There are many things a rookie Republican candidate doesn't want to happen two weeks before an election.
Yes, one might be to get caught pants-less with a naked minor on a roof at daybreak.
Another, though less dramatic, might be to get fired from a government post by a fellow Republican who describes you as lazy and unethical.
]
Ouch.
But that's exactly what happened late this afternoon in Irvine, the Republican city dominated for eons by Larry Agan's three-person Democratic council majority.
Christina Shea, the ranking Republican in Irvine politics and a longtime but now retiring member of the City Council, fired Jeff Lalloway, a fellow Republican as her city finance commissioner.
Shea didn't mince words.
“Today, I have had to make a very difficult decision,” wrote Shea in an e-mail to various Irvine power players. “I have asked my commissioner Jeffrey Lalloway to resign from the Finance Commission as my personal representative. During the course of this council election, he has missed many meetings, which, in itself, violates our City requirements for attendance.”
It got worse.
“Additionally, Jeff, as my endorsed candidate, has been involved in sending out political mail that is making statements that are untrue. After much thought, I cannot in good conscience, continue to have Jeff represent me as my finance commissioner. . . . This was a very difficult decision for me to make, especially at this time, but a much needed decision.”
Scott Baugh, the controversial chairman of the OC Republican Party, orchestrated a move to block Schott's endorsement because, many GOP members believe, she has demanded that Baugh follow Central Committee bylaws and have the party's finances audited for the first time in years.
Oddly–suspiciously?–Baugh has refused to allow an independent audit of the party's bank accounts which have seen millions and millions of dollars pass through since he took over in 2004.
After a protest among GOP folks dissatisfied with Baugh shenanigans and especially the Schott maneuver, Baugh allowed the party to also endorse her.
It's also frustrated Republican activists that Lalloway, a family law lawyer, got special treatment even though he's a relative newcomer to Irvine politics and Schott has been a hardcore party activist for years.
Laughing hardest at this latest Irvine Republican mess must be the devious Agran, who hopes that his slate of Democrats sweeps the election so that he has continued control over massive city spending.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
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.