National GOP Tries to Use Ling-Ling Chang to Prove That It Isn’t Racist. Too Bad She’s a TOTAL LIAR!

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(If you want to skip right down to the mind-boggling evidence regarding Ling-Ling Chang’s lies about her background, it’s down there in red.)

[1] Yep — this SURE IS a “Race to Watch”!

This is cynical — but at least it isn’t likely to work!

A Washington-based Republican group working to elect down-ballot candidates for state office has added two California legislative contenders to its latest top 14 races to watch this fall.

As part of its efforts to engage minorities and women, the Republican State Leadership Committee identified 558 women and 244 candidates with diverse backgrounds from across the nation. The Future Majority Project was launched by GOP Govs. Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada. The group has said it plans to invoke a trio of scandals involving California Democratic lawmakers to eliminate the party’s grip on the statehouse.

On Tuesday, it promoted Diamond Bar City Councilwoman Ling-Ling Chang, a candidate for Assembly, and Downey Councilman Mario Guerra, running for the state Senate, as top recruits to watch in the Nov. 4 election. Chang, a principal at a private intelligence agency, is taking on Democrat Gregg Fritchle, a social worker, in the Republican-favored 55th district held by Assemblyman Curt Hagman, R-Chino Hills.

I’m sure that vast underdog Gregg Fritchle will be glad to know that the 55th Assembly district is a “Race to Watch,” given that Ling-Ling Chang is SO loaded with campaign money right now that just yesterday she gave $4,100 to the campaign of fellow Ed Royce/Bob Huff stablemate Young Kim, and $12,300 to three other fellow Assembly candidates ($2000 more is already showing up today) as well as sending $35,000 to the California Republican Party.  Yep — TIGHT RACE THERE.  (It’s too bad that it isn’t actually “Race to Watch” level tight, because Fritchle would be an awesome Assembly member.)

All that the national Republican Party wants people to “watch” is the fact that Ling-Ling Chang is neither white nor male — because (despite her being a puppet of highly white and aromatically male Bob Huff) that is taken to somehow prove that the party is not racist.  (OJB predicted that the GOP would try this tactic well over a year ago.  I’ll find a link to that when I have time.  Sigh.)  But as I wrote of Young Kim almost a year ago, “she may be an attractive Asian woman on the outside, but inside her apparently beats the privileged heart of Ed Royce.”  Chang is pretty much the same, with her except we’re talking about the privileged heart of Redevelopment Promotion Machine Bob Huff.

Clarence Thomas is in the photo for three reasons: (1) previous example of cynical GOP use of racial politics, (2) previous example of accusations of lying to obtain higher office, (3) seriously effective withering stare directed at Ling-Ling.

The problem with Ling-Ling — for those who missed last Friday’s Weekend Open Thread, which preceded an exceptionally busy few days here — is that she’s apparently a serial liar.  She’s not just a normal serial liar, but one brazen enough that one might argue that that capability is her actual primary qualification for public office.

[2] The Education Claims Scandal, as Reported by a Primary Opponent.

I haven’t had time to dig through the “Phillip Chen campaign” archives, where most of the charges against Ling-Ling’s Lies were chronicled, but here’s the portion of them that filtered into a Martin Wisckol column this past March (in which the boldface emphasis for everything except her name is mine):

Biographies for Assembly candidate and Diamond Bar Councilwoman Ling-Ling Chang have sometimes listed her as having been born in Diamond Bar, having a degree in biology from UC Riverside and now attending Harvard.

In fact, she was born in Taiwan, has no degrees and has been taking online classes from Harvard Extension School since 2008. The Republican is running for Assembly District 55, half of which is in Orange County.

She says the mistakes regarding her birthplace and the college degree were made by others, that she has never represented herself as being U.S. born or having a degree. And at least one of those sources has acknowledged making the error.

For at least two years, from December 2010 to December 2012, her official biography on the Diamond Bar City Council website said she was “born and raised in Diamond Bar” and “went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Biology.”

She blamed Diamond Bar’s public information office.

“They misconstrued it when I said I was raised in Diamond Bar,” said Chang, who came to the United States at age 3. “And when I was asked about my education, I said I studied biology at UC Riverside.”

And the two-year lapse before the biography was corrected?

“It may seem strange, but I hate reading about myself online, so I didn’t pay any attention until people started mentioning it and I changed it.”

The public information office didn’t return my calls, but I had better luck verifying the source of another error.

When Chang ran for re-election to the City Council last year, candidate information published by the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin listed her education as “Bachelor’s degree in biology, UC Riverside; Harvard.”

Chang said that she had again been misinterpreted but didn’t ask for a correction. I called the Daily Bulletin, which verified that in a questionnaire under “Education,” Chang wrote, “Biology, UCR; Harvard.” The paper said a correction would be written.

At least two other websites picked up the erroneous mention of the college degree from either the city or Daily Bulletin biographies.

Chang offers no apologies for listing herself as attending Harvard, information that also appears on her Facebook and LinkedIn pages. While anybody can take classes from Harvard Extension School without going through an admittance process, Chang offered documentation showing that she is in the extension school’s more rigorous degree program which does have an admissions process.

Uh, about that last sentence?  I’m afraid that I’d need to see some more proof before I believed her.  If she’d like to send OJB scans of all assignments she’s turned in, we’ll publish them.  (The downside for her is: we’ll also Google them to see how much of them represent original work.)  Meanwhile, it should be easy enough for her to send us a PDF copy of her transcript, with grades, so that we — and any voter who thinks that she’s gone to Harvard — can see how she’s progressing.

[3] And Then I Started Digging Myself — and I Found Much Worse Than Phillip Chen Ever Did

By the way — I wrote all of what appears above before I really started digging into Chang’s record.  But I was still bothered by the supposed study at Harvard’s Extension program.  Extension programs are sort of the “Redevelopment Agencies” of upscale academia — a gigantic pot of money that exists because they are so easy to abuse.  They let prestigious universities make money off of well-funded people who would not gain admittance into a regular program, but still wanted a bit of cachet — because they’re running for office or something.  As someone who earned all of my degrees based on normal admission factors like grades, scores, and activities, I always want to take an extra look at what was really behind such a degree.  So, I investigated — and take a look at what I found online.

Happily, I was able to obtain an image of the claims that Ling-Ling Chang made about her education in order to help her beat Phillip Chen in the primary:

In case you can’t read it easily, it says this:

• Studied biology, University of California, Riverside
• Attending for a bachelor’s degree in biology, Harvard University (expected 2015)

Uh-oh.  Here comes the part in red.

Note three important issues, one with four sub-parts:

1. “Studied biology” is not an actual educational credential.  We don’t know from this if she passed even a single class at UCR.
   
2. She says that she was “Attending for a bachelor’s degree in biology” at Harvard.
   
   1. “Attending for,” to the extent that it’s grammatical, suggests that she was physically present there; there’s no indication that this was true.  (If it were true, she’d likely have said so.)  Strictly speaking, as someone patching in from the Internet, it’s not even clear that she herself was physically present at her computer — if she actually completed any of these classes at all.  Again, let’s see that transcript!
      
   2. Now her claim goes from “taking some extension classes” to  her being on the verge of earning a Harvard degree!  Presumably, as she says, that would be a Bachelor’s of Science.
      
   3. BUT THE PRESUMPTION IS WRONG!  Harvard’s extension program DOESN’T OFFER A BACHELOR’S DEGREE.  If offers a Master’s Degree in Liberal Arts in with a concentration in Biology.  Here are the degree requirements — does she even claim to have filled them?  Which semesters did she spend in residence at Harvard — as is required?  What’s the topic of her Master’s Thesis?  When did her five-year deadline begin (as she says that she started in 2008.)
      
   4. And in point 2 on the page discussing Admissions requirements, it says this (the boldface is my emphasis):
      

      2. Take your three admission courses.
      
      Specific admission course selection guidelines, including the appropriate graduate proseminar, are outlined on each individual field page.

      Enroll in these three courses for graduate credit at Harvard Extension School or Harvard Summer School, and earn at least B in each. The 12 credits are included in the 40 credits required for the degree.

      If you haven’t yet completed a bachelor’s degree, you may still start taking your admission courses. But you cannot count more than three courses toward the degree before you earn a bachelor’s.

      Ling-Ling Chang has not completed her Bachelor’s Degree.  She’d have listed it, if she had.  So, SHE CANNOT POSSIBLY BE EXPECTING TO GRADUATE FROM HARVARD IN 2015.

      THAT’S A LIE.
      

3. Unlike simply scrawling down “Biology, UCR; Harvard.” as she claims to have done elsewhere, the information on this Voter Information website is SO DETAILED — as well so obviously beneficial to her (the payoff doesn’t come until after the election) and so obviously wrong — that this could not have come from anyone outside of her campaign.  (They may have — I’d guess likely did — swipe it from another voter information website, but they would not have made up these sorts of details on their own.)  So this is the equivalent of a fingerprint left behind, evidence of a previous claim.   She has blamed others, including City staff, for each of  her representations — but who else would claim that she was graduating in 2015, and listing the wrong degree, without her knowledge?

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As I recall, Phillip Chen presented more reasons than this to challenge the veracity of the woman who wants up to 12 years in the State Assembly.  OJB is still looking for a volunteer — ideally someone who kept Phillip Chen campaign material (such as perhaps you, Steve Tye?) — to assemble the full case against Ling-Ling’s lies.  I have, as of just now, barely even started looking into her supposed company, “Strategy Insights Group” — which claims: “Our core service team consists of former consultants from McKinsey & Company” — oh, really? — but doesn’t list the names of any employees AT ALL.  Their phone number — 213-255-5750 — leads to a Google Voice request for you to state your name; I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t let me through if I said who I really was, but YOU, Dear Reader, are welcome to try!

And here are their claimed — or sort of claimed, as it doesn’t say that this business actually served them — clients, listed under the link “Clients”:

Yes, because these are the sorts of companies that want to take advice from someone who (maybe, at most) took some biology classes at UC Riverside.

You might hesitate to believe that she actually claims to own this business, so — here’s a screenshot from her LinkedIn page.

And oh look — IT ALSO LISTS HER EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND AS “HARVARD”!  SOMEONE ELSE’S MISTAKE, NO DOUBT!  (Note for to-investigate list: Is LinkedIn In on the Conspiracy to Misrepresent Ling-Ling?)

We’d ask Gregg Fritchle for more dirt on Ling-Ling — but he steadfastly rejects even legitimate “negative campaigning” like this, which marks him both as “too good for Sacramento” and “just right for Sacramento.”  (And, as part of the Democratic majority, he’d be in a better position to serve his district, too!)  As it is, though, if Ling-Ling REALLY thinks that she can put this level of deception over on the public, the 55th District would also better be served by an empty seat.  We can’t afford this sort of disdain for the truth in our public officials.

UPDATE, 2015:

And now she’s running for the 29th State Senate Seat being vacated by her mentor, Bob Huff, in 2016!  At least by then she’ll have her Harvard degree to advertise!  Right, Ling-Ling? Right? … Ling-Ling?