What’s that smell?
It’s the stink Don Perata’s ethically challenged ways all over the attempt to recall Senator Jeff Denham. We’ve all heard that fable of King Midas who could turn things to gold with a mere touch. Well, here in real life, we have Don Perata, who can turn anything into a smelly quagmire of questionable ethics with his mere involvement.
It seems like forever that Perata has been under the cloud of an FBI probe, which is probably more like an ongoing feeding frenzy as he keeps acting like some dictator with a Nietsche complex (the rules of mere mortals don’t apply to The Don).
In an article in today’s Merced Sun-Star Stephen Jones, the Merced County Registrar of Voters, has said that he will be filing an official complaint after the addresses given many petition gatherers working to qualify the recall were not residents of Merced County. An excerpt from the story…
Jones, Merced County’s top elections official, said his staff noticed some of the same problems several weeks ago and that he will file a complaint by early next week with both the county district attorney and the state attorney general.
Specifically, his staff discovered that some of the signature-gatherers had used hotel addresses when they registered to vote in Merced County. His office called the hotels and verified that the signature-gatherers didn’t live there, Jones said. "It appears that people who stated they were residents of Merced are actually residents of Florida, and that’s a problem," he said. "We think it warrants the attention of law enforcement."
You may recall that back in December the FlashReport released audio tapes exposing efforts by a signature gathering supervisor to make sure her troops lied about their non-resident status, "Don’t tell people you are from Michigan…"
As more and more is revealed about how this recall was qualified, the more it makes you wonder who, if anyone, is going to jump into the stinky-mud wth Perata and run as the Democrat candidate…
Of course, the ultimate irony of all is that austensibly the recall of Denham is somehow "justified" because he (along with many other legislative Republicans) would vote for a big, fat bloated state budget that, as it turns out, was unbalanced and is in the red…
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