Who’s Behind the Pauly DUI Attack Signs? Harry Sidhu’s Cronies, Including Tarnished Tony Strickland

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Recently Dishonest Dave Gilliard-acquired mouthpiece Matt Cunningham published a piece on Friday slamming the breaking news story published here Thursday morning about signs being posted within the 68th District attacking Deborah Pauly for a drunk-driving offense last year.  I am happy to take the chance to respond to his post.  Unless you like Inside Baseball blog-warring, you can skip Part 1.

[1] “Teddy-Bear-Killer” Cunningham’s Weak Lecture to Me on Blogger Ethics

Matt states that Brian and I “need glasses.”  It’s true: we each do.  I’m wearing mine right now.  And since Brian recently underwent successful cataract surgery, it’s nice that Matt takes the chance to note this.  Let’s explain why the piece went up where and as it did — and what Matt leaves out of his critique.  And then let’s jump on aspects of the story that Matt tries to soft-soap — these will become clear to readers below — that we probably wouldn’t have been prompted to cover had Matt been such a gender-non-specific genital apparatus in raising the story in such an obviously smarmy way.

The background is that Brian was driving around on Wednesday night, having recovered from his surgery, when he saw a whole bunch of dimly lit campaign signs in his neighborhood.  He sent me a photo of a pair of them, which I enhanced in Photoshop, and I saw that the signs were crudely and rudely attacking Pauly for last year’s DUI.  This was an attack that had long been expected to come (the link is to Vern’s story) — the main question was whether it would be soberly stated and signed, or dishonorably scandal-mongering and anonymous, as turned out to be the case– but (so far as either of us know) it had not happened until that very night.

This was of interest to Brian because Pauly’s DUI was the deciding factor in his getting into the AD-68 race.  While he and Pauly disagree on issues involving virulent xenophobia (which he doesn’t endorse), he admires her devotion to fighting waste and corruption — a topic on which candidates Harry Sidhu (like Matt, a Pringle operative) deserves a low “F” grade and Steven Choi might charitably earn a “D+.”  With Pauly politically damaged by her arrest, although we did not know how much, there might be no clear leading anti-corruption candidate in the race — potentially leading to a dreadful Sidhu versus Choi match-up.  So Brian decided to enter the race and asked me if I would help him.  As a friend and admirer, I said yes.  Thus began what Matt’s friend and DPOC Central Committee candidate Dan Chmielewski has charmingly declared to be my “elder abuse” of Brian.  (More on that another time.)

I published those enhanced photos in the story; they were all that I had seen at the time.  I couldn’t rule out from them that a disclaimer was present — and I said so.  But — and you can check the image there yourself — I said that it didn’t look to me that there was one, but that I wasn’t sure.  Matt quotes me as saying “We haven’t seen these signs up close, but at our highest magnification it seems like — once again, illegally — there is no identifying information on the signs.”  And that’s what it did seem like — and probably will seem like to you based on the photo.  I expected to find out from Brian on Friday whether there was a disclaimer  — he was in San Diego much of Thursday for a follow-up visit, so I knew it wouldn’t come that day — and on Friday he texted me the disclaimer (which was in a very fine font.)  I then noted the presence of the disclaimer in the story,

The reasonable criticism of me might be that I should have held onto the story before publishing it.  If I were a reporter — or if I were filing an FPPC complaint, like one over Sidhu’s unquestionably illegal posting of campaign signs on publicly owned telephone polls — that’s probably what I would have done.  But I really hate underhanded vicious anonymous attacks (with which I have some experience of receiving), and the value of this nighttime sneak attack would be that it would be out there strong and wide before anyone could say word one about it.  The main thrust of the attack was that it was cowardly and low-class — I believe that I used the word “chickenshit” — and a lesser concern was the possibility that (so far as I could perceive from the photo) it might lack a disclaimer.

So Matt wrote a story about my making reckless allegations — which I hadn’t.  The main allegation — that it was chickenshit — was well-founded.  My expressed concern about it “lacking a disclaimer” based on the sole photo I had was a concern, but not yet an allegation — and I believe that I asked readers to write in and let me know if they saw the signs and found a disclaimer.

What Matt may really dislike is that I got onto his man Sidhu’s back so quickly and — I’d say — effectively.  Now, let’s get to the investigation that his poison-pen letter elicited from me.

[2] So How DID the Signs Come About, Anyway?

The committee that provided the independent expenditure for the signs was the “California Freedom Fund a committee to oppose Deborah Pauly for Assembly 2016.”  According to its Statement of Organization, this Committee was established on May 19.  The Committee does not give a street address — which I believe is standard procedure for online postings — and lists its city as Ladera Ranch, combined with an 805 (Ventura County area) area code.  The Treasurer is listed as Jen Slater of Irvine; the other officer is former State Legislator Tony Strickland.

Hmm, Tony Strickland?  Wasn’t he in the news recently?  Oh yes, here it is:

California enforcement officials are proposing $80,000 in ethics fines against former state Sen. Tony Strickland (R-Camarillo).

The punishment is for allegedly aiding three supporters in disguising that they were the true source of contributions to Strickland’s unsuccessful 2010 campaign for state controller.

The recommendation from the enforcement division of the state Fair Political Practices Commission comes in documents released Monday after Strickland was accused of 16 violations of campaign finance law, including political money laundering and the filing of false statements.

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The FPPC enforcement division alleges Strickland  arranged for supporters to make $65,000 in contributions to his campaign, but through and in the name of the Ventura County Republican Party and the Stanislaus County Republican Party.

The investigation found the true sources of the contributions were supporters Matthew Swanson, president of Associated Feed & Supply Co.; Andrew Barth, an investment manager residing in San Marino; and William M. Templeton, a Dallas resident who had significant business interests in oil and gas production and real estate in Ventura County.

And, yeah — that’s against the law, which of course makes Strickland the perfect choice to become the President of this little temporary PAC.  One wonders how the donors — we’ll get to them soon, found Strickland up in Ventura, where his ethical lapses in disclosing donors were already in the news.  Presumably it wasn’t from the Sidhu campaign, which was of course prohibited from coordinating with this independent committee.  Maybe investigation will make that clear. Read the rest of the LA Times story; it’s pretty good!

(Thanks for the tip, Matt!  You’re worth every penny to your paymasters!)

So, the use of Strickland to set up this committee to make independent expenditures to oppose Deborah Pauly — that’s on page two of the linked form — certainly raises the inference that he was once again trying to protect the confidentiality of shady donors and/or donation practices.

Let’s start with the expenditures, which are relatively straightforward:

On May 22, the committee spent $6,186.40 on “Outdoor Signs.”  On May 23, it spent $2,600 on “Sign Placement Costs.”  If the per-piece cost of the latter was, say, $4.00 per sign, this would mean 650 signs.

On May 24, an Independent Expenditure of $29,079.00 was made for a “Media Buy & Production Costs”  So, the signs are only less than a third of what this committee seems prepared to do to attack Pauly.

(If you’ve heard a media buy on this theme, please let us know, OK?)

Now let’s figure out where the money is coming from:

On May 19, the same day that it was formed in Irvine, Strickland’s committee received two donations.  One, for $15,000, was from Deepak J. Krishan, of Orange.  The other, for $25,000, was from Almex USA, Inc  of Buena Park.

This is a good moment to quote from Cunningham’s desperate-seeming screed:

As for his insistence that “chickens–it” was the point he was really making…how is that? There’s nothing anonymous about the signs. The identities of the funders was properly and legally disclosed and available any member of the public interested in finding them out.

Sure, at this point — if you know where to look up the information, which most of you don’t — “the identities of the funders was properly and legally disclosed.  They were “Mr. Krishnan” and “Mr. Almex USA Inc.”  But that’s a far frfy from there being “nothing anonymous” about the signs — who is “Mr. Almex USA”? — let alone that the involvement of Strickland leaves doubt that the nominal donors are necessarily the actual ones.

So who’s Almex USA?  We go to a separate database of the Secretary of State for that.

The agent for service of process is “THE CHUGH FIRM, A PROFESSIONAL CORPORATION,” at 15925 CARMENITA ROAD in CERRITOS CA 90703.

The company itself is located at 6925 ARAGON CIRCLE, BUENA PARK CA 90620.

(MATT?  Hey Matt, this still feels a little anonymous to me!)

Google map search!  OK, we have a visual!  Here’s who has $25,000 of hate for Deb Pauly!

Still not all that transparent.  And look, if this is an Muslim or Mexican insider whichever of those cars is driven by someone who writes the checks, I can understand why they might want to spend $25,000 to defeat her.  The questions are: are they identifiable and are they really working independently of the campaign?  Did they really decide to roll out and hang 650 or so signs and spend more than three times the cost of the signs on media — all to come out in the week before the vote — on their own?

After going to the almexusa.com website, I finally found in a Twitted post a statement that the President of the company (which does aluminum casting) is Ravi Tilak.  NOW we’re in a position to ask whether Deepak Krishan and Ravi Tilak are acquaintances (or cronies ) of Harry Sidhu.

Well, it turns out that there’s a shortcut to at least a partial answer to that question.  Matt, writing for his Gilliard publication, did all of this spadework back on May 27!  And he calls them “Sidhu supporters” in the headline!  (Makes you wonder how he got on this trail so quickly, doesn’t it?  It’s almost like he has inside information!)

But there’s still something odd: neither Krishan or Tilak are listed as “major donors” — which means that for them this level of contribution is, as I understand it, unprecedented (at least over the past few years.)

They sure did show a lot of independent initiative and good timing, though — and saved Sidhu from making a nasty attack out of his own copious funds!  If it weren’t for Matt himself, I wouldn’t have even known that they were Sidhu supporters!  (So, again — thanks, Matt!)

As for Matt’s criticism about OJB not condemning Pauly giving odd and disturbing explanations in response to her arrest, there’s a reason that I didn’t condemn it in the article: because that’s not what the article was about.  (For what it’s worth, I find her statements at the time disturbing and sad — but, then again, she was drunk at the time.)  The article was about a hard-to-trace late hit undertaken in a classless way — and whether it traced back to Sidhu.  And the continuing question of interest is: was there any illegal coordination between these donors or their hastily assembled Strickland-led committee and the Sidhu for Assembly campaign?

That’s not an accusation, despite what Matt may claim.  It’s only a question — at least for now.