I’m sure Fullerton’s millionaire developer Tony Bushala is laughing his butt off on this drop-in-the-bucket fine, but the FPPC has punished Bushala and his pal Jack Dean $2,500 for several violations of their anti-Sukhee Kang campaign on behalf of their Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform.
You can read the filing here: 6 Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform – Stip and Exh.
The nut of the fine is a failure to provide adequate disclosures on campaign signs of “No Kang; Irvine Carpetbagger.” According to boasts on the anti-Kang blog and on the revived Friends for Fullerton’s Future Blog, the campaign against Kang cost Bushala and Dean about $5,000.
Pretty cheap to displace someone who would have been an outstanding State Senator.
But let’s review a few other items here. Is the claim of capretbagging really the reason, or are Bushala and company targeting Asian candidates?
It can’t be said Bushala favored Josh Newman, who’s now sitting in Sacramento in that State Senate seat because Bushala offered no help to State Rep. Ling Ling Chang who’s now out of office and sitting home (pursuing that Harvard degree one hopes).
Currently, blog posts on FFFF unfavorably compared Former State Rep. Young Kim to a fish, claiming the fish is more qualified to be the next County Supervisor from the Fourth District. Bushala targeted Kang, a Korean-American former Mayor of Irvine, who demonstrably steered the city through the worst of the 2009-2011 financial crisis with no cuts in service and no tax increases. And there’s the Bushala-led massive effort to push against Roland Chee, a Republican candidate for Fullerton city council, peppered with the same sort of signs that sprung up against Kang. Chee wasn’t a carpetbagger — just Asian. Food poisoning at a Chee establishment was grounds he’d be a bad city council member, really?
Bushala and company also went overboard on the carpetbagging charges aganst Harry Sidhu and Lorri Galloway for fourth district supervisor — both are Asian-American — but in fairness it was because Shawn Nelson, Bushala’s next-door neighbor was running. But both Sidhu and Galloway were hit with carpetbagging charges for moving to represent people they already did on the Anaheim city council.
Bushala and company are now targeting Joe Kerr, a Democratic candidate for 4th district supervisor. We’re going to encourage Joe to focus on issues that really matter to residents of the 4th district and not so much address issues. Kerr does live in the district now, in Brea, and has for a while.
The bigger question here is does TeamBushala think carpetbagging is such a big deal (they go after Democrats and Republicans alike on this issue so they are non-partisan in that respect); or is TeamBushala anti-Asian? They’re critical of Democrats of all racial stripes in general, but they only seem to actually spend money and venom on Asian-American candidates. Or is it possible that Bushala only supports candidates he thinks he can control?