When the band stops playing next in Orange County’s continual musical chairs game, Irvine-based state Senator Mimi Walters will probably replace retiring Congressman John Campbell.
That concept isn’t new, but look at who might want to plop down in Walters’ warm seat: Scott R. Baugh, veteran chairman of the Orange County Republican Party and a onetime Republican Assembly Leader.
Baugh, a successful attorney and Newport Beach lobbyist, told me tonight he’s considering a run but announcing a campaign now “is premature.”
Multiple Republican insiders say the 51-year-old Baugh will definitely run for the Sacramento post.
If Baugh formally announces for Walters’ seat, the move might not elate Irvine’s state Assemblyman Don Wagner, who is known to have an interest in moving up the GOP food chain but doesn’t have Baugh’s political clout or access to campaign contributors.
The biggest impact of a potential Baugh campaign for senate, however, would most likely be felt inside Orange County Republican headquarters, where he has been boss since 2004.
A Baugh departure there could launch a brutal fight for the leadership among various bitter factions inside the party about what Republicans need to do to reach young and minority voters.
The state senate district cuts through the middle of Orange County from east Anaheim to Irvine to Laguna Beach and up to Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and Huntington Beach.
Walters’ political career includes serving on the Laguna Niguel City Council as well as in both bodies of the California legislature. If she replaces Campbell, she’ll be OC’s second female representative in the nation’s capital. Her husband, David, has been at the center of several business scandals.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.