Baugh’s Biggest Reelection Obstacle Isn’t on the Ballot

Orange County’s 67th Assembly race isn’t about campaign politics as usual. The real contest is the People of the State of California vs. Scott R. Baugh.

Baugh, a freshman Republican from Huntington Beach whose election last year tipped the Assembly’s balance of power to the GOP, is favored to recapture the conservative coastal district easily in the Nov. 5 election.

These days, his biggest worry is Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi.

The county prosecutor is aggressively pushing a case against Baugh for alleged campaign finance wrongdoing during last year’s run for the Assembly. If guilty, Baugh could be forced to resign.

Last month, after a judge gutted the case against Baugh, the assemblyman pounced with political zeal.

A four-color brochure mailed to district voters blared: “Scott Baugh Vindicated!” An invitation for a Sacramento fund-raiser echoed that theme, adding a cheeky promise that proceeds would go to reelect Baugh and not to his criminal defense team.

Last week, Capizzi refiled five felony perjury counts and 13 misdemeanor violations against Baugh.

On the stump, Baugh is impassioned in his own defense. He has virtually ignored the two challengers on the ballot--Democrat Cliff Brightman, a Fountain Valley aerospace analyst, and Donald W. Rowe of Los Alamitos, the Reform Party candidate.

For all intents, Baugh is running against the district attorney.

He contends that Capizzi, a possible candidate for state attorney general in 1998, is out to bag a political trophy, not pursue justice. “These were trumped-up charges,” Baugh declares. “When a judge agrees with you and throws them out, it goes a long way toward communicating to the voters that this is a bogus case.”

Capizzi is weary of the critique.

“We’ve had to endure a lot of name calling, but we’re intent on staying focused on our responsibility to prosecute criminal violations,” the district attorney said. “We’re not going to get into public shouting matches with defendants in criminal cases.”

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Political pundits say Baugh’s vindication strategy makes sense. With a trial certain to be delayed until after the election, Baugh needs to work at solidifying his name in the district for the rocky ride when the case goes to court.

“I think Scott Baugh’s problems are after the election, not before,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a Los Angeles-base GOP consultant. “His problem is with the district attorney, not the voters.”

Brightman and Rowe, meanwhile, have been lost in the legal shuffle. Both are running campaigns that are low budget. Brightman has flatly refused to raise money and is not sending out fliers--he calls them “junk mail”--or posting placards, saying, “We put kids in jail for graffiti but we let the politicians do it.”

Both challengers also admit that Baugh, despite his difficulties in criminal court, remains the big favorite. The district, which stretches from Huntington Beach through Seal Beach and inland into Fountain Valley, Cypress and Los Alamitos, is 51% Republican and 33% Democrat. The Reform Party has less than 1%.

While the two challengers fashion themselves as citizen candidates who want to see politics reformed, neither has gone out of his way to spotlight Baugh’s legal difficulties.

“When I campaign, I do not bring it up,” Brightman said. “But that doesn’t mean the audience doesn’t bring it up. Scott Baugh hasn’t gotten off yet. It isn’t settled in the people’s minds.”

Brightman, a corporate financial planner at Douglas Aircraft who also teaches economics at Coastline Community College, focuses on education instead. He wants to see more money for classroom computers, smaller classes and curriculum changes aimed at developing critical thinking skills.

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Rowe, an apartment manager and poker dealer at Commerce Casino, is making campaign finance reform his big issue. He supports Proposition 208, which would put restrictions on contributions to politicians. Noting that contributions have increased 173% since 1992, Rowe concludes that “our government is just for sale. Period.”

Baugh, meanwhile, has tried to play up his role in helping the Assembly return to Republican hands for the first time in a quarter century.

He came to office during the November 1995 recall of former Assemblywoman Doris Allen, the maverick Republican from Cypress who defied the GOP and struck a deal with the Democrats to become speaker. Baugh gave the Republicans the key vote they needed to elect Curt Pringle of Garden Grove as speaker.

Baugh hasn’t had much legislative success, though. His biggest efforts--to regulate nude juice bars, to require the loser in civil lawsuits to pay legal costs and to deny workers’ compensation benefits to illegal immigrants--died in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

That has left him to shadowbox with Capizzi on the campaign trail.

Prosecutors allege Baugh misreported tens of thousands of dollars in campaign loans and contributions during his run for Allen’s seat. They contend he falsified his campaign reports in part to hide any connection to a GOP scheme to recruit a decoy Democrat--Laurie Campbell--to siphon votes from Baugh’s chief Democratic rival in the campaign.

Campbell and her husband, longtime friends of Baugh’s, gave the assemblyman a $1,000 donation one week before she was recruited into the contest by the GOP. Baugh returned their money in cash, then allegedly misreported it.

Baugh insists any errors he made in reporting that contribution or others were “simply good faith mistakes” resulting from bad advice he got from his campaign treasurer, Dan Traxler.

Last month, Superior Court Judge James L. Smith dismissed most of the charges against Baugh, ruling that prosecutors withheld critical evidence about Traxler, including a taped conversation the campaign treasurer had with Baugh.

“Traxler admits on tape that the contribution from Campbell didn’t have to be reported,” Baugh said. “That was the assumption I had all along. It makes it impossible to show criminal intent.”

Capizzi counters that the original charges were dropped strictly on procedural grounds. “I don’t think that’s any vindication whatsoever for the conduct that gave rise to the charges,” he said. “That remains to be litigated in court.”