Why Does Fred Whitaker Want to Control Lake Forest, Part 1

Why is Fred Whitaker meddling in your business? You're a Lake Forest resident, but Whitaker is a councilman in the City of Orange, and chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County. Yet he continues to stick his nose where it doesn't belong in an effort to control the City of Lake Forest.

Whitaker seeks the financial and political benefits of keeping Andrew Hamilton in the office of city council in Lake Forest, which is why he sent mailers to residents advising them to not sign the recall petition of Hamilton, and why he tried to discredit 16,000 signatures that were submitted to the county's registrar of voters, Neal Kelley, with a half-cocked claim in an equally egregious press release.

The very fact that Whitaker is such a staunch and active supporter should have residents salivating at the opportunity to get rid of Hamilton. Here's why.

Hamilton's A Sure Thing for the Status Quo

Whitaker is part of an incestuous relationship that includes Hamilton, Mayor Scott Voigts, the City of Irvine, Councilman Dwight Robinson, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, State Assemblyman Steven Choi, and the OC GOP.

The Orange County Republican Party is financed, in large part, by contributions from developers and special interests, although taxpayers also contribute to the grand old party; it's important to remember that taxpayers help pay the freight. Lake Forest (No. 2) and Irvine (No. 9) are two of the fastest-growing cities in California, and developers are eyeing even more building.

Hamilton, Voigts and Robinson have all benefited from developer money. All have benefited from support from the OC GOP. Not once has Hamilton, Voigts and Robinson voted against the wishes of a developer who desired to build in Lake Forest, or get special dispensation after their projects were approved. To use a crude example, if Hamilton, Voigts and Robinson were prostitutes, the developers would be the johns who get exactly what they want – every single time; of course, Hamilton, Voigts and Robinson aren't prostitutes, they are elected officials who receive campaign contributions and give the developers exactly what they want – every single time.

Losing Hamilton from the Lake Forest council risks developers not getting the free pass they've been getting for years as part of the City's three-man majority, and that could impact the OC GOP. Hamilton, while mayor, said Lake Forest needs more residents, basically parroting a concept extolled by Robinson, even though further building impacts traffic and school overcrowding – two of the guiding principles that were supposed to be protected by the Opportunities Study Area (OSA). Currently, Toll Brothers is considering building more than 800 homes on the Nakase Brothers Nursery property on Bake Parkway at Rancho Parkway. Whether he's made a public statement on it or not, it's clear that Hamilton inherently supports such a project because he is a “Constitutionalist” and “property rights advocate,” according to the Orange County Register article that endorsed him for council in 2014; Hamilton, a self-described free-market capitalist, cannot justify not voting for the Toll Brothers development, especially after the company contributed $33,500 to Hamilton's anti-recall campaign. If Hamilton's voting history is a guide, he's a sure thing for the Toll Brothers project; the company didn't invest $33,500 because they think he's pretty.

Losing Hamilton off the City Council risks making life tougher for developers who are supporting Whitaker's Republican Party. With Hamilton on the Council, Republicans have a developer-friendly majority that asks few questions even though such building comes at the expense of existing infrastructure, traffic, schools and residents. Lake Forest hasn't ironed out its own problems before trying to make them bigger.

Additionally, Whitaker is managing partner of the law firm Cummins & White, which would no doubt love to land the $1.4 million legal contract as the City Attorney. Cummins & White, with the support of Robinson or Voigts or both – and likely it was both – was hired on to defend the City in its lawsuit involving former Councilman Adam Nick. In that suit, the attorney for the City lied in court by claiming Nick had applied for an “also-unsuccessful application” (page 2, section 1) and been denied; City Clerk Stephanie Smith confirmed Nick had never applied for the waiver, which was used to paint Nick as a disgruntled litigant. In the judgment, Nick was told by the court that he should change City Hall, which prompted his 2012 run for City Council. Cummins & White received about $60,000 from the City for their services. Even though they won the case, Nick was vindicated; the City changed its laws to prevent City administrators from handing out waivers without public notice.

Whitaker had previously given campaign contributions to Robinson and Voigts.

The Web of Intrigue

When Voigts ran for City Council in 2010, his campaign manager was Robinson. Voigts worked as an assistant to State Assemblyman Don Wagner.

When Peter Herzog resigned the Council in October 2013, Robinson clearly indicated that his first choice as a replacement was Hamilton, who had been appointed Planning Commissioner – often seen as a steppingstone to the Council – by Robinson and Voigts just nine months earlier.

Whitaker, whose resume includes membership in the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America, California Independent Oil Marketers, and representation for SC Fuels, Pacific Tank Lines, Storm Industries and other energy-based companies, orchestrated Robinson's election to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Robinson is a partner for a trucking company that operates out of the Long Beach and Los Angeles piers, and would benefit from relaxed air quality standards. Robinson's selection to the AQMD gave Republicans a 7-6 voting
majority, and Robinson has been the decisive vote on several occasions.

How did Whitaker get Robinson on the AQMD board as the Orange County representative? Whitaker promised his support to Irvine Mayor Steven Choi for the California State Assembly if he could get Irvine's voting representative, Jeff Lalloway, to vote for Robinson instead of Democrat Miguel Pulido, the mayor of Santa Ana. About four hours after Lalloway refused to commit one way or the other, Choi replaced Lalloway with Christina Shea, who then voted for Robinson. More details are here but Whitaker took credit for his role in getting Robinson elected. Less than two months later, Whitaker presented Robinson with the Local Elected Official of the Year Award even though Robinson was subject to a recall after turning his back on residents who complained of the dangerously constructed Saddleback
Ranch Road (doing the work was a company that contributed to the Political Action Committee that supported the Council majority), and had failed to bring any of his campaign promises before the Council for consideration during his first three years in office.

The electric vehicle that Robinson drives is one of the perks for being on the AQMD. Another is that he governs the standards that influence the extent of his business profits.

Choi won election to the Assembly. Elected to replace him as mayor of Irvine was Don Wagner, the termed-out assemblyman who employed Voigts. Remarkably, Voigts works about 30 hours per week as the executive assistant to the Irvine mayor while at the same time serving as mayor of neighboring Lake Forest. Even though Voigts has many times been caught lying to residents from the dais of the City Council, in 2017 he was chosen mayor for the third time in five years after receiving the majority of council votes, from himself, Robinson and Hamilton.

Over the past five years, Voigts, Robinson and Hamilton have been mayor, which allows them to set the City's agenda and control the council meetings – determining who can speak and who can't, and for how long, among other things. As Council majority, they control who gets appointed to the Planning Commission and the City's Parks and Rec, and how the City should spend its money – taxpayer money.

In the first two years that they were on the Council together, by my count only once did Hamilton fail to vote in agreement with both Robinson and Voigts, which was part of the collusion argument when there was a recall attempt on the three men in 2016. When Hamilton was served with a recall notice earlier this year – just him, not Voigts and Robinson – he changed his voting pattern that night, and voted apart from Voigts and Robinson six times over the next seven meetings. Cynics point out that Hamilton is attempting to alter the statistics of his voting record so that, should there be a recall election, he can point out that he is an independent voice and a “Gang of 3” does not exist.

Hamilton has continuously deceived residents over the past 18 months with lies, innuendo and fake names that allow him to maintain internet anonymity on social media and news websites; he secretly videotaped unsuspecting citizens and then posted their doctored interviews to social media without their consent; he supports any development on the Nakase Nursery site despite the negative impact on infrastructure, traffic and schools in direct opposition to the guidelines of the Opportunities Study Area; and voted in favor of a contract with the notorious high-kill Orange County Animal Care that locked Lake Forest into a 10-year contract and now more than $700,000 in initial investment in construction without negotiating any equity in the facility (and costs of services that would rise by 40 percent).

Yet Fred Whitaker has used taxpayer funds earmarked for Republican enterprises to openly campaign on Hamilton's behalf for a non-partisan local government seat in which political affiliation is not included on the ballot. He did the same thing during the election in support of Robinson, despite Robinson's mediocre performance: not one single verifiable written campaign promise was brought before the Council by Robinson in four years!

As a resident of Lake Forest, you should ask yourself why Whitaker is working so hard to keep Hamilton in office with Robinson and Voigts. And provided there are enough signatures to initiate a special election, you should run to the voting booth to remove Hamilton from office and break the stranglehold Whitaker has on Lake Forest's elected leadership.

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