O.C. District Attorney Race Heats Up

An already-fierce race for Orange County district attorney has turned even more combative, with incumbent Tony Rackauckas under scrutiny for a mass mailing sent out at public expense and challenger Wally Wade drawing criticism from his former campaign manager.

Government watchdog Shirley Grindle, a Wade supporter, has asked the state Fair Political Practices Commission to investigate whether a district attorney’s office survey, mailed to 2,500 county residents, violated a state law prohibiting such mass mailings.

Rackauckas’ office defended the mailing, saying it wasn’t used for campaign purposes. State law prohibits mailings of 200 pieces or more at public expense if office-holders are named or sign the document, as Rackauckas did.

Wade, however, said the survey read more like a campaign piece and considered it a misuse of public funds. One question on the survey says, “Due to the efforts of the district attorney, there is a high level of justice in Orange County.”

Questions about the mass mailing arose last week. Rackauckas’ office said the survey, also sent out in 2000, was used to complete an annual job-performance evaluation required of county managers.

“Public surveys [allow] the department to judge the effectiveness of its efforts and whether it has been successful in achieving its goals and carrying out its mission,” Rackauckas said in a written statement.

Chief Assistant Dist. Atty. Chuck Middleton said Action Mailing Inc. of Placentia conducted the confidential survey of randomly selected households. The results haven’t been tabulated, he said.

“When there’s a business purpose behind it, it shouldn’t fall under” the law, he said. “Until the FPPC talks to us, I can’t agree there’s a violation.”

Middleton said other county departments conduct surveys as a way of measuring job performance.

County officials, however, said they knew of no other department that sent out similar public mass mailings.

The county requires each department to set goals every year that can be measured, county spokeswoman Diane Thomas said. Individual departments choose how to measure their own performance, she said.

County Counsel Benjamin de Mayo said his office advises elected officials that they can send mass mailings at public expense only if they don’t include the official’s name, signature or photograph. The Rackauckas survey included his name and signature.

Treasurer-Tax Collector John M.W. Moorlach said he unwittingly violated the mass-mailing law shortly after he was elected in March 1995 to fill the unexpired term of Robert L. Citron. Citron resigned and served jail time as a result of Orange County’s December 1994 bankruptcy.

Moorlach said he sent a notice with 1995 tax bills introducing himself as the new treasurer and assuring taxpayers that the problems of the office were being corrected.

Soon after, he said, he got a call from Webster J. Guillory, now county assessor, warning him that the mailing violated state law.

“I went straight to county counsel, and they said I’d violated it,” Moorlach said Wednesday. “I wrote to the FPPC and apologized. They said it was a violation and I guess because of how I handled it, they just put a letter [of reprimand] in my file.”

The Sheriff’s Department has hired Chapman University to conduct periodic telephone surveys of residents’ concerns about crime, but the surveyors don’t mention Sheriff Michael S. Carona by name, spokesman Jon Fleischman said.

Grindle said the district attorney survey smacked of electioneering because the questionnaires were to be returned by Nov. 30, a week before ballot statements were due.

Even as Wade and his backers questioned the survey, his former campaign manager, Cathy Barry, held a news conference to accuse him of improperly soliciting donations from district attorney employees. She said she quit the Wade campaign in January because Wade solicited funds from employees--a violation of state law--and took donations in cash to avoid reporting requirements.

Wade denied the charges and said he fired Barry because she was ineffective.

“If an employee attempted to give me a contribution, I returned it,” Wade said. “I have reported every contribution I have received.”