California Conservative

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.”

This woman then hurried out. The senior staffer followed her to the door, asking her name and affiliation. After having been asked three times, she finally identified herself as Ms. Terry Leach, the former executive director of the Rockridge Institute. Leach is, as I found out when I called the Garamendi office for her comment, the Communications Director for Garamendi for Lt. Governor, for the Bay Area. She did not return my call. When she does, I will report on her side of the story. A quick Google search reveals that she is a longtime left-wing activist who endorsed Garamendi on March 31, 2006: “As a heatlh (sic) care consultant, I have gone on leave as ED of the Rockridge Institute to help John.” “John” in this context clearly is Garamendi.

Can Garamendi’s campaign really be so desperate as to spend time on such trivia? Are they that thin-skinned? After all, this is California politics. Or, alternatively, has Big John attracted a staff utterly clueless? I report; you decide. For Terry’s sake, I hope the PRI people don’t call the police and have her charged with trespassing, disrupting the peace and making a fool of herself and her candidate, John Garamendi.

Question, Mr. Garamendi, will you fire her for this action or commend her–the public has a right to know your values. Is this type of campaigning style, threatening, intimidation, arrogance, use of government against free speech, your style as well? Garamendi, either fire her or explain why you didn’t. This is shameful. (BTW, others on the floor and in the building heard about this–she was very proud of her accomplishment, threatening a non-profit for having a one time staffer that wrote a piece in the OC Register for a candidate)

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Steve Frank is the publisher of California Political News and Views and a Senior Contributor to CaliforniaConservative.org. He is also a consultant currently working on gambling issues and advising other consultants on policy and coalition building.

Read more of his work here or at his blog.

Technorati Tags: California, Garamendi, PRI, Liberals

This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 5:52 pm and is filed under Activism, Author: Steve Frank, California, Liberals, Sacramento. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.