Orange County Elections : Roth Says Beam Falsely Links Him to Moriarty

Anaheim Mayor Donald R. Roth complained bitterly Thursday that his opponent in the race for county supervisor was falsely linking him to convicted political corrupter W. Patrick Moriarty and for the first time had raised the issue of prostitutes being provided by Moriarty.

In a letter delivered to his opponent, Mayor Jim Beam of Orange, Roth said he was “deeply disturbed” by reports that “your campaign currently is conducting a poll that renews and expands your unfounded charges linking me to Patrick Moriarty.

“This poll, being taken in the 4th Supervisorial District, implies that I engaged in illegal or immoral acts. These allegations, initiated by you and now being spread by your paid pollsters, are flagrant lies.”

Moriarty, who once owned the nation’s largest fireworks manufacturing firm in Anaheim, is serving a seven-year federal prison term after pleading guilty last year to charges of laundering money, fraud and bribing public officials.

In 1982, before Moriarty was investigated or any charges about his activities became public, he gave a $1,000 campaign contribution to Roth, which Roth reported, as required by law.

Last month, former Moriarty aide Richard Raymond Keith wrote in a letter to a federal judge that Roth “was provided with free use of a home by Mr. Moriarty on occasions in the Palm Springs area.”

Keith, who is serving a four-year term at the federal prison in Boron for tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud and making false statements on loan applications, devoted most of his letter to U.S. District Judge William J. Rea to complaints about Moriarty’s activities last summer while at a federal holding facility in Garden Grove, where he was staying while waiting to testify in a Los Angeles trial.

Roth has denied receiving the use of the home, a condominium, which the state Fair Political Practices Commission said he would also have been required to report.

Although Keith has named politicians who he said were supplied with prostitutes by Moriarty, he has never mentioned Roth.

Asked Thursday about Roth’s letter to Beam, a Roth campaign consultant, Jeff Adler, said that “Beam is out polling and asking questions about Moriarty providing prostitutes for Don Roth.”

Adler said Lynn Carpenter, an Orange resident, reported the questions to a neighbor, who contacted the Roth campaign.

Carpenter said in a telephone interview that she received a call Tuesday night in which the questioner asked a series of questions about whether she would be “more or less likely to vote for” a candidate if certain facts were known.

She said the questioner mentioned Moriarty and briefly gave his background and said Keith had charged that Moriarty had provided Roth with use of a condominium in Cathedral City. Carpenter said that during the questioning “there was something in there about sex or procuring women or something along that line.”

Beam said the poll did mention the Keith letter last month to the judge and added that he assumed the questioner also asked about Moriarty providing prostitutes to Roth, even though neither Keith nor anyone else ever made that charge.

Beam said, however, that the questioner did not accuse Roth of anything but asked what the voter’s reaction would be if he were accused.

Beam said the issue of prostitutes was raised “because it might be one of the things that develops in the coming weeks.” If it did, his campaign would want to know if voters cared about the issue, Beam said. “If we hadn’t measured it, it might be too late when it comes out.”

“When I read your newspaper, the articles about Moriarty usually mention prostitutes, and it’s natural to think it might come up,” Beam said.

Beam said he had not raised the Moriarty issue in the campaign but simply had his campaign manager pass on to newspaper reporters copies of the Keith letter to the judge who sentenced Moriarty to prison. Beam said that he didn’t know where the letter came from and that his campaign didn’t intend to “do anything more about it unless the press or law enforcement comes forward and it becomes obvious that it’s a bona fide allegation.”

Beam said Roth’s letter to him “was the dumbest letter he wrote, to raise this issue again. There’s going to be an article in the newspaper tomorrow because he’s raised it. I’ve got to tell you I think we’ve hit a raw nerve. He doth protest too much, it seems to me.”

Roth’s letter said he had been informed that Beam was planning a series of three last-minute political “ ‘hit’ mailers which seek to link me to these same alleged illegal acts” involving Moriarty.

He again criticized Beam for relaying the Keith letter, which “may have been a court document,” to the press “without first checking its accuracy or even its authenticity.”

“It’s sad that these are the kind of underhanded and sleazy political tactics that seem to be coming from your campaign,” the letter said.