Casual Remark Led to O.C. Election Plot, Affidavits Say

The events that led to Friday’s indictment of Orange County legislator Scott Baugh, and threaten to shift the balance of power in the California Assembly, began with an offhand remark by a legal secretary at a Labor Day party last year at Baugh’s Huntington Beach home, according to sworn affidavits.

During a discussion about a likely special election in the 67th Assembly District--and its importance to the Republican Party--someone noted that four declared candidates would dangerously divide Republican strength in the winner-take-all contest, while the only announced Democrat would be assured of garnering all of her party’s votes.

“Well, I should run,” joked Laurie Campbell, who surprised the heavily Republican gathering by announcing that she was a registered Democrat.

Campbell said later that the remark was not lost on Baugh, 33, a newcomer to the political scene himself. But Baugh was more concerned with cementing his own candidacy than he was in the number of Democratic challengers, according to court papers.

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), who was spearheading GOP efforts to recall Doris Allen, the 67th District’s Republican incumbent, had told Baugh in July that he had to raise $100,000 in little more than a month to prove himself a serious candidate.

Enlisting Campbell to run as a spoiler was of some interest to Baugh. But getting a $1,000 campaign contribution from Campbell and her husband, Rick, was more to the point, prosecutors allege.

That $1,000 donation, and the last-minute scramble to put Campbell on the November ballot, have resulted in three criminal convictions--one involving a staff aide to Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove)--and now threaten to put Baugh and Rohrabacher’s campaign manager behind bars.

The story of Baugh’s high-stakes bid to get elected, and of the extraordinary actions taken to undermine the chances of Democrat Linda Moulton-Patterson with a decoy candidate, is spelled out in a detailed 65-page affidavit from Orange County district attorney’s investigators and three other sworn statements from GOP staffers who have pleaded guilty to campaign misdeeds.

The three are Jeff Gibson, 24, who managed the campaign to recall Assemblywoman Doris Allen; Mark Denny, a 27-year-old former staff aide to Pringle, and Richard Martin, a 26-year-old Baugh campaign worker. All have pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme to fraudulently gather voter signatures on petitions to put Campbell on the ballot. In addition, Campbell cooperated with investigators, giving them extensive statements about how the scenario unfolded.

The documents, all filed in Orange County Superior Court in the past several weeks, portray the days leading up to the signature-gathering deadline as harried, confused and sometimes comical.

What follows is that story, as related by those convicted staffers and by district attorney’s investigators, who brought more than 30 witnesses before the grand jury that on Friday indicted Baugh, his chief of staff, Maureen Werft, and Rohrabacher’s campaign manager, Rhonda J. Carmony. If convicted, all are facing possible prison terms, ranging from 44 months to seven years.

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With the filing deadline for candidates to succeed ex-Speaker Doris Allen fast approaching, some Republican leaders were worried about the possibility that Moulton-Patterson, a Democrat, could end up with the greatest number of votes and win in the heavily Republican district, because there were going to be four Republicans on the ballot.

Against this background, Scott Baugh made a Sept. 19 telephone call to Laurie Campbell, whom he had first met nine years earlier when the two, still in their 20s, were working at the same Sacramento law firm.

Was she serious during their Labor Day weekend chat, when she spoke of her willingness to run in the 67th District race, Campbell recalled Baugh asking her. Her anti-abortion stance would be in stark contrast to that of pro-abortion rights Moulton-Patterson, and could siphon off the conservative Democratic vote.

When she agreed that she would, Baugh told her that time was short and to expect a call from Rohrabacher aide Rhonda Carmony, who was active in the campaign to oust Allen. Allen had enraged many GOP leaders by getting herself elected speaker last year on the strength of her own vote and those of 39 Assembly Democrats.

Instead of Carmony, the call came from Martin, a paid Baugh campaign staffer who instructed her to go to the registrar of voters office to get the petition forms and other papers she would need to file her candidacy.

Martin called again that same day to explain that she would have to gather the signatures of 40 registered voters on her candidacy petitions.

But Campbell said she was too busy with her work to gather signatures, so Martin picked up the forms on filing day and delivered them to Rohrabacher’s campaign office, where he gave them to Carmony, according to the court documents.

Carmony, according to court documents, was the ringleader of the effort to put Campbell on the ballot, and supposedly had the “blessing” of Pringle to go forward with the scheme, Campbell recalled Baugh telling her.

With time running out and only a few hours left, things began to get frantic.

Carmony told Martin to begin circulating petitions and dispatched him to a neighborhood in Huntington Beach where many Democrats were registered.

Carmony gave other petition forms to another Rohrabacher aide and instructed him to deliver them to Pringle’s chief of staff, Jeff Flint, at Pringle’s campaign office. Once delivered, the petition forms found their way into the hands of Denny, another Pringle staffer, and Gibson, a paid worker in the Doris Allen Recall Campaign.

Carmony called the workers at Pringle headquarters in Garden Grove, and Denny quoted her as saying, “We are trying to get Laurie Campbell on the ballot.” When Denny asked who Campbell was, Carmony said Campbell was “a Democrat that we are trying to get to run.”

According to both Denny and Gibson, Carmony desperately needed help gathering signatures and the deadline was less than two hours away.

“Carmony had more or less volunteered Denny and me to assist in the circulation of Campbell nomination petitions,” Gibson said in the affidavit. “Carmony made it clear that without our help, Campbell would not get on the ballot.”

Denny grabbed a computerized printout of registered Democrats in the 67th District, pens and a precinct map. The three petition circulators, as well as Carmony and Campbell, would converge on the registrar of voters office at 4 p.m. on deadline day, leaving little time to spare.

Gibson, meanwhile, had noticed problems with five of the partially completed petitions he had been given. Where voters from the same family didn’t feel like filling in the same address on the forms, ditto marks were inserted. That wouldn’t fly. Gibson said he called Carmony, who said she would take care of it.

Gibson and Denny gathered signatures door to door in a Garden Grove neighborhood from 3:45 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. After gathering 10 signatures, the two drove to the registrar’s office to meet Campbell and Carmony.

Martin and Campbell were the first to arrive at the appointed hour of 4 p.m.--one hour before the office would close. Martin began making calls on Campbell’s cellular telephone. Martin’s beeper buzzed incessantly. They both watched from the car as Moulton-Patterson arrived to file her candidacy papers.

By 4:50 p.m.--10 minutes before the deadline--everyone had arrived in the registrar’s parking lot.

There, sitting in her car with Gibson and Carmony, Campbell completed the petitions, signing as their circulator and swearing she had gathered all the signatures, Gibson said. Campbell said Carmony and Gibson filled in the addresses that had been missing. But Gibson said Carmony alone wrote over the ditto marks, remarking, “See Jeff, it’s not a big deal.”

Three minutes before 5 p.m., Campbell went inside to file as a Democratic candidate in the 67th Assembly race, with petitions signed by 43 Democratic voters.

Throughout the day of Sept. 21, the day the signatures were gathered and the papers filed, young staffers involved in Campbell’s short-lived candidacy had been using cellular telephones and pagers with abandon in their last-minute efforts to qualify the candidate. Their calls would later leave an electronic trail of evidence.

More than 50 calls of interest to prosecutors were made that day, but the lion’s share came between the frantic witching hour of 4 p.m. and 5 p.m., just as the deadline approached. Some 30 calls were made in those 60 minutes, as Carmony’s cell phone was used to page Martin, contact Baugh field representative Jeff Nielsen, call Baugh’s campaign consultant Dave Gilliard, and telephone the campaign offices of Rohrabacher and Pringle.

Shortly after the 5 p.m. filing deadline, Carmony’s phone was used to call the district offices of Pringle, as well as Baugh’s home. Flint’s cellular phone was used to call the California Business PAC, whose executive director told investigators that she had been interested in recruiting a Democrat to run in the 67th, but was not involved in the Campbell matter.

At the deadline, Campbell paid the $699.36 filing fee.

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Campbell’s candidacy posed a new problem for Baugh, one that ultimately got him indicted.

Having a $1,000 campaign contribution from the Campbells appear on the finance reports he was required by law to file apparently did not appeal to Baugh, prosecutors allege. According to the grand jury, Baugh’s first solution to the problem was to conceal the donation and not report it on two separate campaign reports in October and November. Later, he would account for the money as a loan from himself, and only on election day--just hours before the polls closed--did he file an amended campaign finance report correctly stating the donation’s source.

Prosecutors filed several felony and misdemeanor charges against Baugh accusing him of violating campaign finance laws.

In one of those alleged attempts to cover up the transaction, Baugh returned the $1,000--in cash--to Campbell’s husband, Rick, who gave $700 of the money to his wife to reimburse her filing fees, according to the investigators’ affidavit.

As Democrats petitioned the courts last year to remove Campbell from the November ballot, Campbell said she conferred with Baugh about her legal problems. She said Baugh told her that “they” would make sure her attorneys fees were paid and if not, he would personally take care of them. Campbell told investigators her legal fees were paid by someone else, whom she did not name. She also said the attorneys were provided by Gilliard, Baugh’s campaign consultant.

Speaker Pringle told investigators that he may have interceded to get her legal help.

“Campbell said Baugh told her it was Curt Pringle’s people who [were] behind this nomination paper incident,” the search warrant affidavit says. “Baugh told Campbell that Dana Rohrabacher is ‘really ticked’ at Pringle’s office for allowing this to happen. Campbell said that Baugh said it is Baugh’s understanding that this whole idea was Carmony’s but she had Pringle’s blessing to go forward with it.”

After The Times broke the news of Campbell being a decoy candidate last October--and quoted Baugh as saying he barely knew her--Campbell called Baugh and confronted him. “I know I lied,” Campbell quoted Baugh as saying. “I choked.”

Baugh’s first brush with district attorney’s investigators was tense when they appeared at his door at 7:40 a.m. on a Saturday 10 days before the election.

After first inviting investigators into his Huntington Beach home, Baugh changed his mind when they brought up the subject of Campbell and had them wait for him on the porch for 20 minutes.

While he acknowledged he knew the Campbells from Mariners Church in Newport Beach, Baugh said suddenly, “But to get to the heart of your question, I didn’t ask [Campbell] to run.”

In the next few minutes, Baugh rebutted just about everything Campbell had told investigators: he didn’t know who asked Campbell to get into the race; he wasn’t sure of her motivation, although he believed it stemmed from her opposition to abortion; he didn’t know who circulated the petitions, and he never discussed petition-gathering with her.

Baugh told investigators that his campaign had been put together rapidly, after Rohrabacher approached him last August to consider running. When Baugh was asked if Campbell supported him before she announced her own candidacy, Baugh cut the interview off.

Baugh later hired a lawyer and refused to cooperate further.

When the dust settled Friday, Baugh had been indicted by the Orange County Grand Jury on four felony counts, including falsifying campaign reports and persuading another person to commit perjury. He also was charged with 18 misdemeanors for allegedly concealing the source of campaign money. If convicted, he faces up to seven years in state prison on the felony charges. Baugh on Saturday did not answer questions about the indictment, but he has accused the district attorney of grandstanding.

Carmony was indicted on charges of fraudulently making and filing nomination papers for Campbell, and being part of a conspiracy to file false nomination papers. If convicted, she faces up to three years and eight months in prison.

Baugh’s chief of staff, Maureen Werft, was indicted on two felony counts of perjury and fraudulently voting in last November’s election to recall Allen and elect Baugh. She faces up to 4 years, 8 months in prison.

Carmony and Werft declined to comment. They and Baugh will be arraigned April 22.

Rohrabacher said Saturday he knew something about a plan to get a Democrat in the race but advised Carmony against it because it “seemed underhanded.” But the congressman said he had nothing to do with the scheme and was away in Bosnia at the time it was being developed.

Pringle has told investigators that he confronted Denny and Flint about the plan to recruit Campbell after he read about it in the newspapers. He reprimanded Denny, who resigned from Pringle’s office. Flint said he did not circulate Campbell’s nomination petitions. Pringle said he was in no way involved in the plan to recruit Campbell. Prosecutors declined to discuss her status and she has not spoken to reporters.

Times staff writers Peter M. Warren, Dexter Filkins and Michael G. Wagner contributed to this report.