Allegations Lead to Rising Star’s Fall

Though his wide grin belied a furious temper, Kevin Shelley -- son of a congressman and protege of a political legend -- had been the darling of San Francisco Democrats until his future swerved out of control.

In a year, accolades that Shelley earned for smoothly steering the first election to recall a California governor were overtaken by accusations that he broke laws, berated employees and ran a sloppy office as secretary of state.

The allegations pushed Shelley to step down Friday while continuing to deny any intentional wrongdoing.

In the end, despite his political lineage and the initial support of his party, Shelley stood largely alone. His well-known volatility had driven away colleagues who might have otherwise backed him. And fellow Democrats sent a clear message when they shook hands with Republicans over ground rules for a pending legislative inquiry: No pains would be taken to protect Shelley from tough questions under oath.

On Monday, Shelley’s abandonment was further underscored when disclosure reports filed with the state showed a single contribution to his 3-month-old legal defense fund -- $250 from Tony Miller, Shelley’s special counsel. Shelley put $100,000 of his own into the fund by borrowing against the mortgage on the San Francisco home where he grew up and lives with his wife and two young children.

The charge that Shelley could be an abusive boss -- as detailed in a state Personnel Board hearing last week -- was nothing new to those who had worked with him when he served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors or in the California Assembly. One former high-level aide said reporting to Shelley was like “being in a bass drum all the time.”

Former staffers said Shelley exploded over things as minor as the size of type on his briefing notes. His staff turnover was among the highest in the Legislature, and the churn continued when he became secretary of state.

In 1998, as an assemblyman, Shelley was videotaped by a Capitol security camera as he argued with an employee and repeatedly blocked her from getting into an elevator. Then-Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa urged Shelley to get professional help to manage his anger. Faced with a near-mutiny by Shelley’s staff, Villaraigosa also moved his press secretary to Shelley’s office to help calm the situation.

In his 14 years as an elected official there had been no whiff of scandal.

“He was always considered one of the most promising young men coming up in the Democratic Party,” said Agar Jaicks, a longtime San Francisco Democratic activist.

But in August, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that $125,000 from a grant Shelley arranged as an assemblyman appeared to come back to him as campaign donations. Soon after, other allegations began to surface about Shelley’s management of federal voting funds and -- again -- his treatment of employees.

In its report, the Personnel Board characterized the behavior in the secretary of state’s office as “abusive, humiliating, unreasonably demanding, or demeaning” to some workers. It described Shelley cursing and yelling, insisting that workers stay past 5 p.m. even if there was no pressing work and directing them to deliver press clippings to him every morning, even on weekends.

“Everybody in politics needs good staff people,” said Sal Russo, a Republican political consultant. “The officeholders don’t do the day-to-day work. They need good staff people to keep things straight and to maintain an ethical standard, and obviously that process broke down.”

Others speculate that Shelley’s desire to heighten his profile and raise cash for his secretary of state campaign may have contributed to his downfall.

“There was nothing in his record that would suggest that he would behave so stupidly,” said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley. “What drove this is shifting to an arena where he needed more money and trying to promote himself from a relatively second-tier position.”

Shelley’s resignation does more than end his upward political trajectory. It also tarnishes a Shelley family dynasty.

His father, Jack Shelley, was a San Francisco bakery wagon driver and labor leader who put himself through law school at night and served as a state senator, a congressman for 13 years and mayor of San Francisco. In the Senate, Jack Shelley cast one of only two votes against putting Japanese Americans in internment camps during World War II.

An imposing, ruddy-faced man, Jack Shelley died in 1974 of cancer when his only son was 18 years old.

In previous interviews, Shelley has said that his father “didn’t have a whole lot left over to give. I swore I would not become like him, but I’m sure it rubbed off.”

Shelley earned a political science degree at UC Davis and a law degree from UC’s Hastings College of Law. He found a job and surrogate father with the legendary Phil Burton, one of the most powerful members of Congress from the mid-1960s until his death in 1983. Steeped in the crusading liberal politics of San Francisco, Shelley launched his own political career in 1990 by winning a seat on the Board of Supervisors with the backing of the city’s Democratic establishment. He moved to the Assembly in 1996 to replace Burton’s brother John, who had moved to the state Senate.

In the Legislature, Shelley worked to increase fines against drivers who run red lights, require handgun owners to submit thumbprints and create a network of coastal no-fishing refuges. In 2002, as he geared up to run for secretary of state, Shelley also co-sponsored Proposition 41, a $200-million bond to help California counties purchase new voting equipment.

In 2002, Shelley defeated two primary opponents with widespread name recognition: Former Secretary of State March Fong Eu and Michaela Alioto, granddaughter of another former San Francisco mayor. He beat former Assemblyman Keith Olberg, a Republican, in the general election. Shelley promised to extend polling hours, allow voters to register by computer and include a voter registration card with every high school diploma.

But his agenda was quickly sidetracked: In the summer of 2003, Republicans gathered enough signatures to force a historic election to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. Working in uncharted territory, Shelley ultimately drew praise and national publicity for conducting an evenhanded election with 135 candidates and only 2 1/2 months to prepare.

He jumped into the national debate over the nation’s next generation of voting equipment. He banned California’s counties from buying touch-screen voting computers unless they included paper receipts so voters could check the accuracy of their ballots. Other states soon followed his lead.

“I think the debate has shifted quite a bit, and I think Kevin Shelley is in large part responsible for that,” said Kim Alexander, founder of the California Voter Foundation. “He was the first secretary of state in the nation where electronic voting has been introduced to say we need to have a voter-verified paper record.”

But Shelley’s overbearing style infuriated some county registrars with whom his office needed to work closely. Among them was Los Angeles County elections chief Conny B. McCormack.

She accuses Shelley of fumbling a historic opportunity to upgrade the state’s voting infrastructure with federal money under the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA.

According to a state audit released in December, while registrars waited for Shelley to give them money to buy voting machines, his office spent some of the funds on temporary workers who attended partisan events, apparently to raise Shelley’s political profile. The audit faulted Shelley’s office for exercising such lax controls that California may miss the January 2006 federal deadline to create a statewide voter registration database.

“Instead of improving the election process,” McCormack said, “there’s not a single county that’s HAVA-compliant, because of actions of the secretary of state.”

Shelley’s resignation shouldn’t be taken as an admission of guilt, said Republican political consultant Wayne Johnson. Taken separately, he said, each allegation against Shelley could prove to be more smoke than fire.

But politics sets a different standard than the law, Johnson added.

“You bring your credibility to the office,” said Johnson. “When it drops too far, you can’t really function in that job.”