Capizzi’s Role Puts Him in GOP Hot Seat

The indictment of Assemblyman Scott Baugh has brought law and politics crashing into one another.

In the middle stands Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi.

Capizzi, the county’s chief law enforcement officer, is a Republican. So is Baugh, whose election victory last year enabled the GOP to wrest control of the Assembly and install a speaker of its choice for the first time in 25 years.

Now, with Baugh facing criminal charges for alleged election law violations, the GOP victory is tarnished. And the political fortunes of Capizzi, who has tenaciously pursued wrongdoing in his own party, are just as surely in doubt.

“You won’t be seeing any Republican legislators contributing to Capizzi’s campaign,” quipped former Democratic Assemblyman and prosecutor Tom Umberg, who had praise for Capizzi’s conduct of the investigation.

Capizzi, 56, is often mentioned as a potential candidate for state attorney general, a job that might open up if current occupant Dan Lungren moves on. But the district attorney’s investigation into the 67th Assembly election--which resulted last Friday in the indictment of Baugh and two others on felony charges--has enraged Republican leaders across the state.

Some say Capizzi has overzealously pursued minor acts of malfeasance, and is harming the party in the process. Others call him a traitor.

“Any doubts regarding the honesty and integrity of his office have now been dispelled,” said Michael Schroeder, the state GOP vice chairman.

Capizzi has a ready answer for his critics.

“The state prisons are full of people who say I’m overzealous,” Capizzi said last week. “All we do is pick up the bread crumbs and follow where they lead.”

The investigation into election irregularities illustrates the conflicting pressures that tug on an elected prosecutor like Capizzi. As district attorney, he is sworn to fight crime where he finds it. At the same time, he is an elected official who must rely on those in his party who helped him get his job.

Capizzi, a fixture in the D.A.’s office for 31 years and district attorney for the past six, says he is unmoved by pressure to ease up. So far, the investigation has netted three guilty pleas.

He says he has received “many, many calls” of support.

In a recent interview in his office, Capizzi seemed relaxed amid the turmoil. “This is not a difficult case,” he said.

Many in Orange County’s legal community praised Capizzi’s conduct last week as a profile in political courage. Capizzi, they say, is risking the ire of his party’s leaders in rooting out suspected corruption in the county’s political system.

“Capizzi is saying, ‘Damn the torpedoes,’ ” said Municipal Judge Margaret Anderson. “He’s doing what he was elected to do.”

The Baugh inquiry has gone to the top of the Republican leadership. Three people, including a former aide to Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle, have pleaded guilty so far to trying to sway the Nov. 28 election in illegal ways.

And Friday, Capizzi’s office charged Baugh with four felonies and 18 misdemeanors, alleging that he lied about his campaign finances and then tried to cover it up.

Nearly as damning is the affidavit compiled by Capizzi’s investigators, which lays out in meticulous detail the effort to draft a phony Democratic candidate into the Assembly race to ensure Baugh’s victory. The affidavit, 65 pages long, shows blow-by-blow the involvement of Pringle’s staffers and the campaign manager of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach).

Confronted with such evidence, Capizzi said Friday he would not tolerate such affronts to the political system.

“This is Orange County. . . We are not Chicago,” Capizzi said, “Fair and honest elections are the cornerstone of a democracy and that is something we take seriously.”

Confronted with testimony that Pringle approved the scheme, Capizzi must now decide whether to go after Pringle himself.

“The investigation is continuing,” a top Capizzi deputy said after Baugh’s surrender.

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From the beginning, Capizzi has come under heavy fire for the Baugh investigation.

In December, Schroeder accused the district attorney of trying to “cover his own political rear end.” Schroeder said Capizzi’s real intention was to deflect attention from his failure to prevent the county bankruptcy.

When investigators launched a sunrise raid on Baugh’s home--surprising the candidate before he was fully dressed--Rohrabacher denounced the search as a “home invasion assault” and likened it to tactics used by the Nazis. He demanded that Capizzi resign.

As investigators closed in on Rhonda Carmony, his campaign aide who was ultimately charged with three felonies, Rohrabacher grew even hotter.

“We have a D.A. who has gone berserk,” the congressman said. “This is part of a vendetta. Lives are being destroyed.”

Capizzi shrugs off the criticism as part of his job. He pointed out that three GOP aides so far have admitted breaking the law.

“The laws these men pleaded guilty to were enacted by the Legislature,” Capizzi said. “If [Rohrabacher] doesn’t like the laws, maybe he should call up his favorite legislator and have them repealed.”

When it comes to ferreting out political corruption, Capizzi has etched a substantial record--against Democrats and Republicans alike. As a staff prosecutor in the late 1970s, Capizzi posted some 40 convictions for public corruption charges, including convictions against two county supervisors and a former congressman.

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Since becoming district attorney in 1990, Capizzi has continued the focus. The biggest hit: Three years ago, County Supervisor Don R. Roth resigned amid an investigation into alleged influence peddling and pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors.

“I think the prosecutions against public officials have been somewhat evenly distributed among the political parties,” said Loren DuChesne, chief of the office’s bureau of investigation.

While Capizzi earns praise in some quarters, others criticize him for occasionally pursuing the trivial with felony-like zeal.

Some of the charges filed by Capizzi’s office against elected officials could have been handled in civil proceedings by the Fair Political Practices Commission. When former Brea Mayor Ronald Isles resigned from office in 1992, he compared Capizzi’s prosecutors to “Sherman marching to the sea”--a reference to the Civil War general who burned everything in his path.

Capizzi’s focus--and the criticism--continue today. In December, a grand jury charged Orange County Supervisors William G. Steiner and Roger R. Stanton and Auditor-Controller Steve E. Lewis with official misconduct. All are Republicans.

The three officials are asking a judge to disqualify Capizzi’s office from prosecuting the case. They contend that Capizzi has inherent conflicts of interest stemming from his actions both before and after the bankruptcy. A decision by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John W. Ouderkirk is pending.

After the Baugh case blows over, Capizzi may find that advancing politically becomes trickier.

State GOP Chairman John Herrington, asked about Capizzi’s political future last week, seemed not even sure who he was.

“I’ve never met the man,” he said.

Capizzi says he’s unbothered by the criticism. And he’s staying mum on his future political plans.

“I don’t assume facts not in evidence,” he said.