Here is the link to Francine Busby’s campaign blog. The Busby campaign responds to the lies, distortions and deceptions to which the National Republican Congressional Committee and Brian Bilbray have resorted in the 50th CD campaign.

The NRCC and lobbyist Brian Bilbray have sunk to a new low in their latest ad. In addition to falsely attacking Francine on her record on education, they accuse her of sympathizing with a teacher accused of possessing child pornography. This claim is despicable and couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Claim 1: Francine sympathized with a teacher accused of possessing child pornography.

The Truth: Francine and the Cardiff School Board took immediate action and had the teacher removed from the classroom. He never taught again – end of story.

Claim 2: Under Francine’s supervision, the school district deficit increased.

The Truth: California law requires that School Districts adopt a balanced budget. They are also required to maintain a reserve equivalent to 3% of total expenditures. In the time Francine has been on the School Board, Cardiff Schools have never allowed their reserve to dip below 5% – 2% more than is actually required.

Claim 3: Busby voted to layoff teachers.

The Truth: Initial layoff notices are required in March, with final notices in May. Districts must project enrollments and determine staffing needs long before they know their final revenues for the current year. As a result, school districts are required to give notices as a precautionary measure even though layoffs may never take place.

Three claims – Three shameless lies. Expect more of the same in the next 6 weeks from these corrupt Washington insiders who want more of the same in Washington for years to come.

For most Republicans wining is all that counts.  How you do it and what you become in the process doesn’t matter to them.

Over at Dump Doolittle, they pick up on a new editorial from within Doolittle’s 4th CD that calls on Doolittle to speak out against the allegations that keep swirling around him. Unlike last week’s Washington Post editorial, which questioned Doolittle’s fund raising arrangement with his wife, the Roseville Press Tribune pleads with Doolittle to put the issues on the table and tell the truth.

At the heart of the Press Tribune’s plea to Doolittle is his secret hiring of a high priced Washington lawyer, David Barger, to advise him as to how to deal with questions regarding Doolittle’s close association with convicted felon Jack Abramoff.

While it’s not uncommon for someone involved in such rumors and innuendo to seek help in dealing with controversy, Doolittle’s choice of help can be viewed as intriguing if nothing else.

Barger is the former president of the Virginia Bar Association’s criminal law section and a former assistant U.S. attorney who later was an associate of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr in the Whitewater investigation during the Clinton administration.

The Press Tribune suggests that instead of hiring a lawyer, if Doolittle is as innocent as he maintains, there is an alternate course.

The goal of the media is to publish the news and the truth. And what better place to get the truth than straight from the horse’s mouth? If there’s nothing to hide, then why all the secrecy? Why not publicly release all information proving his innocence? Why not publicly announce the January hiring of Barger at the time?

There may be nothing worse in politics than guilt by association. It’s not pretty, and it’s not always fair, but unless there is irrefutable proof to the contrary, the rumors will continue to swirl not only in Washington,D.C., but in Northern California among Doolittle’s supporters and detractors.

Doolittle has publicly pledged to “fight to ensure that the truth in these matters prevails.” There’s an old cliché that an innocent man will shout his innocence from the rooftops. What better way to do that than to talk, openly and honestly? Which brings to mind another cliché:

“The truth shall set you free.”

The problem that John Doolittle faces may be a bit more complex. For Doolittle, telling the truth may in the words of the 5th Amendment, force Doolittle “to be a  witness against himself.”

In Doolittle’s case, the truth just might put him in jail.

The National Republican Congressional Committee released a television ad in San Diego today that is filled with outright lies and a blatant disregard for the truth that is breathtaking even for the Republican Party.

The ad represents a new low for a party that had pretty much plumbed the depths of sleazy political dirty tricks. Unlike 2004’s Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry, this ad comes directly from the Republican Party. This ad couldn’t have hit the air in San Diego without the approval of county Republican leader, Ron Nehring.

Lies and liars……………

This ad is filled with such massive lies and slanderous statements that any honest Republican should disavow it on sight. Here are the lies and some of the direct repudiations from the Busby campaign.

The ad contends that while Busby was a member of the Cardiff School Board district deficits “skyrocketed by over 250%.”

The reality:

By law, California School Districts are required to adopt a balance budget.  They are also required to maintain a reserve equivalent to 3% of total expenditures and other outgo in a reserve.  In the time Francine has been on the School Board, Cardiff Schools have never allowed their reserve to dip below 5% – two full percentage points higher than the state mandates.

The ad contends that “Busby voted to layoff teachers but gave raises to administrative bureaucrats.”

The reality:

Busby Voted For A Pay Raise For Employees Who Had Not Seen A Salary Increase For Years. Francine never voted for a pay raise for herself. She voted for a pay raise for “certificated management employees” because they had not received a pay raise for years prior. The vote for the 3% salary increase was a unanimous decision by the school board.

This was a pay increase for school workers who hadn’t seen a raise in years. This was a raise for clerical workers and janitors, people working with students and parents every day. Hardly bureaucrats.

Like most school districts in the state in 2003, the Cardiff district faced the prospect of massive budget cuts. By law the district had to inform teachers of the possibility that teaching positions would be reduced. It was the same requirement that school districts all over California had to deal with.

In Spring of 2003, the state was proposing “devastating” budget cuts that were translating into massive layoff notices being given across the state. Statewide, “more than 10,000” teachers were “given notice that they may be layed off in the fall.” The Contra Costa Times wrote, “Years of work to boost education spending and recruit credentialed teachers could be wiped out as school districts across the East  Bay and state brace for devastating cuts amid continued uncertainty as to how deep state budget reductions will be.”

The most egregious charge made by the slimeballs at the NRCC is the implication that Busby is soft on porn because at one point in time she said something positive about a teacher who was later “reported to have child porn.”.

The reality:

Francine Busby and the Cardiff School Board took immediate action to get the teacher in question out of the classroom and away from Children.

How desperate must the Republicans be regarding this race? This new attack ad is nauseating in its reliance on plain and simple lies.

The Busby campaign has challenged Brian Bilbray to repudiate the slanders being promoted in support of his campaign. How he responds will tell us a lot about the true nature of Brian Bilbray.

Representative John Doolittle (CA-4) continues to blame the media for his relationship with convicted felons such as Jack Abramoff and soon to be indicted co-conspirators such as Brent Wilkes. According to Doolittle the media is to blame for his sweetheart deal with his wife that moves 15% of all campaign and PAC contributions directly into his bank account.

Doolittle met with a group of Orange County Republicans this week and according to conservative blogger, Jon Fleischman, he wowed the crowd. Fleischman says that Doolittle claims to be under a….

…relentless barrage by the media (he equated it out to an equivalent of over a million dollars being spent against his re-election). He said that he enjoys debates over issues and ideas (he wishes someone would take him on for being against illegal immigration) — but these are attacks on baseless ethical charges.

Does Doolittle Pass the Smell Test? More follows.

Of course Doolittle would rather talk about immigration than Abramoff or his wife’s cut of his campaign contributions. What is sad is that Republican conservatives would rather join corrupt politicians like Doolittle in blaming others than do something to clean house in their own party. According to Fleischman the Orange County Republicans all had the same thoughts after their meet and greet with Doolittle.

I think that everyone at the event had the same feeling that I did – gee, I wish this could be my Congressman — he’s great! (Well, my Congressman – John Campbell – is great, too). Ken Campbell, Aaron Park and all of my other Placer County friends are lucky to have John Doolittle as their U.S. Representative.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is the Washington Post. Today in an editorial, the Post suggests that Doolittle’s 15% cut of all campaign funds is just plan wrong.

Imagine that every time members of Congress received a $1,000 campaign contribution, they could skim $150 off the top and put it straight into their personal bank accounts. Sound shady? That is, in effect, how Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.) and his wife, Julie, operate. According to our review of campaign finance records, Mrs. Doolittle has received at least $215,000 from Mr. Doolittle’s various campaign committees since 2001. This doesn’t include $6,800 in payments to another of Mrs. Doolittle’s companies, Events Plus, before she started doing his fundraising work. She’s taken in nearly $100,000 during the 2006 campaign alone.

The Post has a single line comment that sums up how most normal people respond to a deal like Doolittle’s.

The arrangement couldn’t smell more.

Apparently, to conservative Republicans Doolittle smells just fine. I guess after 5+ years of the Bush Administration Republican noses aren’t very sensitive anymore.

Right now it is hard to tell how the saga of Republican congressional candidate, Eric Roach, will play out.  According to the North County Times, Roach is still considering his options regarding a run at the Republican primary against Brian Bilbray.

Conservative Roach has an aggressive faction of the Republican Party that is actively encouraging him to take on the much more moderate Bilbray. Representative of that conservative base is Howard Kaloogian, the man who came in third among the Republicans in the 50th CD special election.

Either Roach or Kaloogian would have achieved enough votes to move forward to the run-off election had the other not been in the race. By splitting the conservative vote, Roach and Kaloogian insured Bilbray’s victory and, in the strongly Republican 50th, potentially insured that Bilbray would have a secure seat in congress for as long as he wants.

Now San Diego area conservatives find themselves between the devil and the deep blue sea. If Roach decides to concede the primary to Bilbray, conservatives will have given a solid Republican seat to a moderate who has in the past actually supported environmental legislation, voted for gun control and doesn’t demonize gays on principle.

If Roach decides to go after Bilbray and wins the primary, while Bilbray is winning the run-off, all bets are off. At that point, the incumbent Republican congressman would either be forced from office or would have to run a write-in campaign against Democrat Francine Busby and Republican primary winner, Roach. The November election result could end up with Busby winning a full term and sitting in convicted Republican felon Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s old seat in congress.

TPM revisits Representative John Doolittle’s (CA-4) lucrative financial arrangement with his wife that put 15% of every campaign contribution directly into the family bank account.

Since some of the fattest months of the fundraising cycle are still to come, I guess it’s conceiveable that the Doolittles could stash away more from this de facto bribe system than John’s congressional salary.

According to this from Dump Doolittle, John and Julie have put more money in their pockets from campaign contributions that Doolittle’s leading Democratic competitor has collected.

Yet, voters will continue to vote for crooks like Doolittle because they are Republicans. How many votes do you think Randy “Duke” Cunningham would have pulled in from prison, if his name had shown up on the 50th District ballot? I say he would have finished no worse than fourth, even if his title on the ballot were “convicted felon.”

The opinion section of the 50th District’s “newspaper of record,” The North County Times, bashes Francine Busby in a series of articles.

The opinion sections top story is an attack on Busby by Nathan L. Gonzales, who we are told is the political editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report.  Gonzales lays into Busby and tells us that her campaign is a failure.

This week’s election was not a win for Democrat Francine Busby. She was the top vote-getter in an 18-candidate field, but she was the only serious Democrat in the race compared with a half-dozen active Republican candidates who split the larger Republican vote

For Busby, the first 44 percent of the vote she garnered was the easy part, but the last 6 percent she will need to win will be much more difficult. Her performance was unimpressive considering she received roughly the same percentage that Sen. John Kerry , D-Mass., received in the district (44 percent) against President George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election.

President Bush and the Republicans have endured virtually 16 straight months of bad news and falling poll numbers since then, and Busby’s inability to break through the Democratic ceiling in this special election should make Democrats uneasy.

How nonpartisan is Gonzeles?  See below.

According to Gonzales, Busby failed……..Game over. But, wait, is Gonzales truly nonpartisan? The NC Times cites his association with the Rothenberg Political Report, which Matt Stoller of MyDD finds to be a lot more Republican in its bias. You would think that the NC Times might actually look at where much of Gonzales’ other political writing surfaces. It would have found Gonzales all over the conservative Townhall political opinion site, where Gonzales is a frequent “guest contributor.”

For the sake of balance the NC Times gave us dueling opinion pieces from the two county party chairs. The reason Republicans own the 50th District couldn’t be made more clear than in the two contrasting messages.

Democratic Party chair, Jess Durfee, tells us what Busby would do were she to be elected to congress.  His commentary is simple, unexciting and undistinguished.

On the other hand, Republican Party chain, Ron Nehring, raises every Rovian talking point and attacks Busby at every opportunity. Nehring learned his trade from the best. He stands proudly at the right hand of Grover Norquist and remains a “senior consultant” at Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, an organization that helped Norquist’s close friend, Jack Abramoff, launder money.

The NC Times offers one additional piece of analysis.  This from SDSU political science professor, Carole Kennedy.  Kennedy, a liberal, provides the most balanced analysis.

Turnout in Tuesday’s election was predictably dismal, in spite of the expenditure of millions and millions of dollars by all candidates, the saturation levels of political advertising on television, and well-funded get-out-the-vote operations on both sides. The outcome suggests, however, that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats were particularly effective in getting their supporters to the polls. In spite of an all-out effort by Democrats, they could not squeeze the necessary votes to avoid a runoff, and the Busby campaign had to be looking over their shoulder at the recent mayoral race where Democratic candidate Donna Frye handily came out on top against a divided Republican field, only to lose just as handily when she ran one-on-one against Jerry Sanders. On the other hand, Democrats point to the contested Democratic gubernatorial primary in June as having the potential for increased interest and turnout among Democratic supporters as reason for hope.

Not much comfort after the NC Times has allowed the Republican hatchets to take aim at Busby, while leaving her only Durfee’s lukewarm defense.

Joe Cantlupe of the Copley News Service has a detailed examination of Cunningham co-conspirator #3, Thomas Kontogiannis. Unlike Mitchell Wade and Brent Wilkes, who personally gained millions from their criminal relationships with Cunningham, Kontogiannis’ benefits from the $328,000 he provided the former congressman are much harder to characterize.

“It’s not the standard bribe scenario,” said a Justice Department official who declined to be identified because the investigation is ongoing. “He had a lot of money. What went to Duke was chump change.”

Cunningham “introduced him to people. It was like he had a congressman on retainer,” the official added.

A former associate of the New York businessman said Kontogiannis thought Cunningham “was going to be a big guy some day – secretary of defense.” The former associate would speak only on background because Kontogiannis remains under investigation.

Said an FBI official: “Let’s look at it this way. Duke Cunningham had power and no money, and Tommy Kontogiannis had money but no power.”

Kontogiannis appears to be a pretty sharp businessman, yet he believed that Duke Cunningham was on track to become the “secretary of defense?” Certainly, Cunningham was in a position to introduce Kontogiannis to people and to appear at functions when his friend needed to produce an important person.

The two men also visited the White House together. Kontogiannis had his picture taken with Cunningham at a White House reception, and friends of Kontogiannis say the businessman kept a photo of himself with Cunningham and President Bush in his house.

Building on their relationship, Kontogiannis joined Cunningham on a December 2004 trip to Saudi Arabia. They were accompanied by Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Riverside, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and Rancho Santa Fe businessman Ziyad Abduljawad, who paid for the trip.

Cunningham apparently was just a phone call away whenever Kontogiannis needed a letter written or a phone call made. Cunningham stepped into Kontogiannis’ bribery case, writing a letter of support that also suggested that his friend, who handed a school official a paper bag containing a $50,000 cash bribe, was somehow the victim of “a political agenda.”

Of course, there may have been some more tangible benefits to Kontogiannis from his relationship with Cunningham. It turns out that the Department of Homeland Security is a tenant in an office building that Kontogiannis owns in Rosedale, New York.

The main tenant of the four-story building where he works is the Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services, which recently agreed to pay $1 million a year for a second 10-year lease.

New York state records show that the building is owned by One Cross Island Plaza Corp. Although New York does not require that corporations reveal the names of individual owners, an examination of other records shows that the officers once included Kontogiannis and his wife.

A million here, a million there…..

Will they or won’t they?  Will one emerge as a challenger?  Will he go unchallenged?

Conservative Republicans Howard Kaloogian and Eric Roach are leaving the door open to compete against Brian Bilbray, their party’s candidate for the 50th District congressional seat.

While Bilbray is locked in a race against Democrat Francine Busby to determine who will represent the 50th through the remainder of convicted Republican felon Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s term won in 2004, Bilbray may also have to watch his back and play defense against one or more Republican challengers in the parallel primary election that will occur at the same time in June.

More on Bilbray’s Danger on the Right.

The San Diego Union Tribune continues to follow the key potential Republican challengers.

Some conservative activists are calling for an alternative to Bilbray in the primary. Most are looking to Roach, who has the personal wealth to run a credible campaign, bucking the party. He spent at least $1.8 million of his own money in the recent campaign.

Former state Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian, a conservative favorite but distant third-place finisher among the GOP candidates Tuesday, said he hasn’t considered campaigning for the June primary, but “I will walk through the door God opens for me in the future.” Businessman Alan Uke, who finished fifth among Republicans, said he doubts he’ll mount a campaign but hasn’t decided for sure.

[…]

California Republican Assembly president Mike Spence said his independent group would actively campaign against Bilbray in the primary if there is “a credible conservative candidate” in the race. He said he has spoken with people from Roach’s campaign.

[…]

In his influential conservative blog, former state Republican executive director Jon Fleischman suggested that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if Busby won six months in Congress, if it allows Roach to be elected to the next two-year term.

Is the California Republican Party skewed so far to the right and so distorted by ideology, that it is willing to risk the loss of this seat in congress to keep it out of the hands of a fellow Republican? Spence and Fleischman are the voices of a party that doesn’t want Bilbray in a safe and secure seat in congress for the next decade or two. Can their strategy succeed?

The North County Times has an initial breakdown of voting patterns in the 50th CD special election.

The results aren’t really surprising. Democrat Francine Busby did extremely well in the coastal communities of the district. If the decision were left to the coast, Busby would be on her way to congress. Inland, Busby led the 18 candidate field in every community, but by much narrower margins.

Roach and Bilbray showed a much weaker performance than Busby at coastal community polls than they did in the election as a whole. Bilbray won 15.27 percent of the votes districtwide, but at coastal polling stations, his share came to 12.38 percent. Similarly, Roach won 14.50 percent of the votes districtwide and 11.17 percent at coastal polling stations.

However, a very different pattern emerged in the inland communities of Escondido, Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Penasquitos, Rancho Santa Fe and San Marcos. While Busby won 54.8 percent of the votes on the coast, she only earned a 37.7 percent share of votes in the inland communities. Meanwhile, Roach and Bilbray performed much better in inland areas than they did on the coast.

Whereas Bilbray’s coastal share stood at 12.38 percent, he scored an average of 16.45 percent at inland polling stations. For Roach, the coastal versus inland contrast was even more dramatic. He earned a 11.17 percent share of the votes at coastal polling stations, but 20.13 percent inland.

Busby will need to hold the coast and change some minds in the more staunchly conservative inland communities to give her the margin she needs in June.