This morning columnist Tim Rutten has an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times entitled, "GOP Hard-liners take aim at Cooley" — the substance of the piece being that Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley, who has announced a bid for the GOP nomination for Attorney General, is not a fan of California’s 3-Strikes-Law and has raised the ire of one of its authors, Mike Reynolds. Rutten quotes from Reynolds’ piece that ran here on the FlashReport (Rutten, of course, doesn’t reference this site as the source of the piece).
Former California Republican Party Chairman read the piece, and was motivated to e-mail over his own response to Rutten’s piece, for your reading pleasure…
I should probably add quickly that I have been in dialogue with Cooley’s campaign about having him pen a column for FR readers about his candidacy, but have had no luck in getting them to agree to do so.
The Cooley Kool-Aid
L.A. Times and the Public Defender Come to Cooley’s Defense
By Michael Schroeder
Sacramento – In yet another example of why liberal Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley should probably be running in the Democrat primary, LA Times columnist Tim Rutten today defends Cooley’s aggressive efforts to weaken California’s effective "3 Strikes" law. Rutten even quotes LA’s Public Defender Michael Judge praising Cooley’s "political courage," presumably for the LA DA’s office policy not to prosecute many third strikes.
The Times treats Cooley’s failed ballot effort to weaken "3 Strikes," a bungled fiasco funded by the law partner of former O.J. Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, as a badge of honor.
Mr. Cooley and his glee club down at the L.A. Times can rationalize his efforts to weaken ‘3 Strikes’ for the rest of this campaign, but the facts are that his policies have made all of us less safe — that is, unless you’re a career criminal.
Early polling shows that Cooley already trails Republican Senator Tom Harman for the Republican nomination for Attorney General. If the Times and the criminal defense bar continue to sing Cooley’s praises, Harman’s margin will only grow. Ironically, Cooley’s Democrat campaign handlers may think this story actually helps Cooley, proving once again how tone deaf his campaign is to how Republican voters think.