Baugh Worker Pleads Guilty in GOP Scheme

A campaign worker for Assemblyman Scott Baugh pleaded guilty Friday to participating in a Republican scheme to plant a decoy Democrat in last year’s special election, becoming the first person convicted of a crime in the ballot fraud case.

Richard Martin, 26, admitted that he played a significant role in helping Democrat Laurie Campbell get on the Nov. 28 ballot.

“I willfully and unlawfully aided and abetted the making and the filing of false nomination papers,” Martin admitted in a sworn declaration to the court.

Martin, who pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor, agreed to cooperate with the investigation of alleged wrongdoing in the 67th District campaign, and named three other GOP workers as participants in launching Campbell’s candidacy.

Martin is the first person to state publicly under oath that staff aides and campaign workers employed by Republican legislators worked to undermine the candidacy of popular Democrat Linda Moulton-Patterson and ensure a Republican victory.

Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) and U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) acknowledged in December that their aides had a role in fostering Campbell’s candidacy. But no evidence has emerged publicly to indicate that they or Baugh, the Huntington Beach Republican who won the election, participated in the scheme.

Martin’s account that Rhonda Carmony, Rohrabacher’s campaign manager, played the key tactical role in the Campbell candidacy directly contradicts Rohrabacher’s claim in December that she was “peripherally” involved.

Moulton-Patterson, whose campaign was the target of the vote-siphoning plan, said: “I just hope that they go all the way up to Mr. Pringle and Dana Rohrabacher. I don’t think these aides should take the fall for who was really giving the orders.”

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Pringle declined comment and Rohrabacher could not be reached for comment after Martin pleaded guilty Friday afternoon. Carmony also could not be reached, but her attorney said earlier this week that she has committed no crime.

Ronald G. Brower, one of Baugh’s attorneys, said the plea does not affect his client because it only mentions people associated with Baugh’s campaign, not Baugh himself.

“There is no specific mention of Scott being involved in this,” Brower said. “Scott emphatically denies ever being involved in urging or placing Laurie Campbell on the ballot.”

In his declaration to the court, Martin accused Mark Denny, a staff aide to Pringle, and Jeff Gibson, manager of the campaign to recall then-Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress), of also participating in the Republican effort to dilute the Democratic vote.

Baugh succeeded Allen by capturing the winner-take-all special election Nov. 28, the same day Allen was recalled. Baugh’s election and Allen’s ouster were pivotal for the GOP because they gave Republicans enough votes to take control of the Assembly. With Baugh providing the winning margin, Pringle was elected speaker in January.

Martin, 26, who plead guilty to “fraudulently making a nomination paper,” was sentenced to three years’ probation, fined $2,700, ordered to serve 200 hours of community service and prohibited from participating in campaign work during his probation.

Campbell, a longtime friend of Baugh, was removed from the ballot in late October by a Sacramento judge who found she had filed falsified nomination papers and did not gather the signatures on them. A few days later, the district attorney’s office started investigating the circumstances of her candidacy.

Democratic leaders immediately charged that Campbell’s candidacy was engineered by Orange County legislators. The investigation expanded in November to include campaign finance irregularities in the Baugh-for-Assembly campaign.

The Orange County Grand Jury has taken testimony since mid-February from a parade of witnesses in the two-pronged case. Campbell was one of the first, appearing Feb. 13.

Prosecutors last week invited attorneys for five GOP aides--Martin, Carmony, Denny, Gibson and Pringle’s deputy chief of staff, Jeff Flint--to negotiate a settlement of their clients’ potential criminal liability in the recruiting of Campbell.

Flint’s attorney, Charles Spagnola, said Friday that Flint has committed no crime. Lawyers for Gibson and Denny could not be reached for comment Friday.

Friday’s events were bittersweet for Moulton-Patterson, who said, “I would have made a good legislator, a good assemblyperson. I feel really sorry for the people who didn’t know who they were voting for and what they were voting for.”

Republican Haydee V. Tillotson, who was among four Republicans originally in the race but dropped out before the election, praised the ongoing investigation. “It’s very important to have all of the truth come out,” she said.

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Democrats in the Capitol, meanwhile, were already salivating over the possibility that Martin’s plea could be the first of many.

“It appears that dirty tricks are alive and well in Orange County,” said Assembly Democratic Leader Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). “I’m going to watch with interest.”

Martin, who wore a brown suit and a dark blue shirt, was subdued at the court appearance. In pleading guilty, he avoided a possible felony charge.

His voice quavered during a brief conversation with a reporter in the courtroom, but a few minutes later he publicly acknowledged his responsibility in clear tones. Later, he explained his guilty plea as an effort to take “moral” responsibility for his actions.

Erik Larsh, his lawyer, said Martin “feels he is the scapegoat now for everybody.”

While it is not a crime for a Republican to recruit a Democrat, it is a felony to falsely fill out any part of a nomination paper or to knowingly file a falsified nominating petition. Penalties can include a $1,000 fine and imprisonment for up to three years.

Martin pleaded guilty to gathering the signatures but failing to sign the nominating petitions as their circulator. “I did not sign the petitions . . . knowing that if I were to do so it could be damaging to the candidacy of Scott Baugh,” he wrote in his declaration to the court.

Campbell also may be liable for criminal charges for signing and filing the nominating petitions that Martin and others circulated.

Martin’s statement gives the clearest public account to date of how Campbell was able to secure signatures from 43 registered Democrats. But it leaves unanswered the question of who recruited Campbell.

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GOP leaders have acknowledged that they were interested in getting a second Democrat into the contest because they feared Moulton-Patterson might win against a divided Republican field, but they have denied any role in the Campbell candidacy.

In his court declaration, Martin described in detail assisting Campbell in obtaining her nominating papers on Sept. 20 and his role in gathering signatures from Democrats. He said he circulated petitions in a Huntington Beach neighborhood that evening and at a post office the next day, which was the filing deadline.

It was at Rohrabacher’s campaign office on Main Street in Huntington Beach where Martin said Carmony gave him his orders and a precinct sheet listing names and addresses of Democratic voters. On Sept. 20 and 21, Martin said, he returned to the Rohrabacher office repeatedly to drop off petitions or get instructions from Carmony.

On Sept. 21, after gathering about 20 signatures in three hours at the post office, Martin said, Carmony told him to “take the petitions to the parking lot of the Orange County registrar of voters office . . . and to deliver the petitions to Laurie Campbell, who would be waiting for me in her car in the parking lot.”

Martin met Campbell there between 3 and 3:30 p.m., sat with her in her car and gave her the petitions, “but did not sign the bottom . . . indicating that I had circulated the petitions,” he said.

While in the car, he phoned Carmony several times and received calls from her. About that time, Denny and Gibson were in a Garden Grove neighborhood going house to house gathering signatures on behalf of Campbell, other sources have said.

Sometime later, but before Campbell walked into the registrar’s office about 4:50 p.m., Carmony arrived at the parking lot. She got into Campbell’s car, Martin said, and subsequently, Denny and Gibson arrived. Gibson got into Campbell’s car, Martin said, and told him “ ‘to get the hell out of here.’ ” Martin departed.

Martin concludes his declaration by stating that he purposely did not sign the petitions because it “would appear that the Republicans, specifically a group of staff and volunteers associated with the Scott Baugh Campaign effort, were placing a Democratic candidate on the ballot to split the Democrat vote.”