Kevin Shelley’s Mess

In California, the secretary of state is elected as a Republican or Democrat. Then, the minute the state’s elections chief takes office, partisanship has to leave the stage. It’s critical to the elections process that the secretary of state, more than any other statewide official, hew to the line of fairness. It’s a strange setup for a politician. Even so, Republican Bill Jones, forced from office by term limits and now running against Barbara Boxer for the U.S. Senate, was a model of probity.

Democratic Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has failed the test, more thoroughly than any other secretary of state in memory. Although there is no solid evidence so far that laws have been violated -- investigations are underway -- Shelley is at best guilty of serious ethical lapses.

He claimed he did not know that part of a $500,000 grant he won as an assemblyman for a San Francisco community group apparently was laundered into contributions to his 2002 campaign for secretary of state. Then he claimed ignorance that his office contracted with crony consultants to distribute federal money for citizen education programs at the same time the consultants were engaged in partisan activity. Or that members of his publicly paid staff were used to collect and process campaign contributions and represent Shelley at Democratic events, and apparently not given a choice about it.

Now, it’s charged that Shelley is not even doing a good job as secretary of state. Several county registrars of voters accuse him of destroying the collaborative process needed to run elections. Alameda County Registrar Brad Clark told the Contra Costa Times last week that the relationship between Shelley and the registrars was the worst he had seen in his 22 years in office. Shelley, he said, frequently told registrars one thing and then did another, was slow in passing along money to train poll workers and treated county officials as subservient workers. Some registrars defend Shelley, saying he just has a different management style.

Times Sacramento columnist George Skelton recently wrote that it was widely known that Shelley “frequently acts like a jerk. Verbally abusive. Vulgar. Volatile.” After abusing aides while in the Assembly, Shelley was required to attend anger-management lessons. He still admits to being “a hot Irishman.”

That weak admission does nothing to overcome the mess that Shelley faces today. It is possible that not even a complete turnaround in partisan uses of his office will protect his job. But whether he stays or not, he owes local election officials some respect and his own staff some apologies about his temper and out-of-line demands on their time.