Garamendi Campaign Official Barges into Pacific Research Institute Office
Monday, September 18th, 2006
Mid afternoon today, a woman barged into the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) office in Sacramento — which is just a floor downstairs from the John Garamendi campaign (Lt. Governor) office — and proceeded to question one of the PRI staffers about purported PRI involvement with partisan politics. (PRI does no such thing, as it is a 501c3 nonprofit that strictly conducts public policy analysis as opposed to political advocacy) She then pulled out a camera and took a photo of one of the office doors that has Reagan photos and the like on it. It seems this “lady” had read an op-ed piece last week in the Orange County Register written by Ben Zycher, a former PRI staffer/consultant — the key word is former.
She then turned to a senior staffer there and demanded to know why partisan materials were present in the office. She was informed that staff members are free to decorate their offices as they wish, but that as a nonpartisan think tank PRI adheres to the law on partisan involvement in its official publications and other such output.
She then informed the senior staffer that the IRS has been notified that PRI has violated the law due to a column by Benjamin Zycher on Tom McClintock, which ran recently on the OC Register website.
Note that PRI is not mentioned in the column; indeed, due to a glich at the OCR, no affiliation was listed. In the manuscript that was sent to the OCR, Zycher was identified as “a volunteer policy adviser to the Tom McClintock campaign for Lt. Governor.” (more…)