cross-posted from Daily Kos.

I started to write that pretty much the worst thing that I could imagine in Orange County Democratic politics, short of someone’s death, has happened today.  That isn’t quite true, though.  What has been reported today is worse than anything I have imagined about our party — and I have imagined plenty.

One’s first tendency may be to hide it.  I think that one instead faces it.

I hate to give the conservative-libertarian Orange County Register any hits, but they are the ones with the story, so click away:

A prominent Democratic campaign treasurer who works for federal, state and O.C. lawmakers including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Rep. Loretta Sanchez and state Assemblymen Lou Correa and Jose Solorio has been arrested by the FBI on suspicion of mail fraud, The Orange County Register has learned.

U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Thom Mrozek confirmed Saturday afternoon that Kinde Durkee of Burbank-based Durkee and Associates, was arrested by the FBI on a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento. Special Agent Steve Dupre of the bureau’s Sacramento office said she was arrested in connection with her position as a campaign treasurer.

“Innocent until proven guilty,” absolutely; I make no conclusions from this arrest.  But this story is huge.  Kinde Durkee was the one person always represented to me, since entering Orange County politics a little less than five years ago, as trustworthy and incorruptible.  We will be reeling from this arrest alone, let alone the details, for a long time.

Federal Election Commission records show that Durkee is the treasurer for Feinstein and Sanchez, who could not be reached Saturday. California Secretary of State records show she currently serves as the treasurer for at least 115 state-level committees. Those committees include campaign accounts for Solorio, D-Santa Ana; Assemblymen Gilbert Cedillo, D-Los Angeles, and Roger Hernandez, D-Baldwin Park; State Sens. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance and Curren Price, D-Los Angeles; Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian; and former Orange County lawmaker Tom Umberg.

Durkee also oversaw the political-action committees of the Democratic Party of Orange County and the Democratic Foundation of Orange County, among others

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Another day, I’ll talk about what one expects from a committee Treasurer — who is not the person you elect or appoint as Treasurer for your campaign or PAC but the professional with whom your Treasurer does business.

Today, the earthquake is still going on.  We crouch, with the ground shaking, hoping that we survive with the least possible damage.  “Terrible” barely begins to describe it.  As a Democrat active in, among other things, the DPOC, I feel like I have been kicked in the teeth.  I can only imagine how the officeholders listed above feel.

Mimi Walters has something of a vanity campaign for treasurer up and rolling. She’s not up for re-election to the senate this year, so why not take a free shot at the Treasurer’s spot.  It’s a massive uphill climb against Bill Lockyer and the $10 million warchest that has been scaring everybody else away from ever challenging the guy.  So why not?

The primary was a walk for Walters, so that didn’t cost much, if anything.  She’s not really campaigning for the gig, and it seems the total of her campaign is a little bit of fundraising and a website.  I recently got one of her google ads shown below:

Pretty standard stuff really. But, I’m interested to see what she has going on, so I click on over to her site.  It’s all really standard stuff. A little letter saying why she’s running, Sacramento’s broken, out of ideas, and all that. Not for nothing, but she’s been in Sacramento for 8 years now.

Anyway, the part that really got me interested is this little nugget in the title bar of the website:

It seems Ms. Walters has her eyes set higher than just the Treasurer’s chair. She’s ready to take on Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman. Now, Walters has always been seen as something of a “rising-star” of the OC GOP world.  She is fanatically conservative. Never met a tax cut she didn’t love, or a social program she didn’t think was either rife with “waste, fraud and abuse” or flat out wanted to see it eliminated and/or chopped to the bone.

Walters is charismatic enough, and if given the right set of circumstances could be an interesting statewide candidate.  I thought she was looking at the treasurer’s spot, but now we see she’s got bigger eyes than that.  Keep your eyes on MimiWalters.com, she’s got some big plans for that space.