| Author |
Message |
Newshound (Newshound)
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 01, 2004 - 9:19 am: | |
Sept. 1-DeVore lodges complaint against Agran associate,OC Register
He says company linked to Irvine mayor purposely left him off political mailer.
By JEFF ROWE
The Orange County Register
Assembly candidate Chuck DeVore filed a complaint Tuesday with the state Fair Political Practices Commission charging that a political organization associated with Irvine Mayor Larry Agran failed to file proper reports, used campaign funds incorrectly and meshed its activities with the mayor's political campaign.
DeVore lost his 2002 bid for a seat on the City Council by 150 votes of 14,412 cast. He was not included on a political mailer produced by the Hometown Voter Guide, which is owned by Ed Dornan, a longtime friend and political adviser of Agran's.
Since then, DeVore won the Republican primary for strongly Republican 70th Assembly District and faces Democrat Carl Mariz, a retired chemical engineer, in November.
Agran described DeVore's allegations as "ludicrous," noting that he paid for space in the mailer and that the Hometown Voter Guide is responsible for filing the correct forms, not the candidates. The Hometown Voter Guide did indeed file contribution reports on paper but not electronically so that they can be read at the FPPC's Web site, www.fppc.ca.gov.
DeVore said the Political Reform Act requires the electronic filings, and he called on the FPPC to "act swiftly," which almost certainly is not going to happen. Sigrid Bathen, a spokeswoman for the FPPC, said the organization's budget has been cut, making it difficult to keep up with the 1,000 complaints it receives a year. A complaint similar to DeVore's filed in 2001 by political activist Shirley Grindle remains somewhere in the FPPC system.
Hometown Voter Guide is one of dozens of political mailer companies around the state that assemble political advertising brochures, called slate mailers because they often present a group of allied candidates.
Candidates pay for space in the mailers but are not supposed to manage or direct the content.
|
|