D.A. Candidate Says Poll Guard Case Poses Conflict for Capizzi

In the opening shots of the district attorney’s race, candidate Thomas Avdeef has charged his opponent with a potential conflict of interest in connection with a criminal investigation into the County Republican Party’s use of uniformed security guards at the polls last year.

At three campaign appearances over the past two weeks, Avdeef said Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi has received campaign funds and support from the County Republican Party at the same time the local GOP is being investigated by a unit Capizzi supervises.

“There is an appearance of a conflict as a prosecutor when you accept money from part of the Republican organization,” said Avdeef, a veteran deputy district attorney. “He (Capizzi) and the district attorney’s office have an obligation to remove themselves from the case.”

Capizzi, second-in-command of the office, has steadfastly denied any impropriety. He said Wednesday that he removed himself last month from the poll guard case handled by the Special Operations Unit.

“It sounds like it’s awful early in the campaign to hear the last gasp of a man going down for the third time,” said Capizzi, who declared his candidacy in October after months of planning to run. “Avdeef is struggling to find issues, and he is manufacturing nonexistent issues.”

In district attorneys’ offices throughout the state, prosecutors generally remove themselves from a case if it involves relatives, co-workers, close friends, business partners or others with whom they share a financial interest, prosecutors say.

But disqualification from a case can depend on the size of the office, and whether others are available to handle the case within the agency. If a potential conflict is found, the case can be referred to the state attorney general’s office or other agencies.

County GOP officials hired 20 uniformed security guards who went to heavily Latino polling places in Santa Ana on Nov. 7, 1988, in the 72nd Assembly District race in which Republican Curt Pringle narrowly defeated Democrat Christian (Rick) Thierbach.

The FBI, the U.S. attorney’s office and the Orange County district attorney’s office are jointly investigating whether hiring the guards violated state or federal laws by intimidating Latino voters. After almost a year of investigation, the Orange County district attorney’s office last month declined to file charges against any of the guards.

The County Democratic Party subsequently asked the state attorney general to investigate, charging that the district attorney’s office was stalling in the matter to protect the County Republican Party.

On Nov. 16, Chief Assistant Atty. Gen. Richard Iglehart decided that the state would not intercede in the local case because it remained under “active” investigation by local authorities, and that discoveries of new evidence were the reasons for the delay.

Local and federal authorities are still investigating the involvement of County Republican Party officials as well as members of Pringle’s campaign staff. And six Latino voters are pursing a federal civil rights lawsuit against Pringle and GOP officials in connection with the poll guard incident.

Avdeef, 48, has made the conflict-of-interest accusations at forums and gatherings of the Central Orange County Republican Committee, the California Republican Assembly of Garden Grove and the 67th Assembly District Democratic Caucus. The organizations invited Avdeef and Capizzi, the only two candidates in the race so far, to address their members.

“I don’t think (the district attorney’s office) should be in that investigation,” Avdeef said Sunday at the Democratic Caucus forum. “On the surface, there is the potential for conflict of interest when you ask the GOP for support and you supervise the investigation of the GOP.”

Avdeef told them that Capizzi has received a $5,000 campaign donation from the Lincoln Club, a prominent Republican support group in the county. He said Capizzi’s campaign has also sought support and lists of potential donors from the Orange County Republican Party.

But Capizzi told people at the forum that his involvement in the poll guard case was “so small as to be nonexistent.”

Capizzi said Wednesday that no one in the GOP has asked for favors in the case and that under the law, he is not required to remove himself, but did so to eliminate it as a campaign issue. He added that he does not know the targets of the investigation except for members of the Pringle campaign.