On Friday, Scott Baugh — both a former state legislator and former chairman of the Orange County Republican Party — filed paperwork to run in Rohrabacher’s congressional district, raising questions of both his intentions and Rohrabacher’s.

Baugh did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but Rohrabacher spokesman Ken Grubbs told CalWatchdog it was his understanding that Baugh was just laying the foundation for a run when Rohrabacher steps aside.

At this point in the election cycle, Baugh would have a difficult time if he were to challenge Rohrabacher. The longtime incumbent has strong name ID and in 2014 he beat Democrat Suzanne Savary 64.2 percent to 35.8.

And since California has a top-two primary system, Baugh would have to either win a primary outright or finish ahead of either Rohrabacher or Savary, who filed in October to run again.

Savary would likely draw many Democratic votes in the heavily Republican-leaning district, leaving Rohrabacher and Baugh to split the rest. However, she too faces a tough climb, having only $14,700 in her campaign account, according to FEC filings. Meanwhile, Rohrabacher finished 2015 with $205,000 cash on hand.

The largely coastal Orange County district is in the expensive greater Los Angeles media market, so Baugh would need to hurry to “raise enough money to mount a credible challenge,” according Kevin Kondick, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

Rohrabacher was first elected to Congress in 1988. Before that, he served as a speech writer for President Ronald Reagan. Rohrabacher filed paperwork for re-election in July of 2015.

Rohrabacher told the the Orange County Register, which first broke the news of Baugh’s intentions on Friday, “Scott is just laying the foundation for a race for Congress when I am no longer a member … but I don’t know when that’s going to be.”

A confident Rohrabacher added, “(Baugh) does know that if a Republican gets elected (president), I could get a top-level appointment. … He just wants to make sure if that happens, he’s ready to have a running start.”

Spitzer harshly criticizes the law enforcement unions and lawyers who tried to set up Costa Mesa Councilman Jim Righeimer. Righeimer, a pension reformer who has taken on the police unions, was subject to a despicable tactic by union operatives. He went to a pub after a community meeting and a private eye who had worked for a union law firm called in a false police report — claiming inaccurately that Righeimer was drunk and weaving all over the road as he drove home. The Costa Mesa cops came to Righeimer’s door after he arrived home and demanded that he take a sobriety test.

Righeimer held a press conference with other elected officials who have been subjected to similar Mafia-esque tactics by the police unions who have abused their authority to take down political opponents. Wrote Spitzer:

“Righeimer has been elevated beyond his wildest dreams. He shouldn’t complain about being followed. He should send the union’s law firm and investigator (now both fired in the aftermath of being caught) a big “Thank You” and a big kiss. By going after Righeimer they not only did not discredit him, but their target of him proved that his message is so powerful and persuasive to the general public that they felt that they had no choice but to silence him. It proved that he is the most powerful messenger about public employee abuses in Orange County and California today.

“For generations, plenty of minority, inner-city youth have been falsely arrested and accused. Society’s tolerance for police misconduct has been very high since the unspoken rationale has been that it makes our streets and communities safer (‘Well, they probably committed other crimes that they never got caught for’). Other countries imprison their political enemies to silence their voices.

“The Righeimer 911 call just didn’t cross the thin blue line; it erased it. Given all the events facing police in Orange County calling into question police officers’ credibility, in concert with the pension issues, the line may never be able to be redrawn. Someday, when we get beyond these events, we will be able to evaluate whether this is a good or bad thing for our county.”

This is an important article, given that it comes from someone closely associated with the police unions. I doubt those unions, or their dirtbag consiglieres, will get the message. They are so deeply enmeshed in their insulated world, where they protect and serve the union and treat the public with disdain.

In my column in today’s Register on the same topic, I quote former San Jose Police Chief Joseph McNamara: “It’s a pretty dark side of American policing, and I have personally been a victim of this twisted cop behavior when I was police chief.” This “gangster cop” mentality, he said, becomes more prevalent during salary negotiations.

And I conclude: “It’s one thing for elected officials to be ‘taken out’ at the ballot box. But quite another thing for them to be harassed, intimidated and set up on false charges as union operatives, sometimes acting under the color of authority, try to silence them.”

It’s time for the public to demand accountability when police behave like mobsters. Perhaps Spitzer’s words will give other union supporters the courage to speak out at such outrageous transgressions.

SEPT. 2, 2012

By Steven Greenhut

If you wonder why the GOP is having such hard times, one need only look at the goings-on in Orange County, where Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh is pulling out all the stops to ensure the election to the board of supervisors of Todd Spitzer, the former Assemblyman who is a close union ally and someone who proudly increased pensions for his deputy sheriff union friends and then stood by that action right until he started getting political heat for doing so.

Baugh declared that no Republican who gets union support will get his or the party’s support, yet he is lending much support to Spitzer who continues to funnel past union money into his current election account. That technicality is enough for Baugh to turn a blind eye to a candidate who spent his career doing all the things that Baugh rails against. Baugh likes Spitzer and dislikes his board opponent, Deborah Pauly, so he is helping Spitzer.

But hypocrisy and lack of principle have a way of backfiring. Baugh recently sent out a letter to the GOP Central Committee making this case in another race:

“There has been significant activity in the 74^th Assembly District where our endorsed incumbent Allan Mansoor is running for re-election.  … It seems that Allan’s opponent, Leslie Daigle, has not been honest with us or the voters.  Do you remember when she came to our party asking for an endorsement for her city council race in Newport Beach?  At the time, she represented that she did not vote for 3@50 in Newport Beach, and she said that she supported defined contribution plans – not defined benefit plans.  Interesting . . . we actually learned that she voted for retroactive 3@50 defined benefits plans for firemen!  That wasn’t enough for her.  She turned around and then gave the same retroactive 3@50 defined benefit for lifeguards.  That’s right – two different votes supporting 3@50.  …”

Certainly, I agree with Baugh that Daigle is a liberal, tax-hiking, pension-spiking candidate and Mansoor is a pretty solid guy. But how can Baugh be so angry at Daigle for doing something even less egregious than that done by his close ally, Todd Spitzer? After all, Daigle voted for non-retroactive pension increases and Spitzer led the charge for a county-wide retroactive pension spike. Spitzer, by the way, is atrocious on civil liberties issues, a law-and-order, big-government guy with at least as much baggage as Daigle, although they are nightmares in different ways.

The OC Register editorial board noticed this as well. (Although I write a column for the Register and have written occasional editorials, I did not have anything to do with this one.) Wrote the Register:

“It is reassuring, after so many years of sounding alarms about the looming carnage pensions can inflict on government budgets, that more people are holding elected officials accountable for misguided votes, but the criticism should be consistently applied.”

Actually, Baugh is not being unprincipled, he seems to be applying this basic principle: If he likes you or dislikes your opponent, he will forgive any past votes and even current indiscretions. If he dislikes you or likes your opponent, he will hold you to a very high standard.

Welcome to the modern OC GOP.

MAY 20, 2012

By Steven Greenhut

If a politician has based his career on advocating a set of policies, and has always been aligned with a group of special interests, only a fool would believe that he has suddenly seen the light just at the time when those past policies and alliances are causing him some political grief.

Yet Orange County Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh last weekend compared supervisorial candidate Todd Spitzer — a Republican with a long track record in the DA’s office, as an Assemblyman and previously as a supervisor and local school board member — to the adulterous woman at the well whom Jesus forgave. This implies that Spitzer has seen the light and is now a reformed man. I think Baugh is being as loose with his endorsements as the woman was with her partners.

Baugh, writing a rebuttal to an Orange County Register editorial that I had penned blasting his decision to headline a fund-raiser for Spitzer, argued: “It’s a good thing that Register editorial writers did not meet the woman at the well mentioned in the biblical book of John. The fact that she had five previous husbands and was living with a man who was not her husband would have doomed her to a life not worth living. Instead, the woman met Jesus, and she became a great messenger for changed lives.”

If we’re talking about a person’s heart, and a religious conversion, then I see what Baugh is talking about. When people change in those ways, I would never question it. That is, as the cliché goes, an issue between a man and his God. But my Register editorial pointed to Spitzer’s long-standing association with the public employee unions and the way that Spitzer led the charge for a 2001 retroactive pension increase that has put Orange County in a deep fiscal hole.

Baugh became well known for his “manifesto” declaring that the party will not give any support to politicians who take donations from unions. Baugh said in a speech trumpeting his edict that it is not enough for Republican politicians to avoid taking such cash. He expects them to be proactive and create solutions to the mess caused by excessive public-employee compensation.

Pension spiking

As I wrote in the Register editorial:

“Mr. Spitzer was the lead advocate on the Board of Supervisors for a 2001 pension increase for deputy sheriffs that retroactively increased their pensions to the unsustainable ‘3 percent at 50’ formula — guaranteeing a pension of 90 percent of a 50-year-old employee’s final year’s pay after 30 years of work.

“Mr. Spitzer since has said he was wrong on that vote but mainly he blames others for not warning him, which suggests that he won’t provide the kind of pension-reform leadership that Mr. Baugh previously said he was expecting from politicians. In the Assembly, Mr. Spitzer was the cat’s-paw for the public-safety unions. He is smart and hardworking, but he epitomizes everything Baugh and the party said it would stand against.”

I recall Spitzer changing his tune about that increase — at one point saying he didn’t know it was retroactive, at another saying he knew it was but believed the deputies deserved the extra taxpayer cash — and remember him defending it to me right up until the point that it became a political liability. Spitzer has publicly talked about a religious conversion he has had, but we’re talking here about a political conversion — and there’s no actual evidence he really has had one.

‘Trust, but verify.’

Ronald Reagan famously said that the United States should “trust, but verify.” He was talking about arms-reduction talks with the Soviet Union. Baugh recently told me that “I’ve had my conversation with Todd and he is a changed man on this issue and many others. He now admits to me that the vote is wrong . … He has committed to me that he will work to reform the system in the same way as [OC Supervisor] Shawn Nelson and others have done.”

But where is the verification? Spitzer has a long history of saying whatever needs to be said to advance his political career. Most politicians do that, but Baugh is one of those people who over the years had warned me about Spitzer and his union alliances and opportunistic ways. The verification would come in some sort of policy decisions, yet there’s little evidence that he has pushed in the right direction not only on the pension issue but on the civil liberties issues that Baugh and others care so much about.

Even in defending Spitzer, Baugh told me that he is bothered by Spitzer’s positions on civil liberties issues. In the Assembly, Spitzer was the lead Republican voice for police-union-backed policies that made it nearly impossible to do anything about those officers who abused their power. When Spitzer was fired from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, he held his press conference at the deputies’ union headquarters.

He told a colleague of mine that I don’t like him because he was a police officer. That’s right out of the police union playback. If someone disagrees with his views on expanding police pensions or protecting bad-apple officers, then that makes the critic a “cop hater.” I recall an outrageous floor speech Spitzer gave suggesting that supporters of a minor good-government reform were friends of criminals. That type of toxic rhetoric defines Spitzer as well as everything that’s wrong in Sacramento.

Conviction…or convenience?

Sensible people could conclude that Spitzer’s political conversion is one of convenience, not conviction.

And it’s obvious that Spitzer is conforming to the letter, but not the spirit of Baugh’s manifesto. As I wrote in the Register, “Mr. Baugh said that Mr. Spitzer has complied with the manifesto — i.e., he is not taking union money for this race. But Mr. Spitzer has received large amounts of union money over the years. And as his opponents note, he still operates an old political account holding money collected well before Mr. Baugh drew his line in the sand.”

According to former Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who was running against Spitzer but bailed out after accepting a new job in Texas: “Donations to county office are limited to $1,800 per person or business.  But, Spitzer also has an account for Orange County Republican Party Central Committee — an account that allows unlimited donations.  Spitzer is also his own treasurer for this account, meaning that there is no oversight on how he spends his Central Committee cash.  This Central Committee account Spitzer uses to finance everything from Internet costs, to gasoline, to paying off his credit card, to fancy restaurant meals, to an XM Satellite Radio subscription, and even a trip to Las Vegas.”

DeVore then argued that “Dozens of checks from Big Labor totaling some $54,000 that were listed in Spitzer’s 2014 D.A. committee vanished.  Rather than detail the union money in his 2012 Board of Supervisors account, Spitzer hides it, then shifts it into his unlimited Central Committee account from his, serving as his own treasurer, he can use it to pay for virtually anything, including inappropriately underwriting his current campaign for O.C. Supervisor.”

In other words, he is still using union money, although that money is hidden from view. Spitzer criticized DeVore for pointing this out, telling the OCWeekly, “Chuck needs to learn how to read campaign finance reports.” Spitzer also said, “I’m adhering to [Orange County Republican Party boss] Scott Baugh’s manifesto and will not take any union contributions for my supervisor’s campaign. What Chuck is saying is frivolous. All of my money is traceable.”

But DeVore added that “[W]hen Spitzer thought no one was looking on the eve of the Labor Day weekend, he filed a 519-page amended campaign finance report.  This report contains 189 missing pages of information that Spitzer was legally required to report last month … detailing dozens of Big Labor donations of the type Spitzer denied accepting just a few weeks before.”

Spitzer did not return my call to his home seeking an explanation. Baugh admitted that Spitzer is still using union money, but that Spitzer is indeed following his edict because this is past money. According to Baugh, it would be impossible to hold candidates to the same standard for past financial contributions, but in my view he could insist that they not spend money from labor unions for current campaign-related expenses.

As DeVore told me via email, “Every Californian pays $1,105 every year to support state and local retired government workers — more than double the burden in Texas. Spitzer made this burden worse in his years on the board and in the state Assembly. Spitzer’s talking a good game now, but it will take years of discipline to make up for past mistakes.”

Spitzer is almost certain to win the election. It will be interesting to see what Baugh will have to say if Spitzer reverts to his ways and advocates policies that benefit the unions. I hope Spitzer did indeed have a political conversion, but I think Baugh’s comparison to the adulterous woman at the well might be more apt than he thought, but for less noble reasons.