Scandal Stalls GOP Insider Carmony’s Rise

At the center of last year’s Republican scheme to manipulate a critical California Assembly race, court documents allege, was a shrewd 26-year-old political operative with a penchant for surfing and a zeal for winning elections.

Since graduating from Fullerton High School in 1988, Rhonda J. Carmony has rocketed up from the lowest rungs of Orange County politics to managing the reelection of one of the county’s top lawmakers, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach).

At an age when many are still searching for a career path, Carmony has for at least eight years been a dedicated political foot soldier, a vocation that has already brought her one brush with the law and is likely to result in another.

Carmony was recently identified in sworn court statements as the key figure in a ruse last fall to put a decoy Democrat on the ballot in a special election to recall and replace maverick Republican Assemblywoman Doris Allen. The plot involved falsifying nominating petitions for stealth Democrat Laurie Campbell, according to three Republican political workers who have each pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge.

Carmony’s attorney, Creighton Laz, said Thursday night that Carmony has been told by the district attorney’s office to appear in Superior Court at 9 a.m. today. Being asked to appear, Laz said, “would indicate there’s been an indictment.”

The special election last Nov. 28 was far from ordinary. By helping attorney Scott Baugh capture the seat, the GOP gained the margin it needed to take control of the Assembly and elevate Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) to the speakership.

Many who have worked with her, and witnessed her meteoric rise, describe Carmony as anything but the wide-eyed activist she has publicly portrayed herself to be. They talk about a driven young woman with a steely resolve to win.

Carmony has a quick temper and an often abrasive personality, they say. She once tried to elbow her way past Secret Service agents to join an invitation-only luncheon with former Vice President Dan Quayle, said a longtime GOP activist who saw her try it that day.

“It was her way or no way,” the activist said, describing Carmony’s attitude as, “ ‘Here I am, going to turn the world on fire, and here you all are with ideas that are so outdated.’ ”

Rohrabacher, who has paid Carmony tens of thousands of dollars in salaries and bonuses as his campaign manager, has defended Carmony and the three Republican aides who pleaded guilty to election fraud as well-meaning youths simply out “to save the party.”

But close associates say Carmony is a veteran political insider who rose quickly from the unpaid ranks of those who walk precincts and staff phone banks, to become a paid staffer who devises and executes campaign strategy.

“She personifies the role of the dirty trickster who is every place,” said former GOP Assemblyman Gil Ferguson, who added that Carmony has been well-known among local Republicans for years. “She’s omnipresent.”

Carmony could not be reached for comment. Her attorney says Carmony is guilty only of enthusiasm.

“I think she’s a nice girl who is committed to what she does and tries very hard,” said Creighton Laz. “I think some people have tried to take advantage of her. I don’t think she’s committed any crimes.”

Since high school, Carmony has been part of what politicians, consultants and others call “the Orange County crew,” a small, dedicated cadre of operatives who work elections for county Republicans, skipping from one campaign to the next.

Known variously as the “brat pack” or the “YAFers” (members of the Young Americans for Freedom), many of these mostly college-age students were lured to partisan politics by the legacy of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

“Rhonda really identified with Reagan and the Republican Party,” said Richard Schroeder, former head of the Republican Youth Associates of Orange County, a group formed to encourage youth involvement in politics.

At just 18, Carmony, vice president of the group, joined Schroeder and 2,200 other high school and college students at the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans, inflating balloons and painting signs.

“We’ll do whatever it takes to keep a Republican in the White House,” she told a reporter at the time. She and Schroeder likened politics to a drug. “You become a junkie,” he said then. “You get addicted.”

Not long out of high school, she worked as a professional “field representative” for state Sen. John R. Lewis (R-Orange) when Lewis was still in the Assembly. Lewis did not return repeated calls for comment.

Friends say Carmony has dropped out of college several times, unable to resist the action of politics. “She very much likes being an insider,” said Alex Armstrong, a political consultant and former boyfriend.

Even among the county’s highly motivated campaign workers, Carmony has stood out, said Irvine political consultant Mark Thompson. “Rhonda used to sleep at campaign headquarters to get jobs done,” he said. “She has an amazing amount of energy to pursue her goals.”

“But she does so at a price,” Thompson continued. “And that price is that the rest of her life becomes disorganized.”

Carmony would ignore parking tickets, allow her car registration to lapse and neglect personal responsibilities.

Thompson said he first met Carmony in 1990, when she walked a precinct for state Sen. Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) during a campaign he managed, although Wright said she did not recall Carmony and insisted “she was not on my staff.”

As a target of the current investigation of Campbell’s counterfeit candidacy, Carmony declined a recent invitation by prosecutors to negotiate a plea. But she already faces trial May 13 in Orange County Municipal Court on seven criminal misdemeanor counts of violating the state Political Reform Act during a separate, 1991 campaign. If convicted, she could face as much as six months in jail and a $7,000 fine.

Carmony was charged last Sept. 21 with failing to properly register and file reports for the Southern California Taxpayers Committee, a political action committee she created.

In November 1991, that committee sent 4,000 to 6,000 Diamond Bar households a mailer--politicians call it a “hit piece”--opposing the reelection of City Councilwoman Phyllis Papen. Voters had no way of knowing that the real intention of the mailing was to diminish Papen’s chances if she later challenged then-Assemblyman Paul Horcher (R-Diamond Bar). Horcher was later recalled from office.

Papen complained to the Fair Political Practices Commission, which asked Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi to take the case because Carmony set up the committee in Orange County. “The politics [were] out of control, basically,” Papen said.

Horcher, who was later charged in an FPPC administrative action in the same case, said he knew nothing about the mailing, which, he said, was handled by Thompson. Thompson said he needed a committee to sponsor the mailing, so he asked Armstrong, who suggested Carmony.

With money solicited from Horcher’s friend and attorney, Carlos Negrete of San Juan Capistrano, Carmony’s committee paid $2,600 to print the mailer. “I think she probably ended up making more than I did off it,” Thompson said, adding that he was paid $1,000 and Carmony received $1,500.

“It’s been a real pain in the butt and has cost me a lot of money [in legal fees] and heartache,” Thompson said.

Negrete said the matter had been “a non-case” for years until investigators “got active with Rhonda Carmony.”

When Carmony filed the committee’s papers with the secretary of state, she listed her cousin, Steve Szarka, as the treasurer, allegedly to conceal her own involvement and any links to Horcher. But when she opened an account at the Security Pacific Bank in Fullerton, Carmony showed the bank papers naming herself as treasurer, according to sources familiar with the case. Szarka, who could not be reached for comment, was not charged in the case.

After she was charged by the district attorney, Carmony said in an interview that Thompson had recruited her, and “asked me to help him with a piece. I thought he was going to file the paperwork.”

“I was in college at the time,” she continued. “I didn’t know how to handle this kind of paperwork properly.”

But Carmony knew enough to file reports for another organization, the Conservative Republican Political Action Committee, or CORE-PAC, that solicited funds from prominent Republican businessmen. She filed reports as treasurer as early as February 1991.

Thompson said Carmony treated the FPPC’s requests for reports as she did parking tickets. He added that only a day after Carmony was charged in the Diamond Bar incident, she allegedly was arranging to put Campbell on the ballot in the special election to replace Allen.

“It is inconceivable to me that someone who is under indictment by the D.A. would involve themselves in anything that could get you into more trouble,” Thompson said.

“Politics is the most brutal of all businesses,” he continued. “It’s not a game for lightweights.”