At the torrid rate at which Republicans Chris Norby, Orange County Supervisor, and Linda Ackerman, wife of former Assemblyman/Senator Dick Ackerman, are publicly sliming each other, Democrat John MacMurray stands a solid chance to garner a clear victory in heavily-Republican Assembly District #72’s special election to replace Republican Mike “Family Values” Duvall, who resigned after being caught boasting into a hot mike of his sexual exploits with lobbyists.
Five candidates are on the November 17, 2009 ballot: Democrat John MacMurray, Jane Rands of the Green Party, and three Republicans: Norby, Ackerman, and Richard Faher, Placentia businessman. If any single candidate garners more than 50% on November 17th, they win the special election. If no candidate reaches 50%, then a January 12, 2010 special election will be held between the top candidates from each political party.
Democrat MacMurray, a history teacher in Fullerton, is running an effective, albeit low-budget, campaign, mainly via a strong, grassroots get-out-the-Democratic-vote effort. When TheLiberalOC.com met with MacMurray yesterday, he affirmed that he will not participate in the ugly mudslinging fray, and emphasized that Democrats offer a distinct alternative to the sleazy politics of A.D. #72 Republican politicians.
Pictured above is a trash-talking direct mailer TheLiberalOC.com received this week from Chris Norby in which he lavishly exudes about Linda Ackerman’s “corruption,” including:
- “Linda Ackerman serves as a Board Member for a phony ‘Research Foundation’ which the Ackermans used to arrange junkets for themselves and other politicians.”
- “Official tax records show that lobbyists and special interests gave Linda Ackerman’s phony ‘Foundation’ over $1 million dollars for legislative junkets over the past 4 years.”
- “Dick and Linda Ackerman needed more money to finance their lavish Sacramento lifestyle.”
- “So ‘Loophole Linda’ used a money laundering-type scheme to funnel $76,000 into her persona bank account from her husband’s campaign committees by serving as his ‘lobbyist fundraising consultant.'”
- “She was being paid by the special interests who lobbied her husband to vote in favor of FOUR STATE BUDGET DEALS that raised our raised our taxes and gave government benefit to illegal aliens!”
And dotting the district are neon signs decrying Ackerman as a “Carpetbagger” who actually resides in Irvine. Per the OC Register, this allegation holds water: Linda Ackerman recently moved back to A.D. #72 after “spending the past nine years in Irvine.”
Per the Register’s Steven Greenhut, the Ackermans “are renting a room in the district from a friend – which might technically meet the legal requirements to live in the district, but doesn’t pass the smell test.”
Meanwhile, the Ackerman campaign has sent several sleazy direct-mailers aimed at portraying Chris Norby as a womanizer with a drinking problem. I haven’t yet set my eyes on Ackerman’s hit pieces, but believe Greenhut when he pens:
“Dick Ackerman told me his wife was ‘drafted’ for the spot for one simple reason: ‘character.’ This is the heart of the Ackerman attack on Norby, who has some harmless quirks (he once fell asleep behind the Old Santa Ana Courthouse shrubbery and was rousted by a Sheriff’s Security Officer), and one scandal. In that instance (which is being pitched heavily by the Ackerman forces, including in a particularly nasty hit mailer), a county employee filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Norby.”
Believe it or not, the Norby-Ackerman grudge match gets dirtier. I’ve repeatedly heard verified rumors, and Greenhut alludes to, a recent Ackerman fundraiser at the Summit House at which a certain attractive Ackerman fundraiser was caught in a compromising position in a car with none other than… Mike Duvall!
As if that’s not enough: They were caught by a well-known Orange County reporter strongly suspected of being tipped off by Chris Norby.
Seriously, A.D. #72 Democrats, we can do better. Much, much better.
We may have only 34% of registered district voters, but if we band together, and GET OUT THE VOTE on November 17th, we can end the embarrassing and ineffective North Orange County reign of salacious Republican politics.
Enough is enough. Let’s stop being the laughing stock of the nation.
So much for Reagan’s 11th commandment.
“lavish Sacramento lifestyle” LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
And one also has to love that Greenhut was reduced to rumormongering in his last days with the OC Register.
I’m sure that’s what R.C. Hoiles had in mind when he was championing the cause of libertarianism.