Pringle’s Staff Drove Decoy Scheme, Grand Jury Told

Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle’s office drove the scheme to draft a bogus Democratic candidate into a critical special election that gave Republicans control of the lower house last fall, according to sworn testimony made public Wednesday.

Laurie Campbell, the Huntington Beach woman who entered the race to dilute Democratic votes, told the Orange County Grand Jury that the office of Pringle, who was not yet speaker at the time, set the plan in motion after Republican “money backers” grew concerned that a Democrat might win.

Pringle’s office orchestrated the scheme to draft Campbell to siphon votes from the main opponent of Scott R. Baugh, the Republican leadership’s candidate, she said. She testified that the plan was carried out with the help of young aides to Pringle and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach).

“They got pushed by Pringle’s people to do it,” Campbell testified under oath. “I don’t know who it was, but whoever holds the money, some big campaign donators, made some calls. . . . And those people called Pringle’s office. . . . And [Pringle’s office] said, ‘You better get it done.’ ”

One of the big donors she identified was Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., heir to a Los Angeles banking fortune who lives in Orange County and who contributes heavily to conservative Christian candidates. Ahmanson gave $40,000 to Baugh’s campaign.

Campbell said that much of what she knows about the GOP plan was revealed to her by Baugh, who she said took her into his confidence after the election.

Campbell’s testimony about the involvement of Pringle’s office in the scheme was amplified by Richard Martin, a Baugh aide who has pleaded guilty to election law violations for fraudulently promoting Campbell’s candidacy.

Martin told grand jurors that Pringle wanted to have another Democrat in the race to divide the opposition. Martin said he got the impression from a “conversation with Curt Pringle a month prior [to the filing deadline], I believe, indicating that if there were more than three Republicans on the ballot, we would need at least two Democrats there.”

Pringle spokesman Gary Foster said it was difficult to comment on transcripts not in his office’s possession, “but if this is trying to insinuate that Speaker Pringle knew anything about the recruitment of Laurie Campbell beforehand, it is incorrect, which he has stated many times in the past.”

“Many people were talking about the makeup of the ballot,” he said, “so there is speculation about that, but as far as specific recruitment of a specific candidate, Speaker Pringle knew nothing about that.”

In a recent radio interview, Baugh said, “I have no personal knowledge of Mr. Pringle’s alleged involvement in this action at all.”

Martin testified that the pressure to recruit a decoy was so intense that he felt blackmailed by Rhonda J. Carmony, Rohrabacher’s campaign manager.

“It was explained to me that, due to problems in the past I had with legislators and their staff, that if I were not to do this, it would reflect poorly both on me and on Scott [Baugh],” Martin said.

Campbell and Martin were among 31 witnesses who testified in recent weeks before a grand jury investigating the alleged scheme to manipulate the outcome of November’s crucial 67th Assembly District race. The testimony lays out in great detail the active interest that some of the GOP’s most powerful leaders reportedly took in the candidacy of a decoy Democrat.

Campbell was thrown off the special election ballot by a judge, but Baugh went on to win the election without her help. His victory enabled the Republicans to seize decisive control of the Assembly and elect Pringle as speaker.

Last week, the grand jury indicted Baugh on four felony counts for allegedly concealing campaign contributions and loans and persuading his campaign treasurer to lie under oath about the source of some campaign funds. Baugh also was charged with 18 misdemeanor violations of the state’s election laws. Two other GOP aides, including Carmony and Baugh’s chief of staff, were indicted on felony charges.

Three GOP operatives, including a former Pringle aide, have pleaded guilty to their roles in the plot.

Baugh has declared his innocence and denounced the investigation as a political witch hunt. On Tuesday, he won the GOP nomination for the 67th District with the help of absentee ballots cast before his indictment became public.

Ahmanson did not return phone messages left at his office Wednesday. He is a major donor to the California Independent Business PAC, a tiny, powerful group of major GOP contributors.

Prosecutors told the grand jurors that much of the responsibility for the Campbell episode may rest with this group and its predecessor, the Allied Business PAC.

The “business PACs may well have been the source of all this,” Supervising Dist. Atty. Guy Ormes told the grand jurors, adding that Baugh received substantial support from the group.

“That’s a total of $50,000 coming from the Independent Business PAC and one of its members, which I submit to you is a sizable chunk of change,” Ormes said. “And it would really get the attention of a brand-new young, inexperienced candidate.”

Campbell appeared before the grand jury under subpoena. In exchange for her cooperation, she told the panel that prosecutors have agreed not to charge her with any felonies for her acts in the election scheme. They are still free to charge her with misdemeanors, however.

In nearly 200 pages of sworn testimony, Campbell described in detail how she entered the race as a Democrat to siphon votes from Baugh’s Democratic opponent, Linda Moulton-Patterson, and boost Baugh’s candidacy.

Campbell denied that the principal reason for her candidacy was to help Baugh, whom she has known for more than 10 years. She also denied that Baugh urged her to enter the race. She said she did it to offer Democratic voters a “conservative alternative” and to draw votes away from the only other Democrat in the race.

Campbell described how GOP operatives took charge of her effort to qualify for the ballot, which was a special election to recall and replace former Speaker Doris Allen. She named Carmony, the Rohrabacher aide, and Martin, a paid staffer in Baugh’s campaign and the recall effort, as instrumental in getting her into the race.

Campbell said she became troubled at the frantic scramble by the GOP aides to qualify her as a candidate. “I thought it was kind of weird,” she said.

She told grand jurors that after her ties to Baugh were exposed and Democrats filed a court action to get her removed from the ballot, James Righeimer, chairman of Rohrabacher’s reelection campaign, assured her that her legal bills would be taken care of. Righeimer testified that he did not recall offering legal assistance but acknowledged talking to Baugh and Rohrabacher about raising money to help her.

Campbell also testified that she and Baugh compared stories before submitting to questioning by investigators for the district attorney’s office. She said Baugh told her that her memory was faulty.

“I told him what happened and he said, ‘No, I think this,’ ” she testified.

In her most surprising testimony, Campbell said that after the elections Baugh laid out the entire GOP scheme to ensure a Republican victory in the 67th District and capture the speakership. Much of the scenario was corroborated in testimony by Martin.

Campbell said that some powerful GOP backers were concerned that Baugh, who faced several Republican contenders but only one Democrat, might lose unless another Democratic candidate entered the race. She said the backers took their concerns to Jeff Flint, Pringle’s chief of staff.

Flint, she said, ordered Carmony to go out and draft a Democrat.

“Those people [the GOP backers] called Pringle’s office,” Campbell said. “And Jeff [Flint] told Rhonda [Carmony] that she has to get it done. Rhonda in turn called Richard [Martin] and some other guys, Mark Denny and Jeff Butler, to get the signatures, to get the [nomination] petitions completed.”

Martin and Denny both have pleaded guilty to violating state elections laws for their part in fraudulently preparing Campbell’s petitions.

Flint declined to comment about the investigation.

Campbell said Carmony took part in the plan even though Rohrabacher, who was out of the country, opposed it.

“[Carmony] was put under pressure by Flint and Pringle’s people,” she said.

Flint, Campbell testified, used her candidacy to reassure restive GOP contributors that Baugh was a good bet.

“He’s kind of like Band-Aid man,” Campbell said of Flint, who was on leave at the time from Pringle’s office to run the recall campaign.

Jeff Gibson, one of the GOP operatives who pleaded guilty, testified that Pringle, state Sen. John Lewis (R-Orange), Righeimer, Flint, Carmony, Denny and several other GOP staffers and political workers attended brainstorming sessions on several midsummer Saturdays at which the possibility of losing the 67th District was “a general topic of discussion.”

The fear was that a Democrat could win if too many Republicans entered the race, Gibson testified, adding that there was no discussion of finding a Democratic candidate to dilute the vote.

Martin testified that Pringle saw a need to split the Democratic vote.

The prosecutor asked Martin:

“Did you feel any other pressure from Rhonda Carmony, about Speaker Pringle--at the time Assemblyman Pringle--or Dave Gilliard?”

Gilliard was a political consultant for Baugh, Pringle and the campaign to recall Allen.

Martin, who said he had reservations about the scheme to draft Campbell, answered: “I was under the impression that there was pressure there as well.”

Some of California’s most powerful Republican backers made no secret that they wanted a second Democrat in the race.

Catherine Raynor, a former field representative for the California Independent Business PAC, testified that she had numerous conversations with Flint and Gilliard about the need to recruit a Democrat.

Raynor testified that before the Sept. 21 filing deadline, both Gilliard and Flint told her “a number of times” that “they were taking care” of recruiting a Democrat.

Raynor told the grand jurors that her boss, Danielle Madison, directed her on Sept. 21, the filing deadline, to make sure another Democrat had been recruited.

Martin testified that he attempted to shield Baugh from the details of how Campbell ended up on the ballot. Asked whether Baugh had quizzed him about his involvement in the Campbell matter, Martin said, “He didn’t want to know my direct involvement in this until after the election.”

Martin said he told Baugh everything after the election. He said he tried to conceal from Baugh how the signatures had been gathered for Campbell. He said he realized that people would probably draw the link between Baugh and Campbell when they discovered that Campbell’s husband had contributed $1,000 to Baugh’s campaign.