It is not hard to find photos like these, they are plentiful with regard to Diane Harkey.

What do you say when you research a candidate and generate over 300 pages in a Lexis Nexis file? There’s an obvious problem. The volume of information has been staggering. Diane Harkey was first elected to office in 2004 after taking a lead role in the incorporation of Dana Point (where her 5 million dollar residense is located). Her one term in Dana Point was not without drama.

OPPONENTS ACCUSE HER OF:Per dianeharkeyrecall.com: “Diane Harkey has cursed at residents during council meetings, ignored a state ruling on her conflicts of interest, told people to ‘grease palms’ in order to get construction variances, ignored her community to run for higher office only months after being elected and much more.”

THE FACTS ARE:An undated, blurry YouTube video posted as evidence of Harkey’s cursing kind ofshows her flipping the bird while leaving Dana Point’s council chambers. The greased-palm anecdote has been verified only by opponents. A Dana Point city attorney recently opined that Harkey can participate in discussions that seem like conflicts of interest to everyone else. On the other hand, Harkey is currently campaigning to take over Mimi Walter’s 73rd Assembly District seat next year.

RECALL CHANCES?Slim. Harkey is independently rich, a darling of the Orange County Right, and her allies in Dana Point City Hall will do their damnedest to keep their gal in office—until she bolts to higher ground, that is.

While the recall ultimately failed, take a look at the main points from the OC Weekly 14 years ago, and they are timely today:

1. Harkey’s temper – a theme seen in dozens of articles, backed up with lawsuits
2. Hakey’s personal finances – hundreds of articles and documents tell a complex tale, that is a lot more difficult than Mrs. Harkey presents it to be.
3. Office Shopping – City Council, State Senate, Assembly, BOE, Congress and now Supervisor. She will have the political six-pack should she win election, a rare feat indeed and every career politician’s dream.
4. Reputed to be independently rich – something that would become a nightmare for her just 6 years later.
5. A darling of the Orange County Mafia (aka the party bosses are rigging endorsements and twisting arms as I type)

Harkey was embroiled in controversy from day one on the Dana Point City Council. Her husband’s business dealings that she would sue people over and sue to get out of just a decade later were a problem. She was constantly being accused of a conflict of interest because her husband was engaging in speculative real estate and had numerous LLC’s and Corporations with entanglements all over Orange County. While Diane Harkey has attempted to play the victim of her husband’s finances, it is not difficult to find her name all over the paperwork of some of his LLC’s, her listed as an employee of others and Real Estate records with her name all over them.

When I checked the Orange County Superior Court’s website, I see that Harkey was suing people in the mid-2000’s and her husband was being sued at least once a year for breach of contract. This is a key fact to digest. Diane Harkey had to know her husband was crooked. Perhaps the Bentley she was driving while she served on the Dana Point City Council made it hard to take an honest look at the source of the money for said Bentley.

While the effort to recall Diane Harkey failed – the end of said effort is memorialized forever:

Press release from the Harkey Recall campaign:

The Recall Diane Harkey Committee announced today that it is ending the Recall signature gathering effort in Dana Point. The committee will not submit signatures to the registrar of voters and the recall effort is ended.

Although the committee collected many signatures of Dana Point residents to recall Councilmember Diane Harkey, the requirement of collecting 20% of registered voters – over 4,300 signatures, proved to be too high a hurdle to achieve without sufficient financial resources to collect the signatures, and to counter Harkey’s ample self-funded opposition, which included the dirty tricks of her supporters, documented at www.theliberaloc.com, such as the illegal stealing and destruction of pro-Recall campaign signs.

Nevertheless, the Committee is proud to point to these achievements over the last four months:

1. Diane Harkey is no longer Mayor of Dana Point. Just last week, another member of the City Council was selected as Mayor.

2. Diane Harkey is highly unpopular in Dana Point. According to a NSON Opinion Research poll of 200 registered voters in Dana Point who are familiar with Harkey, conducted November 28-30, 2007, almost 30% of respondents viewed her unfavorably. When informed of her family businesses’ 14 tax liens, almost 50% of voters stated they would change their opinion of her. The poll suggests Harkey would have trouble winning another election in Dana Point.

3. During the recall effort, Harkey made several politically motivated decisions on the City Council which proved unpopular. Her actions under pressure of the recall demonstrate her unfitness for higher office:
* Harkey voted for and publicly defended a $50 million settlement of a personal injury lawsuit by the City that blew the aggregate limits of the City’s insurance coverage and has left the city exposed with less than $1 million in insurance coverage for the balance of the current term. Harkey’s settlement occurred without even taking the case to trial. Personal injury attorneys have been quoted as saying the settlement amount is one of the biggest in Orange County history. Because insurance coverage is pooled with other cities, taxpayers across the state will be paying for Harkey’s out-of-court settlement for years to come in the form of higher insurance rates.
* Harkey and her Council violated the Brown Act for political gain. Harkey participated in an action designed to appear as if the City Council had passed a formal resolution opposing her recall. Sacramento-based Brown Act expert Terry Franke, General Counsel of Californians Aware, concluded that Harkey’s action “was likely a Brown Act violation.” Though claiming no Brown Act violation, she and her Council responded to a legal complaint by formally retracting the illegal resolution opposing the recall effort, to avoid a lawsuit. (Councilmember Lara Anderson did not participate in the Brown Act violation.)
* Harkey attacked the Rev. Robert Schuller by name on Los Angeles radio, over what she termed “an unholy alliance” between his church and the United States Post Office regarding the planning of a facility to improve postal service in south Orange County. Harkey could have made her point without the cheap-shot at a good man who does not deserve to be dragged into the mud.
* Harkey embarrassed herself with the public and Orange County Register political Reporter Martin Wisckol by complaining to him that she was “not that unphotogenic,” and that the newspaper was using “unflattering” photographs of her.

4. Harkey compounded her troubles by revelations of other actions attempting to leverage her office for political gain:

* A member of Harkey’s own law firm was revealed to be behind an anonymous, “city” newsletter, designed to look like an official city publication, which was very flattering to Harkey personally, and mailed during the recall effort. It included an unauthorized and illegal use of the city seal, as well as official city council portraits. Harkey publicly praised the anonymous publication. But in response to a “cease and desist” letter from the City Manager, the bogus outfit agreed to stop the illegal use of the city seal. This outfit has failed to file required disclosure forms with the California Secretary of State and to this day the only individual publicly associated with it is a member of Harkey’s law firm.
The Recall Committee has decided to maintain its highly popular website and change its status to a permanent political committee in opposition to Harkey’s political ambitions. The Recall Committee thanks all who signed petitions and urges voters and the public to research Harkey’s record of bullying, and her lack of credentials, and to reject her at the polls in her campaign for the 73rd Assembly District. Our new name is “Diane Harkey Watch!” – www.dianeharkeywatch.com

Please note that some years later the Harkey Watch Website was taken down. Also a sad note that the Crystal Cathedral (and the late Rev. Robert Schuller) is also a relic of the past as well.

I also encountered some entertaining tidbits about the Orange County GOP. They participated in screwing with the locations of party events to throw off the recall people and also unanimously stood with the incumbent. It seems 2007 and 2021 have some disturbing parallels. There is one difference though. Right on Daily.

Despite telling people she was not running for higher office if elected to Dana Point City Council, she ran for State Senate in 2006, losing to the squish Tom Harman who benefitted from the open primary law in effect at the time. It was no suprise then when Harkey sought to follow Mimi Walters in to what was then AD73.

To be continued…