Jan 142025
 

The CAGOP is on fire all over the state. Unsurprisingly, those holding the incendiaries are the opposition. But in 2025, it is different than anything I remember. One such difference are that the targets in some cases are people that were once darlings of the right. I wrote about LA County (whose election has been delayed due to the LA County Fires) which is one such instance.

This time around, the opposition to the CAGOP establishment are more organized than I have ever seen them. That said, with a few exceptions, the candidates are more extreme and fringe than I ever recall. People I worked with four years ago when attempting to elect Steve Frank, including Frank himself, I struggle to recognize. It feels like the FBI visit that made me a hero of the opposition was in 1921, not 2021.

Some of what I have learned will find its’ way in to these blogs. Some won’t because it is too disturbing. But if you think Jerry Springer is dead, he lives on vicariously through the garbage I am witnessing.

Solano County has long been one of the bright shining stars of the opposition. In fact, their closed caucus system was the inspiration for a by-law change stripping counties of their delegates to the CAGOP unless they were on the ballot. At the time, this was done to help a major donor who was pouring millions in to the party and contested primaries to try and eliminate conservatives in the legislature and county parties. He is not around the scene anymore. There is no excuse not to go on the ballot, because outside of San Francisco, there were no organized efforts to spend big money in county party elections.

Former Solano GOP Chair Michelle Guerra has become so toxic that she had to do two things – keep Solano off of the ballot in order to keep control and get a sock puppet to run for chair to replace her. I thought this is what the establishment does to keep control? (Hint: I’ve written about establishment Central Committees for years)

Not to be outdone, the Chair of Yolo County Dan Brown (whose tenure more closely resembles a ham-fisted dictator) attempted to extend his influence into Sacramento County. While Sacramento has not organized as of the writing of this blog, look for Brown and his candidates to get trounced. Brown may well have been making his endorsements from another state – the lack of self-awareness from the rank-and-file opposition folks is staggering.

I received one first-hand account of bullying in a Bay Area County whose election went the way of the opposition. In this case elderly members who were swing voters were bullied into voting for particular candidates. I have seen the establishment do this, (In fact, in Placer County many years ago) and now I guess the opposition is ok with this too.

Mendocino, Humboldt and San Luis Obispo opted out of going onto the ballot – costing the opposition another 12 delegates and furthering the absurdity that has been unfolding. I thought voting and being able to vote was a fundamental right?

It appears that Siskiyou County’s refusal to notice an endorsement in April of 2024, and the defense of it by the opposition members of the CAGOP Board was the first shot in the coming CAGOP officer election cycle. Rules and by-laws don’t matter when there is an election to win apparently.

While the opposition took Ventura County by storm, a bunch of democrats called the Briones crowd took over the SFGOP. A group of people who do not understand campaign finance law and have launched a personal crusade (similar to the J6 committee against Trump supporters) based on lies and fabrications to destroy people they don’t like took over Marin County.

I guess lying, bullying and denying several counties an election is OK if that is what it takes to get the bad guys, right? I guess burning the CAGOP down to the ground is ok, if you can’t control it? I guess attacking Conservative and Moderate alike and calling them all RINOS is OK because the war is now tribal and does not follow ideological lines anymore.

I don’t relate to this. These are not the conservative values I grew up with and that I promoted as an officer in CRA for a decade and a half. What I have seen is the tactics I attacked David Stafford Reade and others for, yet they have been applied to a more severe degree by people I once helped!

While I have major issues with Jessica Patterson and Kevin McCarthy’s crew and how they wielded the power of CAGOP –  the behavior I am seeing now is literally justifying all the things they did that I criticized.

Where is Mike Morrell in all of this? I can draw no other conclusion that the man I once knew is gone or has gone in to hiding. I could not imagine him associating with and condoning the tactics being used on his behalf., but here we are.

… and I am just scratching the surface.

Jan 142024
 

Update – see at the very end an important update…

“Aaron is part of the swamp” – Ken Campbell.

Your intrepid blogger received a lot of response to three emails I sent to the Placer GOP in advance of their expected ram-down of an endorsement of Suzanne Jones. The responses from some Placer GOP members resembles the string of “f— Y–” responses my people have been getting from Trump supporters in the Presidential Primary.

Other responses were actually acknowledging the damming results of Suzanne Jones’ decisions to appoint a slew of democrats and greenies to important positions in Placer County.

Interestingly, based on accounts, the Placer GOP may well have violated their by-laws with the way the endorsement was done. Nothing new there either, Tom Hudson has always been a selective parliamentarian in the 25+ years I have known him too.

But, then there is the crazed Ken Campbell. I had more than one person ask me what his problem is and why he hates your intrepid blogger and Kirk Uhler so much. Tom Hudson hates your intrepid blogger for far more legitimate reasons, as I took the guy apart for the rampage he went on against his now ex-wife (see also abusing his law license to stretch the divorce to take over 5 years to go final).

With Ken Campbell, you need to go back nearly 30(!) years for perspective.

In 1996, Campbell supported Rico Oller for Assembly over Kirk Uhler, the late Kathy Lund, former Major Leaguer Steve Sax and a few others. Rico Oller burnt Kirk’s house down to the ground in that tilt. To this day, Rico Oller, Tom Hudson and anyone else (not named Bonnie Gore) that worked for Rico Oller hate Kirk Uhler with a purple passion. Please note that the disgraced Steve Davey also got his start with Oller. (Davey was later fired by the Assembly Rules committee for his abhorrent behavior)

1996 was 28(!) years ago. Let that sink in.

I came in to the political scene in 1997. I met both Kirk Uhler and Rico Oller after the hostilities of that campaign were long since resolved. I met Supervisor Ted Gaines (who just beat Pam Tobin, that’s right Suzanne Jones’ buddy ran against both Ted Gaines and Kirk Uhler), Rico Oller, Tim Leslie, Bonnie Mertus (now Gore) and others. At the same time, I met Campbell, Hudson, Jeff Atteberry and others in the local party. Atteberry would register me Republican and sign me up for the CRA. I met Dave Butler and John Allard back then when they worked for Tim Leslie.

In 1998, Conservatives took over the Placer GOP led by Ken Campbell. Prior to that Tom Jones and the Placer CCR had the reins of power in Placer County.

The Central Committee Meetings were antagonistic and drama-filled. There were new fights every month.

In 2000, I was elected CRA SGT at Arms, a position I would hold 13 years. At the same time, I was elected President of the Placer CRA. I held that position for 10 years.

During my tenure as Placer CRA President Ken Campbell saw the Placer CRA as a threat and would schedule County Party events to compete with Placer CRA events. When I attempted to run for Placer GOP office (I think it was Secretary), Ken threatened to resign if I got elected.

To this day, the only reason I can put my finger on for Ken’s hatred of me is that he served on the Board of the Capitol Resource Institute in the late 1990’s with David Stafford Reade. Yes, THAT David Stafford Reade. Ken never liked me from the first time I met him – mind you, I am going back 27(!) years with this.

Kirk? In 2002, the Placer CCR Club was attempting to run a slate of Central Committee candidates along with the late Auburn Councilmember Bill Kirby who primary challenged John Doolittle for Congress. Doolittle, Tim Leslie, Rico Oller, Ted Gaines and others rallied to the side of Ken Campbell with a slate of their own. There were many names you would recognize in that effort, including Kirk Uhler, Bonnie Gore, Kathy Lund and others that were recruited to help keep the Placer GOP out of the hands of the moderates.

Suzanne Jones’ MAC board member Sandy Harris was on the slate of moderates. Harris has consistently been opposed to conservative Republicans like Ted Gaines and Tom McClintock for the 20+ years I have known her.

During the tenure of Ken Campbell, voter registration in Placer County hit 52% Republican. The Placer GOP was raking in thousands of bounty dollars at the time.

However, when treasurer reports would come out, the numbers did not match. Kirk Uhler, who ran the high school outreach for the Placer GOP for many years, started asking questions. This led to an audit where it was discovered that Ken Campbell had unilaterally run the Placer GOP’s bounty through another county to get a higher payout. Okay, why didn’t Ken just get the committee to sign off on the arrangement? The audit would not have been needed. Ken never forgave Kirk for asking those questions leading to the audit.

Campbell would spiral, later being asked to resign by John Doolittle. When Doolittle was caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal, Ken led the charge against him in retaliation despite having been closely tied to him for years. In 2008, McClintock was elected to replace Doolittle who had to retire. Doolittle would literally almost have to sue the government to finally get them to admit their investigation of him turned up nothing – Doolittle was exonerated finally in 2012. But Campbell had him tried and convicted, as he publicly attacked him without evidence for years.

Also contemporaneous with that was Campbell writing a column for the Auburn Journal where he was using his title to attack the Placer GOP and its’ CRA-Aligned leadership, Campbell accused the committee and individual members of embezzlement and other felonies (How quickly Tom Hudson forgets he was targeted like the rest of us). Jeff Atteberry was the chair at the time. Atteberry lasted from about 2006 to 2012, read on…

Captured in Time and Space, a snippet of 2010 Central Committee Elections Results

When the moderates, aided and abetted by Ted Gaines, Tom McClintock, David Stafford Reade, Doug LaMalfa, Jim Nielsen, Frank Bigelow and others came calling in 2012 to oust Jeff Atteberry and the CRA-Aligned leadership… Ken Campbell aligned with them.

During those years, the Placer GOP was completely neutered. From 2006-2018, the committee was able to accomplish little except making endorsements. During that time, working with Kirk Uhler, the Placer CRA PAC and other PAC’s we created ran efforts to unseat bad local officeholders. We had some successes, but less than we could have because it was basically Kirk and I with not many others involved. Two of our biggest scalps were Jack Duran and Rene Aggielairuh.

In 2012, a coalition of Tea Party activists who were aligned with Doug LaMalfa and the establishment ousted the Placer CRA’s leadership. This led to Dennis Revell being elected Chair of the Placer GOP. While Dennis and I have become friends in the intervening years – people need to understand that Ken Campbell played a role in making that happen.

Over the years Ken Campbell has used a variety of pejoratives to refer to your intrepid blogger, Slimebag, loser, etc. Swamp Monster is just the latest. Your intrepid blogger just referred to him as “Chairman Psycho” during the same period of time as his actions and rampages based on what I thought were his medication levels at the time governed the assignment of that moniker.

Just to layer on a another level of absurdity to the occurrences of Wednesday – When your intrepid blogger worked for Steve Frank’s chair campaign in 2021 against the Swamp, Ken Campbell was the person that wrote me the retainer checks I earned for working on Steve Frank’s behalf. I guess Ken forgot to take his medication again before Wednesday’s Cent Com meeting, because he also forgot about the FBI visit I got while fighting said swamp. I guess that was soooooo 2021.

Let me put in a last note. In the early 2000’s, your intrepid blogger was known as a bomb-thrower and people across the political spectrum were reticent to engage with me. I did not have the platform or the influence I have now as a result. It was Kirk Uhler in the mid-2000’s that recognized that I had potential as a political operative and he took me under his wing. Others like Bonnie Gore had some influence on me during my formative years as well.

Uhler, showed me that I could be a pro-life, pro-family conservative, be aggressive, but how to focus and hit the right targets to advance the Conservative Republican cause. Without the influence and friendship of Kirk Uhler I would not still be an effective force for Conservative Republican causes today in both Nevada and California. As such, most of my political enemies today are people with personal picadilloes against me, but my friends list has grown exponentially.

Which gets me to the conclusion. What happened at the Placer GOP 1-10-2024 was as much a referendum on the personal hatred of Kirk Uhler and your intrepid blogger by a few influential people and less about Suzanne Jones. This is not unprecedented, look at the endorsement of David Fennell and why that happened. That was hate of Brian and Megan Dahle. When an organization makes important decisions based on personal picadilloes, they lose effectiveness and influence almost immediately. I fear for Placer County in the 2024 general election as the committee rendered itself ineffective like it was back in 2002 all over again.

UPDATE – Across the transom, a screed from a former Placer GOP Committee-member is included below. If any of you have any doubt about the personal hatred angle, read it and weep…

Is this what the Republican Party has become?

Oct 132023
 

Hi Fred!

Fred Whitaker, the Chairman of the OCGOP sortied out of his bunker recently to attack your intrepid blogger! Rather than address the validity of the expose’ on Janet Nguyen, similar to an email sent by Nguyen’s consultants, it was long on Hyperbole and short on facts. Everything your intrepid blogger has written about Janet Nguyen is true and we will re-affirm that in this installment of the Janet Nguyen Accountability Project. In addition, your intrepid blogger will provide a fact-check on some of the assertions that Mr. Whitaker has made in his recent email.

Second, I have had enough of these nasty, negative hit pieces coming out against our friend Senator Janet Nguyen and now attacking the OCGOP and our bylaws process. Janet is a strong conservative who has not only been a strong voice for us in Sacramento, but she has been a strong and active part of, and supporter of, our Republican candidates and causes all around Orange County. Just ask Diane Dixon, Scott Baugh and the Fab 4 in Huntington Beach. In many respects she has been the ideal legislative partner for the OCGOP.

Nasty is an opinion. Calling Janet Nguyen a Conservative is also an opinion. Saying she has been a strong supporter of ALL of our Republican candidates is a lie. Your intrepid blogger has documented, with evidence three major instances of Nguyen defying the endorsements of the OCGOP. There are screenshots of mailers and even the tape of a robocall in Vietnamese that she did whilst combatting the endorsements of the OCGOP. Why the Chair of the OCGOP sees fit to outright lie on behalf of a candidate is beyond me.

See here for yourself Nguyen endorsing a left-leaning NPP against OCGOP endorsed Laurie Merrick for Garden Grove Council in 2022.

See here for yourself Janet Nguyen endorsing a democrat for Santa Ana Council in 2018 David Penaloza over Miguel Gonzalez and Left-Leaning NPP Mirna Velasquez over Ceci Iglesias.

See here for yourself the robocall in Vietnamese Janet Nguyen cut on behalf of her defiance of the OCGOP.

Evidence that demands a verdict.

The proposed OCGOP By-Laws changes, especially now that Fred Whitaker has come out of the closet for Janet Nguyen look even more suspect. If adopted all Janet has to do is apologize in a letter for endorsing against Laurie Merrick and she won’t even have to answer for what she did in 2018 because the new bylaws only have a 4 year look-back.

Anyone observing OCGOP politics remembers when Todd Spitzer (who I proudly worked for in 2022 to hammer the local newspapers in to submission when they regurgitated complete crap puked out by Soros aligned groups) got the OCGOP By-Laws amended to deal with Tony Rackauckas habit of endorsing democrats. Those amendments were pretty popular then, what changed?

But it seems like every day I am opening up my email and there is another nasty note from paid muckrakers, attacking her in the most vicious way. Now I got what pretends to be an online survey seeking to get my opinions only to find out that it is just another vicious hit on our friend Janet.  I note that this “blogger” is not only paid, but has a history of attacks on fellow Republicans – that same blogger has been paid to attack Jennifer Beal in 2018,  John Moorlach in 2020 and 2021, and myself and the OCGOP in 2021.

Fact Check: I have never been paid to attack Fred Whitaker, he has been collateral damage. (this holds true with the OCGOP as well) I have never been paid to attack Jennifer Beall (note the spelling), and when I did it was two posts in 2022, not 2018. In the case of John Moorlach, sometimes yes, it was paid for and sometimes they were on the house because I love me some Johnny.

It appears that Whitaker is lawyering up the OCGOP trying to use your intrepid blogger to rally support for changing the OCGOP By-Laws to pave the way for endorsing the party-destroying Janet Nguyen. Whitaker does not explain why Jon Fleischman said the following in an email:

But most importantly right now – we need to get a drill going to make sure you still have all of your supporters, and that they will be able to be there Monday night to vote yes on the bylaw change. We can tell your supporters that if the bylaw change goes through it will eliminate with certainty any lingering questions about whether you can be endorsed by the Central Committee.

Perhaps the answer can be explained by the first sentence in the same email:

If they are circulating this stuff to the committee, we should be figuring out how to respond.

Fred Whitaker could have done a far better job responding. So could Nguyen’s campaign as there is no way to decouple Nguyen from the current effort to amend the OCGOP By-Laws.

There is another key difference between your intrepid blogger and Fred Whitaker. I am not a party officer. I am not a club officer. I am an independent operative and I am not using a title to push my positions. Party officers should remain neutral. Fred Whitaker is anything but, and people in Orange County tell me that Fred Whitaker is pushing Kate Monroe in CA49, Crystal Miles in SD37 and Janet Nguyen. All three have the same consultant. Perhaps members of the OCGOP should inquire as to the relationship between that consulting firm and Mr. Whitaker.

Jon Fleischman and that firm have a long-standing relationship, which is why the email I got from him by mistake discussing Janet Nguyen’s strategy and “drill” to amend the OCGOP By-Laws came as no surprise.

When your intrepid blogger calls a candidate a squish or a rino, there is a reason. When I talk about specific issues, I do so with evidence… perhaps this is why the campaign and Mr. Whitaker call me nasty and a liar without contravening evidence.

Straight off of the California Leg Info website is Janet Nguyen voting yes on AB2601. Fred Whitaker and Jon Fleischman need to do a better job of research. You can read all about AB2601 here including detailed information from Live-Action, a right-leaning parent’s rights/education group.

And Janet Nguyen endorses democrats. How vicious it is of your intrepid blogger to point these facts out!

It is worth noting that Janet has not stooped down to this level — all of her communications to the committee have been positive, talking about her accomplishments, her goals, and sharing her extensive endorsement list. It’s also worth noting that she does not even have an application for endorsement in front of the committee.

Fred lied again. Nguyen’s crew has attacked your intrepid blogger. (including Whitaker) The spin on her application for endorsement is fascinating as she withdrew it in a cloud over her non-Republican endorsements precipitating the effort to amend the by-laws. If the by-law change was not tied to endorsing Janet Nguyen, she’d have told the committee she was going to wait until after the primary before trying again and/or the OCGOP would wait until after the primary to amend the by-laws as the only current applicant that would be affected by the proposed by-law changes is Janet Nguyen. 

That’s correct – filter through everything and ask yourself why is the OCGOP trying to change their by-laws in the middle of a campaign election cycle? Who benefits from said endorsement change? It’s Janet Nguyen.

The OCGOP is prepared to allow would-be endorsers to endorse democrats as long as it was 4 years ago and allow endorsements of NPP’s with a nice letter that the same people considering the endorsement have to “approve”. The OCGOP is about to make their endorsement meaningless on behalf of someone who has been on a rampage against Republican Candidates for Orange County offices since 2018… and I will leave you with the below excerpt from my first “vicious” post about Nguyen when she trashed Trump and immigration enforcement:

In 2017, Janet joined with Democrats to condemn President Trump’s immigration enforcement

See it here. My Favorite Parts are below:

WHEREAS, The Trump administration has justified its vast expansion of those targeted for deportation by falsely portraying the United States as a country under siege by a flood of undocumented immigrants who threaten public safety, giving rise to anti-immigrant fervor and a nativist desire to preserve our nation’s historically dominant Euro-Christian culture; now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate of the State of California, That the Senate calls upon President Trump and Secretary Kelly to publicly and explicitly reaffirm the principles and content of the ICE policy memorandum dated October 24, 2011, regarding enforcement actions at or focused on sensitive locations; and be it further
Resolved, That the Senate calls upon Secretary Kelly to underscore to the public and to all United States Department of Homeland Security personnel that the policy on sensitive locations is not limited to enforcement at the sensitive location, but also to enforcement focused on sensitive locations, and that in other words, waiting across the street from a church or school for people to emerge from the sensitive location violates the policy as much as entering the location itself, as does following someone away from a press conference or other sensitive location so as to detain them; and be it further
Resolved, That the Senate calls upon Secretary Kelly to take affirmative steps, including public commitment to the sensitive locations policy, staff training, investigation or reports of past and future violations of the policy, including, but not limited to, investigating the incidents detailed in this resolution, and pursuing disciplinary action against personnel found to have violated the policy; and be it further
Resolved, That the Secretary of the Senate transmit copies of this resolution to the President and Vice President of the United States, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, the Minority Leader of the United States Senate, and to each Senator and Representative from California in the Congress of the United States.
Basically, Janet Nguyen voted yes on a resolution attacking White people and the Trump administration policy of raiding illegal sanctuaries for illegal aliens. Great Job Janet Nguyen.
May 082023
 

Hannah Holzer? Ooooooooooh Haaaaaannnnnaaaaaaahh?

It is probably time to file a missing persons report on Holzer’s whereabouts with the Sacramento Bee.

About two months after getting blistered for lying and repeatedly abusing New York Times vs Sullivan to smear anyone and everyone to the right of a communist, it appears that the corrupt Sacramento Bee editorial board and management had a moment of Pravda. (the Russian word for Truth)

We would like nothing more than to work with The Sacramento Bee, knowing that what we are doing or how we communicate to the public will be accurately reported. Unfortunately, we are not confident that this will happen given Ms. Holzer’s long history of false narratives. We feel her intent is always blatant in an effort to stir up controversy and perhaps even worse, violence. We also feel that her editors continue to allow it.

Ms. Holzer’s caustic reporting has a trickle-down effect. Given the history, elected officials in Placer County have grown weary about engaging with any reporter from the Bee. We hope that there are serious consequences for Ms. Holzer’s most recent and blatant lie, and we hope that our complaints about Ms. Holzer’s past actions in her betrayal of elected officials and of issues in Placer County will now be taken seriously.

We feel that this is an opportunity to help rebuild trust between Placer County and The Sacramento Bee and hope that you take our concern with Ms. Holzer’s agenda-driven approach more seriously now, too.

We welcome the opportunity to talk with you directly about our concerns. But none of us will work with Ms. Holzer ever again.

The preceeding is an excerpt from the blistering letter signed by 27 political leaders in Placer County. It appears to have hit its’ mark:

The last appearance by Holzer on the SacBee website is the March 15 article that likely contributed to the riot on the UC Davis Campus – the Bee Ultimately was forced to apologize publicly for an outright lie penned by their staff (including Holzer) about Charlie Kirk. (That is Kirk in the 3-15 thumbnail)

Please note – your intrepid blogger is still here despite the Bee celebrating my demise. 26 years and counting in politics and this is my 20th year as a blogger.