Another Fishing Expedition Using Bad Bait

Dwight Robinson may claim publicly he’s going to run a clean campaign, but he has no problem allowing James Ross to do the dirty work. And, with the anti-recall propaganda Robinson stood behind for the first four months of this year, Robinson's condoned enough dirty politics to last him to 2020.

The latest missive by “James Ross,” which was likely written by Mayor Andrew Hamilton using a pen name, breaks the news that the Fair Political Practices Commission is investigating Councilman Jim Gardner and two non-elected candidates from 2014, Tom Cagley and Liz Miller. It’s built using bad intel, and when you’re guessing at information, the whole article basically sinks.

Same thing in yet another article in which Ross attempts to tie Councilman Adam Nick to supporting city council candidate Leah Basile financially because, in Ross’ estimation, she can’t raise as much money as she would need ($7500) in the time she had available. Then again, Ross supports three do-nothing councilmen who prefer to sit on their hands rather than discussing the concerns of residents in order to find solutions. Just because Robinson, Hamilton and Scott Voigts may not be able to raise the money – or maybe they’re just lazy because they can rely on Don Wagner, the Republican party, and developers and special interests to pad their coffers – doesn’t mean Basile can’t get things done.

In fact, if Basile can do what James Ross claims she did, she is more financially adept and efficient than Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts and deserves your vote (given that Robinson betrayed those who elected him by not keeping any of his campaign promises, she deserves your vote anyway).

Ross’ machine gun assault ties everyone – Gardner, Cagley, Miller and Basile – to Nick and ultimate wrongdoing because, in the bizarro world in which Ross writes and Robinson governs, Nick is the reason for everything bad in Lake Forest.

If there’s something broken or bad, the game plan is to aim the blame at Nick, a small businessman who campaigned four years ago on a platform of cleaning up City Hall and who is trying to restore representation of residents – instead of higher ranking Republicans – to city government.

Don’t believe me?

• When Voigts and Hamilton place their campaign signs in illegal locations, it’s Nick’s fault.

• When a neighborhood’s pleas to fix a dangerous road falls on the deaf ears of Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts, it’s Nick’s fault.

• When Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts turn their back on animal lovers and stick with the County’s kill shelter while other cities seek alternatives – and the Gang of 3 basically writes a blank check in the process for one of the most notorious animal agencies in America – it’s Nick’s fault.

• When Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts are held accountable for their lies to the public, it’s Nick’s fault.

• When Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts appoint friends in high places, and other acts of cronyism, it’s Nick’s fault.

See the pattern? Nick’s no politician and may not be perfect, but he’s not the villain he is painted to be by the partisan politics that have created a dysfunctional City Council that is contentious toward its residents and is about as predictable as the sunrise.

So the piling on continues with the news flash of this investigation by Ross, whose assertions are rooted in ignorance of actual facts.

Basically, Ross says Gardner, Tom Cagley and Liz Miller sent 10 mass mailing fliers, contending a cost of $50,000 to $75,000 based on each mailing costing between $5000 and $7000 while reporting a combined $21,020 paid to the assumed vendor. Therefore, it is an under-reporting of $30,000 to $55,000, and an under-reporting of expenditures is a way for Gardner to hide contributions – such as those from Nick. At least, that’s the theory posed by Ross, who in the past has been unable to explain a doctored photo on a third-party website amid claims Nick lied about being a certified public account, made gross generalizations to paint Nick as a racist, and insisted Nick bribed a Council colleague when the county’s district attorney clearly determined he did not.

So in the same vein, one must take Ross’ latest series of conjecture with grains of salt.

Here are the facts.

Gardner, who’s worked as a consultant to some of the largest companies in the world, used several batches of smaller targeted mailings (ranging from 200 to up to about 4,000). For example, he sent a batch of specific messages to mobile home park residents, or to seniors; in other words, he didn’t send mailings to 20-somethings about the future Senior Center. This tactic doesn’t require the $7000 investment James Ross assumes for each mailing to cover the entire city, but creates 8-10 different messages aimed at specific voters at lesser costs.

“Using advanced database management, I crunched the numbers and reduced the target populations enormously,” Gardner said. “I think it’s sufficient to say I did 20-30,000 mailings. What Ross says (about costs) is true, but only if you’re stupid; if you can manipulate databases, it costs much less. We had eight or 10 fliers, but not every flier went to every person.”

Given the results, one can question whether it was successful. Gardner finished second while Voigts finished first and Hamilton finished third. Cagley finished fourth and Miller sixth among seven candidates. Yet the combined spending by Voigts, Hamilton, and Bass far exceeded the combined spending by Gardner, Cagley and Miller. One side was just smarter with its resources than the other.

However, maybe the strategy was successful in some respects: Voigts had 4626 fewer votes than he did in 2010 (a drop of 41 percent), and Hamilton got fewer votes than any elected official since at least 1998 despite holding a spot on the Planning Commission and having the endorsement of Robinson and Voigts.

What’s notable about the information provided by Ross in this link shows the original complaint; the copy that Gardner, Cagley and Miller received from the FPPC begins with “To whom it may concern,” not with the email information that includes the attachments. In other words, as Gardner says, James Ross is showing the original complaint and therefore “James Huston is James Ross.”

Notably missing from the documents is the page indicating “James Huston” was making a sworn complaint under penalty of perjury. When the FPPC determines there’s nothing to it, James Ross won’t lift a finger to report the findings that aren’t in his favor but he’ll still have his headline. He’s operating under the theory that “You can’t un-ring the bell,” which is what Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts did during the anti-recall smear campaign: Say it, even if it’s not true, and a certain uninformed segment of the population will believe it.

As a point of reference, “James Huston” is a name Nick has identified previously, along with James Ross, James Rees and James Phillips as pseudonyms Andrew Hamilton has used.

This seems to be Hamilton’s vendetta, apparently still sore that more people signed petitions to remove him from office than voted for him two years earlier.

James Ross rightly says the FPPC must investigate all claims. There are several agencies which do that.

Because those agencies must investigate all claims, Adam Nick’s gas station/convenience store gets investigated about once a week based on a complaint from an anonymous source – probably Hamilton when he’s not secretly videotaping residents, creating copycat Facebook sites to deceive residents, or writing under the pen name “James Ross” to try to influence residents. Prior to this onslaught of complaints, Nick had received only two complaints in 14 years of operation.

Yet week after week, Nick’s Grab-N-Go 24/7 opens its doors to investigating agencies, occasionally having to shut down for as much as an hour during peak period to accommodate the investigation of pumps that are allegedly leaking, that are allegedly short-changing customers, that are allegedly not pumping fast enough. And each time, the investigator walks away with the comment, “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Nick, but we had to investigate. We don’t know it’s a bogus complaint until we check it out.” It's a waste investigator's time and, subsequently, your tax dollars.

This has been happening almost weekly since July 2015, which coincidentally is when the charges against Nick for “stealing signs” were dropped by the DA after the facts came out. One of the three illegally placed signs Nick removed belonged to … Hamilton.

Other harassment of Nick includes complaints about the inside of his store, even the restroom – despite the fact the whole place gets a professional once-over every day and staff cleaning throughout the day. In fact, Nick has received several Awards of Excellence from the County for the cleanliness of his facilities. Anyone who’s been inside knows that it’s exceptionally clean -- even the restroom.

At about the same time Nick's business started getting harassed, another theory was created, the so-called claim by Nick that he was a Certified Public Accountant on a third-party website. Nick has maintained he never provided that information and that it was “the result of Photoshop,” and none of his critics have been able to explain the doctored photo of Nick’s broken teeth; additionally, the CPA claim never appeared on Nick’s personal website nor his official ballot statement (nor did he claim, like Robinson, to employ nearly 100 people out of his home, or that he eliminated Mello Roos taxes). However, Nick rightly stated on his website to have passed the CPA exam with an average score of 90 percent.

Let’s address some of the other theories by James Ross.

He claims Gardner and Nick recruited Leah Basile in 2015 as a means of breaking up the Gang of 3 with “unfounded allegations against 3 of their colleagues” in the recall.

Why would Nick and Gardner recruit Leah Basile for the recall effort and subsequent run at City Council? Tom Cagley, who had just a few hundred votes less than Hamilton, already had more name recognition within the city; Basile was a complete unknown. If they strategized that, they were idiots.

Ross says the allegations were “unfounded.” Yet, there is clear evidence of cronyism and corruption, certainly in far greater abundance than the financial dealings Ross is claiming against Gardner.

Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts routinely made cronyism a part of their appointments to the Planning Commission, and Parks and Recreation Commission, and their dealings extended all the way up to the chairman of the Orange County GOP whose business stands to gain from continued support of Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts.

There is clear appearance of corruption, in which these Councilmen take campaign contributions from special interests and, on every occasion, have provided waivers, rezoning or votes green-lighting their projects.

Collusion, too, seems likely given the level of agreement among the three on controversial subjects. Only one other city in South Orange County remained with the Orange County Animal Control, but Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts agreed to stick with the County without talking about it among themselves? Maybe it was because they knew it would be good for them politically if they stuck with it, which goes back to an example of cronyism. It got Robinson the endorsement of supervisors Todd Spitzer and Lisa Bartlett even though Robinson didn’t champion anything in his four years and didn’t bring even one of his campaign promises before the Council.

Robinson’s is a perfect example of impotent leadership, yet he has the endorsement of two County supervisors who apparently agree that doing nothing is good enough to be reelected provided Lake Forest gives OCAC a blank check for services.

Another theory posited by James Ross – remember, this is the pen name of Mayor Andrew Hamilton – is that Gardner’s endorsement of Nick is “payback for Adam Nick secretly funding Gardner’s campaign.” Given that Nick isn’t the hand puppet of Robinson that Hamilton and Voigts are, maybe Gardner realized there was a person on the Council who would actually listen to alternative solutions, new ideas, and the residents they represent rather than the county’s Republican aristocracy that Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts aspire to be.

Another theory from Ross is that Nick and Gardner “are trying to achieve dominance of the city council at any ethical and monetary cost.” Seriously, he used the word ethical!

This is perhaps my favorite theory that Ross provides. Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts already control the City Council. They routinely changed City ordinances to accommodate their own strategy – that’s the reason Nick was never afforded the opportunity to be mayor, for example, and the reason it took the consent of three council members to get something placed on the agenda (that’s why Saddleback Ranch Road wasn’t put on the agenda until the Gang of 3 were served recall papers). Imagine that, you needed the majority of the Council to vote an item on the agenda without knowing anything about it.

When the recall was under way, Robinson, Hamilton and Voigts stood behind a smear campaign against Nick, Gardner and the residents of Lake Forest (you were a pedophile and a thug if you supported the recall). They used a stock photo of a mother and daughter (from Asia) to represent a Foothill Ranch family. They mocked those who legally changed their names (no doubt, Dwight Robinson would have introduced Cassius Clay to Lake Forest had the Champ shown up at the Sports Park opening). They made broad exaggerations about the safety of the City to accommodate their agenda – which was to demonize Nick.

And that doesn’t even include the lies. You can’t listen to anything from Robinson, from Hamilton or from Voigts without questioning whether it is true.

When it comes to ethics, “James Ross” should not be picking that fight. His side will lose -- just like the argument that Gardner under-reported.

But it provides the headline Ross wants you to read. Just do so warily.

About the author: Martin Henderson won several Los Angeles and Orange County press club awards while an editor at Patch in 2012-13.