Things are getting ugly in Orange County lately.
In the 5th Supervisor District, former Assemblywoman Pat Bates (full disclosure: I do some consulting work for Pat) and Laguna Niguel Mayor Cassie DeYoung are squaring off for this open seat. DeYoung has access to a ship-load of personal wealth, and has probably spent $1.5 million thus far.
DeYoung has hit Pat with a series of negative mailers focusing on her sponsorship of a matricula consular bill — which Pat wound up being on of only 7 Republicans to vote against due to Democrat machinations. The mailers — here, here and here — depict Pat’s image on a matricula consular card.
Pat responded by taking the DeYoung campaign to court, and yesterday the judge agreed to slap a temporary restraining order on the Cassie DeYoung campaign, her consultanting firm Forde Mollrich and her campaign manager Bill Kogerman. The TRO also requires the aforementioned parties to show cause why they should NOT be "required to pay to Plaintiff an amount equal to the cost of producing, publishing, distributing and broadcasting the materials identified herein as Exhibits A thru C, as required by California Elections Code Section 20010."
Here’s the OC Register story and my post about it on OC Blog.
This obviously throws something of a monkey wrench into Cassie DeYoung campaign, but given her personal wealth and Huffingtonian willingness to spend it, it won’t stem DeYoung’s campaign for long.
The bigger question is how much support DeYoung is accumulating via her heavy spending. Pat is better known in the 5th supervisor district, and unlike DeYoung has been on the ballot in much of at least four times. I haven’t seen any polling, but my gut feeling is Pat continues to lead but that DeYoung’s spending has closed the gap at least somewhat.
I’ve known Pat for a number of years. She is a gracious, principled conservative whose election — along with (presumably) county treasurer John Moorlach — to the OC Board of Supervisors would shift that body’;s center of gravtiy signifacntly to the right.
It’s difficult to discern whether DeYoung has a core political philosophy that guides her. Her campaign has been characterized by hop-scotching from one issue to another in hopes of finding one with enough traction to ride to victory. Thus far, DeYoung has struck out.