UPDATE: RightonDaily is getting some love from other bloggers in our quest for transparency! Click here – this blogger reminded me that Mark Spannagel, Doug LaMalfa’s current chief of staff was part of the operation currently getting assailed by Doug LaMalfa and Ted Gaines! (I had forgotten about that detail)
Have you started to wonder why with the state Billions in the hole, our state education ranked 49th, our credit rating last, our roads crumbling and a new bill just passed mandating 6 year olds be taught about homosexuality – why LaMalfa and Gaines have prioritized attacking Republican volunteers?
I had a close friend email me a video link from Fox news about David Brock. Brock is insane and he is a smear merchant who runs an outfit called media matters. If you watch the video – the parallels to the current situation are obvious.
In late 2009, with the number one donor to her employer the Capitol Resource Institute, (Doug LaMalfa) facing an opponent in Rick Keene who had over $1million in the bank – Karen England went on a rampage.
Her pattern of slander was not new – Conservatives like Jan Pinney and Brett Storey in local office had experienced it firsthand as had Congressman Doolittle.
Her chosen method to advance the candidacy of LaMalfa was to invoke behavior reminiscent of David Brock against anyone that stood between her and her employer’s number one donor getting in to office. (Remember the $27,500 highlighted in post one of this series)
Emails started coming out from local Tea Parties as they represented the only area where Karen England could get traction. People Tom, George and I had never met were regurgitating distortions on their facebook pages, sending emails and writing blogs – parroting talking points about the Placer County Republican Parties’ 2008 Prop 8 effort.
Why most of Karen England’s recruits never questioned what they were told is beyond me, and why they decided to participate in the attempted fraud at the 2011 CRA convention in the name of stopping people they had been convinced were corrupt is beyond me.
Of course, she destroyed the character of Rick Keene in the mind of everyone she could. It’s legal, right? All’s fair in campaign speech, right? A great return on that $27,500 if you ask me.
Late 2009 is when the calls from local media started coming – the timing of those with the beginning of the onslaught of slander, and the financial interests are too much of a coincidence to ignore.
The basis of the charges of embezzlement, fraud, extortion, graft, money laundering and the like had their genesis from the 2008 Prop 8 campaign.
Karen England, who holds herself out as an unassailable conservative, did not support Tom McClintock in the primary in 2008. I was told as such by members of McClintock’s team when I asked them where she was. Unbelievably – I was told the reason was mine and George’s support of McClintock.
I have come to believe that real reason why is that David Reade, a member of the Capitol Resource Institute’s board of directors was the Chief of Staff for Doug LaMalfa (LaMalfa endorsed Doug Ose and not Tom McClintock). It is my belief that between that and the large amount of money LaMalfa had contributed to the Capitol Resource Institute were the nexus for Karen staying on the sidelines. (I found an archived webpage from the Capitol Resource Institute that shows the connection of Reade to the Capitol Resource Institute – the page was removed during the 2010 primary after I had written a blog about the connection at that time.)
The tie in between McClintock and the Placer GOP’s Prop 8 campaign was simple. There was a belief that turning out Prop 8 voters in what was a horrible year for Republicans would help Tom McClintock. (who only won by 1700 votes in 2008.)
Karen England’s Daughter Jordan (who was an adult at the time) was paid out of the Placer County Republican Party’s Prop 8 Get-out-the-vote operation. I found this out courtesy of Ken Campbell (who is also on the Capitol Resource Institute’s Board of Directors) writing a couple of times on blogs that he was shown a copy of a check written out to Jordan England. (She was allegedly paid by some sub-vendor of a sub-contractor of some sort of the Placer GOP’s Main Contractor… or so it has been told, Ken is pretty hard to follow some times.)
In the Meantime – Tom McClintock emptied out an old Board of Equalization account and the Capitol Resource Institute was a beneficiary. $6000 worth.
The donation occurred on 9/28/2008 – around that time, Karen magically began showing up at the Placer GOP / McClintock HQ to run phone banks. Again, like Ted Gaines and Doug LaMalfa – McClintock did nothing wrong by giving the Capitol Resource Institute the money. This is about Karen’s failure to disclose the financial interest in a donor to her employer – and in this case the timing of the donation relative to her activities.
In the months since that campaign – through anecdotal evidence, I was able to determine that the check written to Jordan England was being shown to people and was likely being used as evidence of “corruption” at local Tea Party meetings.
So the mantra of this “Conservative” attacking the Placer GOP’s 2008 Prop 8 effort was born in late 2009. To Be Continued…
