Dan O'Malley

The Contra Costa County Deputy District Attorneys Association last night endorsed Dan O’Malley to replace retiring District Attorney Bob Kochly, said group spokesman Barry Grove:

The Deputy DA’s Association is pleased to announce its endorsement of Judge Dan O’Malley for Distirict Attorney. We believe Judge O’Malley to be, by far, the best qualified of any candidate and fully support his election to lead us in the fight against crime in Contra Costa County. Therefore, once again, the Deputy DA’s Association endorses Judge Dan O’Malley for District Attorney.

Other declared district attorney candidates including Concord Councilman and Deputy District Attorney Mark Peterson and Danville attorney Elle Falahat.

Endorsements are rarely newsworthy. Most are predictable. But in professional occupation offices such as the district attorney or sheriff, support from within the department signals to the public which of the candidates has the most confidence of the employees from within the agency that he  the endorsement from the agency they may one day manage.

Tri-Valley Community TV will air a studio-recorded San Ramon City Council election forum on Channel 29 on the multiple dates:

Oct. 12, 6 p.m.

Oct. 13, 12 p.m.

Oct. 14, 6 p.m.

Oct. 15, 12 p.m.

Oct. 16, 11 p.m.

Oct. 17, 12 p.m.

Oct. 18, 12 p.m.

According to a press release from Tri-Valley Community TV, the moderated forum includes the four candidates seeking two open seats on the San Ramon City Council: Jim Brady, Doug Burr, Dave Hudson (i) and Jim Livingstone (i).

The candidates each made opening and closing statements and answered questions from the moderator, Carolyn Siegfried.

Tri-Valley Community Television is based in Pleasanton. It provides programming for channels TV28, TV29 and TV30 on Comcast Cable and AT&T U-Verse.

Contra Costa District Attorney Robert Kochly

Contra Costa District Attorney Robert Kochly made it official last night: He will not seek re-election to a fourth term.

Kochly spoke at last night’s campaign kick-off event for the man he has endorsed as his replacement, private attorney and former judge and prosecutor Dan O’Malley.

Kochly’s plan to retire has been one of the worst-kept secrets in Contra Costa politics. He still has more than year left to serve in his term and didn’t want to spend it as a lame duck.

But his potential replacements have started their campaigns and Kochly’s silence was proving awkward, particularly for friend O’Malley. Contra Costa is a big county and it will take every minute between now and the June 2010 election to raise the money and name identification required to win.

My Times colleague Malaika Fraley went to hear Kochly’s announcement (I was at the Contra Costa Mayors Conference in Oakley) and filed this report:

Contra Costa County District Attorney Robert Kochly announced Thursday he is retiring from the office when his term ends in December 2010.

“I didn’t think I would serve more than two terms when I started, but you get attached to the job and the people,” said Kochly, 62, who joined the District Attorney’s Office in 1973. “It’s just time.”

Kochly was elected district attorney in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. He announced his retirement late Thursday through an e-mail to his staff and publicly at a campaign party for district attorney candidate Dan O’Malley, a private attorney who previously worked as a Contra Costa County judge and prosecutor.

Deputy District Attorney Mark Peterson, a Concord city councilman, and Danville attorney Elle Falahat also are vying for the job up for grabs in the June election.

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Antioch Councilman Brian Kalinowski

Antioch Councilman and Contra Costa Sheriff’s Lt. Brian Kalinowski has put out an email invite telling folks he will host a short meeting Tuesday night, further fueling speculation that he will announce his plans to run for county sheriff.

The meeting will be held at the Deputy Sheriffs Association union hall in Martinez at 5 p.m.

If Kalinowski enters the race, he will run without his boss’ support.

Incumbent Sheriff Warren Rupf, who announced last week that he will not seek a fifth term, has already recruited and endorsed Concord Police Chief David Livingston.

This could prove to be a barn-burner of a race between two career lawmen from two of the county’s largest cities.

San Ramon Mayor and Assembly GOP candidate Abram Wilson

San Ramon Mayor and GOP Assembly candidate Abram Wilson is featured in National Review, the well-known conservative publication.

National Review senior editor Jay Nordlinger captured Wilson’s personality in the piece, titled “The Making of a Mayor,” through family stories and anecdotes. The author used a unique bullet-style format, which I liked (and may well borrow) for its simplicity.

Wilson says he has received numerous responses to the story, including emails from all over the country.

Check it out.

So far, Wilson is the only declared Republican candidate in Assembly District 15. If he remains the only GOP name on the June 2010 primary ballot, he will mostly likely face incumbent Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, D-Alamo.

UPDATE: So what did Wilson do? He turned it into a fundraiser. What else? Read on for his email solicitation:

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UPDATE: See the link below to the O’Malley video that he removed from his campaign website. LAV

Contra Costa District Attorney candidate Dan O’Malley’s fledgling campaign is off to a rough start.

He told Contra Costa Times reporter Malaika Fraley today that it was a mistake to post on his website (it has now been taken down) a video testimonial from his wife, Contra Costa County Presiding Judge Mary Ann O’Malley.

No kidding.

The California Code of Judicial Ethics states that judges cannot “publicly endorse or publicly oppose candidates a candidate for nonjudicial office.”

That includes wives who happen to be judges. O’Malley told Fraley it was intended to be a video about the family and contained no mention of his wife’s job.

With all due respect to spousal admiration, the O’Malleys should have known better. Dan was a judge. His father was a judge. She is a judge.

Here’s what O’Malley’s two declared challengers had to say to Fraley about the incident:

“It is very troubling that the first act of this candidate who wants to be the chief law enforcement of the county is to violate the judicial cannons of ethics,” said deputy district attorney Mark Peterson, a Concord city councilman who is running against O’Malley and Danville attorney Elle Falahat for the office.

“It’s a clear violation of the rules,” Falahat said. “They’ve been in politics so long, they should have known better.”

The Times also received a copy of a letter signed by an anonymous “concerned attorney” on Sept. 4 that complains about the video testimonial and further states that Mary O’Malley was present at a campaign event thrown by her husband and attended by “a majority of younger deputy district attorneys.”

Concord Councilwoman Helen Allen

Concord Councilwoman Helen Allen says she will run for Contra Costa County supervisor next year for the seat currently held by Supervisor Susan Bonilla rather than seek re-election to her council seat,

Bonilla is running for Assembly District 11. The incumbent Assemblyman Tom Torlakson terms out in 2010.

“I feel I have the experience to do the job,” the 69-year-old Allen said via telephone today.

The retired kindergarten teacher has served on the Concord Council or its planning commission since 1993. She previously held a seat on the Clayton City City Council and spent six years on its planning commission, too. She also sits on the agency board that governs where and when cities and service companies may expand, the Local Agency Formation Commission.

Others who have declared plans to run for what is expected to be an open District IV supervisor seat include Pleasant Hill Councilwoman Karen Mitchoff and Mike McGill, an elected member of the Contra Costa Central Sanitary District board.

Allen’s entry into the supervisor race will undoubtedly revive the whole debate about where she hangs up her coat and gets her mail.

She says she lives during the week at her sister’s condo in Concord. An investigation by the District Attorney’s Office confirmed that her place at her sister’s satisfies the city’s requirement that its councilmembers live in the city. She would also have to be resident of supervisor District IV in order to run as its representative.

On the weekends, Allen says she goes to her and her husband’s house in northwest Sacramento, a gated senior community. Allen says their house has been on the market for months but depressed real estate prices have made a sale difficult.

Critics have been relentless in their objections to Allen’s domestic arrangements. She says people make rude comments to her and she has even been followed.

Whether or not Allen actually runs for this seat is an open question. Always outspoken and often blunt, she is also unpredictable. She withdrew from the 2006 City Council campaign but waited until it was too late to remove her name from the ballot, and she was elected anyway.

Speaking of hearing voices, I just heard the voice of former Antioch councilman Ralph Hernandez on the radio in my car. He was featured on the nationally syndicated Osgood File this morning on KCBS.

Well, well. Ralph goes national. Folks may remember that he resigned from City Council a number of years ago (corrected at 10:41 a.m.) but he has remained a vocal community activist or agitator, depending on your point of view.

It seems Hernandez, a private investigator, was hired by Jaycee Lee Dugard’s kidnapper Phillip Garrido to verify affidavits from people who used a machine Garrido had invented, as Dave Ross on the Osgood File described it, “that allowed him, without speaking, to make other people hear voices inside their heads.” (Click here to see the Contra Costa Times stories.)

You can see the affidavits yourself at http://voicesrevealed.blogspot.com/

I’ve heard from other folks in Antioch that Hernandez described his work for Garrido as “verifying the existence of angels.”

Hernandez said in the Ross interview that he sat inside the Garrido house, met the wife and was introduced to a young woman between the age of 15 to 20. It’s unclear if this was Dugard or one of her two children fathered by Garrido.

But when Ross asked private eye Hernandez if he saw or felt anything strange in the house, well, here’s a short segment of the transcript:

(Ross:) Anything strange about the house itself? I mean, if anybody would walk into that house, would they have any inkling what might have gone on there?

(Hernandez:) Well, no. I didn’t have any reservations about the house. I didn’t say to myself, like: ‘Hey, there’s something strange there.’ I didn’t get that.”

(Ross) No, just an ordinary fellow who had invented a machine that let him insert voices telepathically into other people’s heads …

What does Ralph say about his time in the national spotlight? So far, he hasn’t returned my call although he had clearly been talking to the media and probably law enforcement.

Hernandez  told me in an email that he will make me wait to talk to him about Garrido for as long as he has been waiting for me to write a story he suggested that compares the levels of pension benefits of retirees from various public agencies. Back when Ralph suggested the story, my editor said the idea had merit but thought it was too ambitious for our limited resources at the time.

So, I wait by the phone, another one of those devices that lets you hear voices inside your head.

Willie Brown Jr.

Willie Brown Jr., the legendary former mayor of San Francisco and speaker of the California Assembly, will be the featured speaker at the Sept. 3 meeting of the Contra Costa County Mayors Conference.

San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson traveled to San Francisco a few months ago, had lunch with Brown and successfully persuaded the famed California politician to come to Contra Costa. Brown is now a newspaper columnist, frequently quoted pundit and director of the Willie Brown Jr. Institute on Politics and Public Service.

The mayors conference is made up of the mayors of Contra Costa County cities and it rotates among its member cities monthly.

Brown’s speech is free and open to the public but it will cost $50 if you want to stay for dinner.

The conference meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. at the Bishop Ranch Business Park, No. 8, 3000 Executive Parkway, San Ramon.

The dinner begins at 8 p.m. To RSVP for the meal, contact Karen McHenry-Smith at ksmith@sanramon.ca.gov or call 925-973-2532 by 5 p.m. on Aug. 26.

UPDATE: The California GOP unanimously endorsed David Harmer in the 10th Congressional District over the other five Republicans running in the special primary election on Sept. 1.

California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring has called a Tuesday morning teleconference meeting of the party’s board of directors to consider whether to endorse one of the six Republicans running in the 10th Congressional District special primary election.

The board has invited the candidates to participate in an interview process, as the party’s bylaws require, and it takes a two-thirds vote of the Board of Directors to secure the party’s nod.

The GOP, for example, recently endorsed Teresa Martinez, one of several unsuccessful Republican candidates in the District 32 special election to replace Hilda Solis of Los Angeles, who now serves as the U.S. Labor Secretary under President Barack Obama. (Democrat Judy Chu was elected to the seat earlier this month.)

Primary endorsements raises hackles among some Republicans, who consider the practice antithetical to the democratic process. Critics within the Contra Costa Republican Party are already upset over several incidents they say demonstrate illegal favorable treatment of District 10 candidate David Harmer of San Ramon. (Some members of the committee have filed a complaint with the Secretary of State and Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office alleging this and other violations.)

This is an issue where democratic ideals smack up against reality.

Parties endorse in special primaries as a strategy designed to help elevate a viable candidate from among a field that often contains a mix of well-meaning but utterly unprepared people who have little chance of winning against a well-funded opponent in the general election. Special primaries are blanket primaries, where all candidates of all party affilitions appear on the same ballot. Any single candidate could win the election outright in the primary with a majority vote. (Clarification in underlined text added Monday morning. LAV)

At this point, less than four weeks before the Sept. 1 election, Harmer is the only GOP candidate who has raised money. As such, he is realistically the one candidate with a chance of competing against what will be a very well funded Democratic opponent in a district where Democrats have an 18 percentage point registration advantage.

On the other hand, the party risks alienating members who favor other candidates and may feel excluded from the process. They may not feel too warm and fuzzy about volunteering or donating money in the general election.

Party involvement through an endorsement carries even more significance in a special election, where all the candidates appear on the same ballot regardless of party designation and a candidate who receives a majority vote in the primary can win the seat outright.

Political strategists have said for months that the only chance the GOP has of victory in District 10 was to rally around a single, well-known and popular candidate. Local Republicans had hoped Contra Costa Sheriff Warren Rupf would run but he declined, leaving the party with six unknown political novices.

Read more for the full list of the Republican candidates and their Web sites. Read the rest of this entry »