conservative candidates, good bye! Frankly, as a southern born conservative, the GOP in California is going to get exactly what they deserve in November—a very small, irrelevant minority! Additionally; I am calling on Tom Del Baccaro and Jon Coupal to resign immediately before they do any more damage to their organizations. I’m sure President Reagan was thrilled that his “11th commandment” was violated by the “latte drinking, Volvo driving, country club, liberal republicans both in the Capital and representing conservative groups on election night.”
—John M. Slamkowski, Elk Grove

Karen England’s PAC Fires on Adny Pugno

Karen England and her splinter group—California Conservative Republicans—have gone nuclear yet again in their attacks on fellow Republicans. This time their ire is directed at proven conservative leader Andy Pugno. Andy has a twenty year track record of working in the trenches for the conservative cause.

In his time at the University of California Davis he built the college republican group to over 700 members and took over student government of this notoriously liberal campus. He went on to be chief of staff for Pete Knight. (Knight was the first to lead the charge that marriage should be between a man and a woman.) Andy then worked in the private sector as an attorney for local governments too small to afford a fulltime legal staff. This is where I first met and worked with him. I found him to be professional, knowledgeable and prepared. Andy later went on to Proposition 8 and the defense of traditional marriage.

Character is often defined as what you do when no one is looking. This certainly describes Andy.
His priorities are God, family and country.

In their ad, Karen and her gang are hitting Andy below the belt. They start the ad by purposely wrongly pronouncing Andy’s name and then accusing him of doing things that he has never done; including calling Gaines a liberal. (Charles Monger is the only liberal identified by Pugno in any of his ads. Monger is the billionaire liberal that is saving Beth Gaines’ butt in this race with his independent expenditures.) Then they make their main charge that Andy was allegedly not at a particular meeting of the CRP platform committee. If this is such big deal then why is there no documentation to back-up this ad on their website? Instead, this is just what it appears to be, a slimy last minute “hit piece” unfairly directed at Andy.

We all know that the CRP is both broke (financially) and broken (institutionally). The platform committee vote was the subject of much manipulation and most of the real work was done behind closed doors by a small subcommittee. The CRP chair should be the villain of this ad not Andy. I’m sure Aaron Park has this well documented on his blog should you care to look. But why should the truth get in the way of a good hit piece?

I responded as any person would in the face of such an attack on a friend, I sent Andy a check. I thought I was done with contributions this cycle but Karen crossed the line and made me contribute one last time.