Ugly attack in Irvine insinuates Asian gang link

Irvine’s Beth Krom, Larry Agran and Sukhee Kang have just hit an all-time new low.  They run two slate mailers to circumvent Irvine’s low $390 donation limits, the more established Hometown Voter Guide and today’s entrant to the 2006 Political Slimefest Award, Commonsense Voter Guide.

Download common_sense_piece_on_jd_11306.pdf

The so-called Commonsense Voter Guide hit Irvine mail boxes today and it features a racially-charged piece tenuously linking Irvine mayoral candidate John Duong to Asian gangs through an insidiously insinuating piece. 

Unbelievable.  Unacceptable.  There is no excuse for such an outrage from any person claiming the mantel of civic leadership in Irvine. 

There is zero doubt about Beth Krom, Larry Agran and Sukhee Kang’s connection to The Commonsense Voter Guide.  The Commonsense Voter Guide is run by the same treasurer that Beth Krom, Larry Agran and Hometown Voter Guide use.  It received $5,000 from Planning 2020, Inc. the Monterey-based sham money conduit created by Agran’s election law attorney a few months back.  It was clearly built by Larry Agran’s machine to be a late-hit vehicle.

Every Irvine voter should take offense from this terribly divisive piece.  It should be disavowed by Mayor Krom and her team.

Ugly.  Sad. 

Comments

[Elroy El]

Gimme a break. I've asked you repeatedly for proof the HVG is 'squeezing' donors. So far you've yet to produce anything other than innuendo.

Team Irvine came out swinging. Did they expect the opposition to sit idly by and do nothing?

Tan's peice was tame to this and it will backfire. Talked with several Democrats this evening and they are fuming. This is worse than Beth's last trick in '04 where a stealth candidate took 5,000 votes. This time - the hit piece will return those votes and more.

[Allan Bartlett]

This is the last act of a corrupt crony machine going down to defeat.

[Radis]

Elroy

Your plea for proof that HVG (i.e. Agran & Co.) is squeezing donors is just another attempt at misdirection. The issue is not that anyone is being forced to give money, apparently businesses and/or developers (doing business with or wanting to do business with the City) are quite willing to give large money contributions and the cronies are apparently using that money illegally.

The real issue here is that Hometown Voter Guide and the Commonsense Voter Guide are not slate mailer organizations at all. They are fronts - a vehicle to form a so-called slate mailer (the Hometown Voter Guide) to funnel contributions in excess of the local $ 390.00 limit. It is done through a sham corporation (Planning 2020) to support a phony measures (county measure M and Statewide measures Yes on 1A . . .Yes on 1E). Fortunately, the complaint with the FPPC laid it out pretty clearly how it was done and offering the proof you seek.

[Chuck DeVore]

Commonsense, according to its late amended filing shows $1500 each from Krom, Kang & Gaido, plus $17,000 from Planning 2020. Clearly, Mayor Krom, Kang & Gaido are responsible for this slur and should be asked why they did it by the press.

On Gaido's report, she shows the $1500 as an unpaid bill plus a $30,000 unpaid bill to the Hometown slate. (If the past is a guide, these debts will be reversed, if Gaido loses, as many expect, thus making it an illegal donation from the slate to a candidate in excess of Irvine's $390 limit.)

Chuck DeVore
State Assemblyman, 70th District

[Radis]

The relationship between Krom, Kang, Gaido and the slate mailers was best described in recent public comment by Guy Mailly. He appeared before the City Council on October 24, 2006 and during a public comment section said the following:

"A few weeks ago I received the same mailer that Ms. Shea received, Council Member Shea received. And it purports to be a Hometown Voter Guide promoting Measure M. In the fine print it appears that it was paid for, in part, by the Yes on Measure M committee. It also had advertisements for the Mayor and for the other members of her slate.

I was surprised that Measure M backers would get involved in a partisan political race. I called Art Brown, the Chairman of the OCTA and He emphatically told me that neither the OCTA or Measure M had anything to do with it.

So I had to investigate it further. I went to the Orange County Registrar of Voters. I learned that there is no Yes on Measure M committee. Here is a certified copy of the list of filed committees [holds up a stack of papers] and there is no Yes on Measure M committee. The real Measure M committee is called the Committee to renew measure m and it’s filing is some 100 pages [holds up a larger stack of papers] and they received 1.6 M dollars of contribution - not a dime of it went to the Hometown Voter Guide despite the representations that some of it did.

I had to figure out what’s the Hometown Voter Guide. So I learned that the Hometown voter guide is a so called slate mailer organization. It received in the Months of July, August and September $48,000 from a corporation called Planning 2020 and 35,000 from the campaign committees of Krom, Kang and Gaido. This year through the end of September, HVG received $127,000.

So the question is what is Planning 2020? Well, Planning 2020 is a corporation that is based in Monterey California in the Bay Area. You wonder what do they have to do with Measure M. Apparently, very little. It collected contributions of over $ 60,000 from one of the heirs of John Getty, John Paul Getty, fortune. It was - that heir is Anne Getty Earhart who lives in Laguna Beach. It also received $ 12,000 from a subsidiary of KB Homes.

I wondered what connection is there between Hometown Voter Guide and Planning 2020. Well they all have the same officer acting as their filing officer - Renita Smith. And curiously enough, Mayor Krom, Councilman Kang and Ms. Gaido also use the same filing officer as the treasurer who files their campaign reports.

. . .

In conclusion, the Mayor and the others running with her are using a slate mailer that appears to use a phony Measure M committee to create the misleading and false impression that Measure M backers support them. In fact, the real Measure M committee has not contributed to the Hometown Voter Guide. I did some research and according to that research, in news reports last year, that former allies of Council member Agran, such as UCI Professor Mark Petracca, allege that all the mailers in the last election cycle were approved by Mr. Agran, thereby, allegedly rendering the purported independent expenditures as excess contributions to the committees of Mayor Krom, Council member Kang and Agran. The smears against Council member Shea in these mailers are unbecoming of a great city and makes Mayor Krom and her slate look very, very bad.

Whether the Anne Getty Earhart $48,000 contribution was illegal, illegally laundered through a sham corporation has yet to be determined. Whether the Krom, Kang, Gaido slate has received illegal contributions are an excess contribution in violation of Irvine contribution limits has yet to be determined. All I know that the conduct by, this conduct raises serious questions about the ethics of Mayor Krom, Council member Kang and candidate Gaido.

In my opinion, this conduct violates the spirit, if not the letter of Irvine’s campaign contribution laws and it’s contribution limits. Irvine deserves far better from it’s elected officials."

To see his comments, go to the City of Irvine website, click on the ICTV 30 button and choose the City Council meeting of October 24, 2006. Click on the Jump to pulldown box and select item 5.3 Discussion and direction regarding Measure M . . . Mailly speaks at about 5 hrs. 12 minutes into the meeting (click and drag the green button to advance to 5:12).

As he said "these mailers are unbecoming of a great city and makes Mayor Krom and her slate look very, very bad" and ". . .Irvine deserves far better from it’s elected officials."

This latest attack is more of the same.

[Elroy El]

You guys crack me up. Team Irvine has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at Krom. And you expect her allies to not hit back?

Gimme a break. Chuck if that is your idea of insinuation, please reread the flyers. There is no insinuated link to me. That's just me.

So now you know for sure Gaido is expected to lose? Do you have G-2 that confirms this? Or is this just another false hope the party faithful puts out there? I bet with her previous experience on the council Gaido is giving Shea more a fight than Shea expected.

When the smoke clears on Tuesday, want to bet on who is the winner? If it is Krom does that now mean she has mastered the art of duping one of the more literate electorates in OC. If it does, she deserves to be mayor if she's that good.

[Anon]

Didn't the BIA endorse the miscreants slamming Doung?

[Elroy El]

More importantly. Do any of the Krom opponents dispute what is one these mailers? And don't you think this might be good info to know in order to make an informed decision?

[Asian in Irvine]

Elroy's logic must go like this: landlords in Irvine must not rent to Asians or else Mahjong parlors and Vietnamese gangs will overrun our whitebread community. Alternatively, he must think that Mr. Duong actively sought out Asian gang members as customers of a tenant of his because, afterall, Elroy knows that all Asian immigrants are gangsters.

Want to explain yourself again?

[It works]

I think everything in Irvine works fine. Why mess with it? I like the city council as is and have voted for all the incumbents. Give the voters in Irvine credit they understand the following: If it aint broke don't try and fix it. Adam Poboloski says the same about Irvine!

[Too bad the mailer is true]

Hey Chuck:

Did you ever stop to examine whether or not the attacks in the mailer were true? All of this stuff is public record. Jao and Duong run some really shady strip malls in Westminster.

Do you want the same type of development in Irvine?

"Team Irvine" only wishes they had this kind of ammo.

You're a joke, and if your District weren't so gerrymandered, someone would take you out so you could spend more time writing bad things about the Chinese.

[Claudio Gallegos]

Chuck,

Did you use the same military intelligence training to deduce this mailer is not true? Just like you figured out Lou Correa was behind the Tan Nguyen letter? Your skills at deduction and intelligence seriously worry me.

[Joe Brown]

That was funny, Claudio.

I remember Chuck boasting that he solved the racist letter case using his 27 years of military intelligence. That's the same itelligence that resulted in the 9/11 tragedy. These guys want all the glory but absolutely never taken any responsibility. That's not the virtues that we Republicans claim?

No wonder this guy got trounced when he ran for Irvine city council.

[DanC]

Thin skins. I always knew you guys could dish it out but not take it.

[Chuck DeVore]

You three are revisionist riot.

To “Too bad”:

1) So, you hold John responsible for his tenant’s customers? This piece of mail was an overreaching ethnic slam, and you know it.

2) I wish my district was less gerrymandered. I got 112,844 votes in 2004 compared to Assemblyman Umberg’s 38,516 and Speaker Nunez’s 44,570. You could merge my district into both of theirs and I’d still win.

3) As for “writing bad things about the Chinese,” does that mean you like the leadership in Beijing? Perhaps your love of their repression is part and parcel with your apparent tolerance of the ethnic attack on John Duong.

To Claudio:

Nice try. Go back and reread what I wrote. I blamed the Democrats the same as many Democrats blamed my Party for the reason that the foolish Tan Nguyen mailer helped the Democrats, as your party chairman Barbaro himself said.

As for Joe Brown:

“No wonder this guy got trounced when he ran for Irvine city council.” So, losing by 150 votes or 0.2 percent is getting “trounced”? What planet do you come from? Besides, my loss enabled me to run and win in the 2004 primary by 20 points after getting outspent $1 million to $500,000. Life works in amazing ways, eh?

I’m so glad all you self-righteous liberals approve of Mayor Krom’s ethnic insult mailer.

All the best,

Chuck DeVore
State Assemblyman, 70th District
www.ChuckDeVore.com

[Elroy El]

To Asian in Irvine:

Get your logic circuits reattached. With leaps like that you don't need to go to the gym to work out.

To Chuck:

Where is the ethnic slam? Now you're making things up that aren't there.

[DanC]

Chuck -- everything is attributed. According to Westminster Police reports, the restaurant was a hangout for Asian gangs. And as a property manager, Duong and Jao have an obligation to other tennants to ferret out this sort of thing. My friends in the property managemtn space say contracts are written to evict tennants who do just what Duong's tennants did.

I think folks here are referring to the Madam Mao flier and not your book.

And since you brought it up; your party leadership in Washington **loves** the leadership in Beijing since they allow the Communist Chinese to hold so many billions of our national debt which has more than doubled under Bush's watch. But its OK to show indignation for the Chinese and long as long one sees the receipts.

Tell you what, since you are my representative, I would prefer you spent more time getting IUSD more state education dollars. We're dead last in funding. Dead last. I would like you to do something to change that.

[Bladerunner]

When you stop puffing Chuck, recognize that both Umberg and Nunez ran better against registration then you did(in case you forgot, Fabian ran 20% ahead, Tom ran 14$ ahead and you limped in 12%ahead of registration). You also came in 3rd in total percentage of the vote, 85% for Fabian, 61.$ for Tom & 61.1% for the man who ran against that political powerhouse, Carl Mariz. But go pick on a district that has a closer number of total registered voters then yours--like Todd Spitzer in the 71st. Todd ran 19% ahead of registration getting 73% of the vote. Todd would kick your butt. SO would any number of Dems who ran ahead of their registration.

Your post smacks of visions of victory in Irvine slipping away. You and Bartlett need to move to a City that shares your environmental and political values--the City of Commerce.

[Chuck DeVore]

Bladerunner, you don't appear to understand much about gerrymandering. The point is to pack as many Republicans into a district as possible. "Too bad..." made a comment reagarding gerrymandering. I simply pointed out that I represented a much larger number of voters than two well-known Democrat districts (why is that, do you suppose?). Rather than telling me to move to the City of Commerce, perhaps you should move to downtown L.A. so you can be represented by a Democrat and your vote will go much farther.

[Bladerunner]

My vote goes just fine, thank you. And I withdraw my suggestion---I like having you in Red County--you're accessible, even when you're testy when things seem to be going south you have a decent sense of humour, you provide some useful military info, and last but not least, tend to be one of those who push the Republicans enough to the right to keep them in a minority status in this Blue state.

[Elroy El]

one of those who push the Republicans enough to the right to keep them in a minority status in this Blue state.

I have to agree with that. Despite the pleas of the Fleischman types that Arnold should be promoting the rest of the GOP down ticket, Arnold has done just the opposite. Arnold's calling Tom McClintock “TOTALLY WRONG for California" is about the best soundbite Garamendi could want. Which will put Tom McC in a great position to run for Gallegy's seat in two years. There Tom can continue to slop up it up at the federal trough (never having had a real job) for the rest of his public life with no term limits. More likely finishing up his tenure as another member of the minority party.

After last years November debacle Arnold realized that all he had to do was listen to the Fleischman types and then do just the opposite to get anything done. I personally want to thank Jon and others for helping the Governor come to his senses. One other note. Is it true that just about everyone who steered Arnold toward last years disaster no longer works for him? Maybe one of the insiders like you Chuck can answer that.

So Chuck finally admits that he cares only about representing the people who voted for him.
Interesting.