Bogus Newsletter on Annexation Vote Prompts Postal Probe

U.S. postal inspectors are investigating whether criminal acts occurred in a political “dirty trick” in which a bogus edition of a newsletter was mailed to residents of Lehner Valley near Escondido on the eve of Tuesday’s balloting.

Tom Taylor, an investigator with the postal inspector’s office, said that mailing of the look-alike version of the Lehner Valley News, sent to voters in an area proposed for annexation to Escondido, may be mail fraud. He is interviewing principals believed to be involved in the political scam.

Taylor said he had been contacted by the U.S. attorney’s office Wednesday, asking that the incident be investigated to determine if criminal charges are warranted.

Fake Edition Says Forces Changed Minds

The fake edition of the News informed residents of Lehner Valley that anti-annexation forces, “after careful consideration of all the facts,” had changed their minds on the issue and now supported annexation to Escondido.

Wanda Cavanaugh, a leader of the opposition, said the bogus edition of the anti-annexation newsletter “was a very dirty trick, but I never even considered that it might be illegal.”

She conferred briefly with her attorney, Roy Garrett, on Wednesday but both said that no decision had been reached on whether to take legal action against the perpetrators of the hoax.

Cavanaugh and other annexation opponents launched a telephone campaign after the edition came out Saturday to inform valley voters that the paper was a hoax and that the group had not changed its mind. The annexation failed by a 20-vote margin.

A postage meter used to mail the counterfeit Lehner Valley News enabled the anti-annexation group to trace the mailing to Thunderboats Unlimited, a San Diego-based corporation headed by John Daley. Daley is also president of Daley Corp., which owns about 120 acres in Lehner Valley and the 3,200-acre Daley Ranch next to the valley.

Bob MacNamara, vice president of Daley Corp., said the organization had been one of the initiators of the annexation move but denied that either he or Daley had any knowledge of the phony News edition or its mailing.

Read About It in Paper

“The first either of us knew of the matter was from the newspaper,” MacNamara said. The story about the political high jinks appeared in the Thursday edition of The Times.

MacNamara said the Daley firm had hired political consultant Laurie Shirk to aid in promoting the Lehner Valley annexation. Shirk, he said, also worked for Thunderboats Unlimited, the firm to which the postage meter used in the bogus mailings was registered.

Shirk could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

MacNamara said the Daley corporation first sought to annex only its 120-acre parcel and a 114-acre avocado grove owned by Ed C. Malone, to Escondido. However, after a poll showed that the majority of valley residents favored the annexation, the petition was broadened to include the entire 721-acre valley lying northeast of the city, MacNamara said.

Malone is a developer who ran for San Diego City Council earlier this decade and who is now foreman of the county grand jury.

An 11th-hour campaign by Cavanaugh and her group opposing the annexation was unexpected, MacNamara said. “We were very surprised and disappointed that the annexation failed,” he said, adding that Daley will proceed immediately to apply for annexation of its Lehner Valley property and Malone’s.

Cavanaugh, in rebuttal, said that the Daley-Malone interests could not pursue annexation to Escondido without the rest of the valley “because that would create an island (of unincorporated land) surrounded by the city, which the Local Agency Formation Commission won’t permit.” LAFCO is a state agency empowered to approve or deny boundary changes on the basis of economics and geography.

Cavanaugh’s attorney, Roy Garrett, said he viewed the distribution of the look-alike publication as “a very serious matter.”

“It appears to be a deliberate attempt to misrepresent someone else’s ideas,” Garrett said. “It appears to be a fraud and an attempt to steal an election.”

Gregory Quint, amateur publisher of the Lehner Valley News, returned from vacation to find that his tiny newsletter was the center of a political hubbub, but that his anti-annexation forces had prevailed at the polls.

“I think this thing might have whiplashed on them, might have shown people just how much those people wanted the annexation to go through,” Quint said. “But we won the war, so what’s the point of rubbing it in?”