Sign Vandal Accuses Foe of Same Misdeed

A day after admitting tearing down a rival’s campaign signs in a series of nocturnal romps, Assembly candidate Rich Sybert launched a curious counterattack Friday:

He charged the opponent, Tony Strickland, with committing the same offense while working for Sybert in 1994.

Strickland immediately dismissed the accusation that he led nighttime sign-tearing raids during Sybert’s failed 1994 congressional campaign as a desperate attempt to draw attention away from Sybert’s own acts of vandalism.

“Rich Sybert is still refusing to take responsibility for his own actions,” Strickland, 28, said Friday. “That accusation is just ridiculous. I never did anything like that.”

Both Republicans are seeking the 37th Assembly District seat soon to be vacated by Nao Takasugi (R-Oxnard) because of term limits.

In an interview Wednesday with The Times, Sybert denied tearing down Strickland’s campaign signs in Thousand Oaks and Camarillo earlier in the week. But Sybert quickly reversed his position Thursday after the Strickland campaign produced a videotape of Sybert vandalizing the placards.

Sybert admitted his conduct, saying he was “embarrassed and ashamed” of what he had done.

On Friday, Sybert, 46, held a news conference at his Thousand Oaks campaign headquarters to stress that although he felt terrible about his vandalism, Strickland was a hypocrite for making an issue of it.

James Vaughn, Sybert’s campaign manager from his unsuccessful 1994 bid to unseat Democratic Rep. Anthony Beilenson, then addressed the horde of news media, saying he had learned during that race that Strickland was out tearing down signs at night with college Young Republicans.

“He said, ‘We’ve got some YRs. Tony [Beilenson] has got a lot of signs, and we could take care of them,’ ” Vaughn said. “He said, ‘This is one of those things you don’t want to know about,’ and I told him he’d better not do that because it was stupid.”

Vaughn said he learned afterward that Strickland had then destroyed signs in the San Fernando Valley anyway. But Vaughn conceded that he had no proof the vandalism ever occurred, did not know if Strickland personally removed any signs, and never confronted Strickland about it.

The Ventura County district attorney’s office is investigating Sybert’s vandalism, but has not decided whether to file charges against the Harvard-educated attorney, who is also an Oxnard toy company executive and former state director of planning and research for the Wilson administration.