Trump wants Republicans to vote early. In California, that’s a message the GOP has pushed for years

• July 5, 2024

Former President Donald Trump has instructions for GOP voters this fall: Cast those ballots early.

The Trump campaign recently launched what it’s calling the “Swamp the Vote” effort, encouraging Republicans to vote early or submit an absentee ballot, ensure registration status and encourage other Trump supporters to vote as well. That’s a reversal for the former president, who has long decried mail voting as “corrupt.”

For California Republicans, that plan may sound a little familiar.

Over multiple cycles now, the California Republican Party has implored voters to drop off ballots as soon as possible

In California, registered voters are mailed ballots about a month before Election Day. Voters can fill them out as soon as they receive them and return them by posting in the mail, by sliding them through the slot of a ballot drop box or by delivering them in person at a vote center.

“We may not agree with all the means that Democrats have made legal here in California, but until we elect more Republicans, we have to make sure we’re playing by the same rules,” said CAGOP Chair Jessica Millan Patterson.

“If we allow Democrats to run up the score on us for three-quarters of the game, it’s going to be very difficult to make that all up in one day,” she said.

Related links

How does Orange County’s voting system work?
Legislature considers how AI can impact the 2024 election
GOP congressmember decries mail-in ballot ‘flaws’ after 104 Southern California votes aren’t counted

A benefit to voters casting ballots early: The party will know who it needs to target and encourage to vote.

“Part of it is a benefit to the voter,” said Patterson. “You will stop getting mail from me. You’ll stop getting phone calls. You’ll stop getting door knocks … all of the ways that we utilize to turn out a voter, you’ll stop getting that, and you can go about your day knowing that your vote is in.”

But for the party, it’s also economics.

“When we are spending time and resources turning out a voter who will likely vote but has not voted yet, we cannot move on to new universes, people who are less likely to vote,” said Patterson, who was elected to helm the CAGOP in 2019.

She pointed to Assemblymember Greg Wallis, who won his 47th district seat in Riverside and San Bernardino counties by just 85 votes.

Republicans who voted early in that race allowed the party to target those who may not have otherwise voters, she said.

The CAGOP has embraced early voting for several years now — the party also adopted ballot harvesting in recent elections, where people can turn in a ballot for someone else, under certain conditions — and Patterson said this year’s primary showed success.

More than 300,000 Republicans (about 14% of all Republicans who voted) returned a ballot earlier this year than they traditionally did, according to CAGOP figures. And more than 200,000 (8% of Republicans who voted) had never returned a ballot early but did so in the primary, said Patterson.

“We’re seeing the work that we’re doing pay off,” she said.

Still, it hasn’t been easy to convince Republicans to relinquish their ballots early or to someone else, party leaders said.

“The natural reaction was, ‘Hell no, I’m not giving you my ballot,’” said Randall Avila, the executive director of the Orange County GOP.

The former president changing his position on early voting has helped assuage concerns for some, Avila said, but the party has also worked for the last two cycles on building trust in neighborhoods.

OCGOP, for example, assigns volunteers to be “neighborhood precinct captains” in their own neighborhoods. They’d go door-to-door and talk to voters, their neighbors and friends, about upcoming elections.

It’s a lot easier to hand over your ballot to or receive voting information from someone you trust, Avila said.

This year, the OCGOP’s main focus is targeting former Republican voters who changed their registration to no party preference or libertarian, bringing them back under the GOP umbrella. And they want to encourage voters who may not cast a ballot every election cycle to do so this year “in whatever method they’re willing to do,” said Avila.

While pushing Republicans to vote early this year, Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, continued to peddle falsehoods about his 2020 election loss.

He also vowed to institute same-day voting, voter ID requirements and paper ballots for future elections if he wins a second term in the White House.

“We’re going to do it properly. We’re going to have good, secure, beautiful elections,” Trump said.

Multiple investigations following the 2020 election found very few cases of voter fraud — not to a scale that could have impacted the outcome of that contest.

Trump, however, was convicted in May of 34 felony counts related to a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actress.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Murder by suicide: Serial killer and a book lead to more questions in Linda Cummings’ case

• July 5, 2024

In June 2018, the FBI and several California law enforcement agencies asked for the public’s help in identifying the “Golden State Killer,” a mysterious nocturnal serial murderer they linked by common DNA to 13 homicides, more than 50 rapes and hundreds of burglaries between the early 1970s through 1986.

Editor’s note

Former Orange County Register reporter Larry Welborn covered Linda Cummings’ story from 1974 until his retirement in 2014 and still pursued the truth in the following years. He wrote about it in the new book “Murder by Suicide: A reporter unravels a true case of rape, betrayal and lies,” which is available on Amazon. This is part five of a seven-part series.

Part one: 50 years ago, Linda Cummings died and the pursuit of the truth started

Part two: Search for evidence leads to more heartbreak

Part three: After 31 years, an arrest is made

Part four: Judge’s ruling a ‘gut-punch’

Part six: Coming Saturday

A reader contacted me and asked if it could be Louis Wiechecki?

For a moment there, I thought, yeah, maybe that’s him.

But in checking records, Wiechecki was cleared, and another man was later identified as the serial monster.

Before I could report back, the reader pinged me again on Instant Messenger. She had an update: Louie Wiechecki was dead.

The life-long smoker died of congestive heart failure in April 2018 after suffering for years from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The obituary posted on dignitymemorial.com said simply: “Lou, beloved husband and friend.”

I called one of Lou ‘s neighbors in Henderson to verify that the information was accurate. Mary MacGregor said there had been a nice turnout at his memorial.

She also said she remembered me as the reporter who was there the day Louie was arrested by SWAT, and she wondered if I’d read Louie’s book.

I couldn’t hide my surprise. “What book?”

•••

“Through the Eyes of a Criminal,” a self-published novel by Lou Stanley – the name Wiechecki changed his to – was a revenge tale about a juvenile delinquent-turned-master criminal who commits kidnappings and murders to finance his vendetta against “the cops, prosecutors, and others who’d tried to ruin my life.” Chief among the others, it turned out, was a “Los Angeles area journalist” who had written about his link to a cold case rape-murder that originally went down as a suicide.

According to Wiechecki’s protagonist, the journalist needed to be “sliced and diced. Nothing too messy, just enough to make sure he dies.”

My literary close encounter with Louie’s black heart reminded me there were still questions I’d not yet answered. The one that bothered me most after all these years was who Deputy Coroner Joe Stevens called that night in 1974 after Linda died? Who was the voice on the other end of the line who convinced him to rule it a suicide?

Goaded by Louie’s vengeance fantasy, I made finding out a priority.

•••

A year later, I sat across a table at Wood Ranch in Irvine from a retired Santa Ana policeman who had been first on scene at the Aladdin Apartments in 1974 in response to an emergency call about a suicide in Apartment 8.

Larry DeSantis agreed to talk about the case he never forgot. “It still haunts me,” he said. “That guy got away with murder.”

He remembered that day like it was 48 hours ago. Wiechecki was his first contact at the Aladdin Apartments. He recalled the first words out of Louie’s mouth: “She committed suicide. She’s in there.”

And Louie’s continuing obsession with suicide – what DeSantis called “his shtick the whole time. He was adamant about the suicide part. It was really weird.” He said Wiechecki kept telling detectives that Linda had been a mental patient.

Deputy Coroner Stevens wasn’t someone easily fooled, DeSantis said. In fact, Stevens’ first impression of the death scene was that it appeared staged, plus he was disturbed by the rare event of a female killing herself in the nude.

But alone in the coroner’s office a few hours later, Stevens put aside all those doubts and suspicions based on a single late-evening phone call he made to a local telephone number for Dr. Vincent Mark, supposedly Linda’s personal physician treating her for depression.

The voice on the other end of that line convinced Stevens that Linda had been hospitalized recently for depression, was taking the powerful anti-psychotic drug Thorazine and was “very suicidal.”

More than 30 years later, the real Dr. Mark told Orange County investigators he didn’t know Linda Cummings; he didn’t treat psychiatric patients, and he never prescribed Thorazine.

“I did not talk with any coroner … in ’74,” the real Dr. Mark told investigators. He paused for emphasis. “No, I did not.”

So, who was it? Who told Stevens the big lie that persuaded him despite all the conflicting evidence at the scene that Linda’s death was self-inflicted? How did Stevens get the local doctor’s name and a phone number in the first place?

“Because Louie wrote it down on a piece of paper,” DeSantis told me, his memory still scanning the Aladdin courtyard from 45 years away.

“Did he give it to you?” I asked.

“No – “ He started, but stopped in mid-response. “Wait a minute. He did give it to me. I passed it on. It had the name of the doctor on it. He gave it to me and I passed it on to Sgt. Enos.”

Yes, Louie no doubt used his own phone number – or that of a nearby pay phone – a phone he could easily monitor over the next several hours. When Stevens reached for his phone that night to call Linda’s doctor, it was Wiechecki waiting to take the call. And the voice that answered, “Doctor Mark,” was the voice of Linda’s killer.

And when the deputy coroner completed his report with a big red SUICIDE stamp, he pretty much doomed any future prosecutions.

When Judge Fasel dismissed murder charges against Louie – in the face of faded memories, dead witnesses and lost evidence – it was the end of Linda’s shot at redemption through the justice system. But good journalism, operating in the court of public opinion, can sometimes do what is beyond the power of justice and the courts.

The official record still had her story wrong. It had to be fixed.

Coming Saturday, part six: Linda Cummings’ brother seeks an important change.

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Bureaucrats no longer judge, jury and executioner

• July 5, 2024

SACRAMENTO – After reading progressives analyze the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, I’m wondering if many of them read it or understand the underlying doctrine the court overturned. Common overwrought hot takes claim Loper Bright will obliterate federal regulations, give corporations power to self-regulate and even usher in fascism. Seriously.

In reality, the court simply put federal bureaucracies in their rightful constitutional place, rather than allowing them to make stuff up as they implement ambiguous statutes. For a quick grade-school refresher: The legislative branch (Congress) writes laws. The executive (president and federal agencies) executes laws. The judiciary (federal courts) interprets law. Each branch is independent and serves as a check on the others as a means to limit power.

In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court concocted a doctrine in an obscure case (Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council) called “Chevron deference.” The court determined that when a federal law is ambiguous – and Congress often writes imprecise laws – the courts must defer to whatever the agency decides with some caveats. Although the decision wasn’t viewed as particularly significant at the time, it gave agencies the power to fill in the blanks. It influenced thousands of cases.

This gave the executive vast powers over the judiciary, which is the proper place to mediate disputes. For average citizens, it obliterated their ability to stand up to governmental abuse. Chevron deference only applied at the federal level, but let’s say you have a dispute with the authorities. Would you want a) the agency’s opinion to be the final word or b) just one part of a record adjudicated by a judge? In a free society, the answer (b) is easy.

To progressives, whose entire political project is built upon empowering the administrative state, this is an outrage. Vox’s Ian Millhiser complainsthat the decision “expands the court’s authority so that it is also the final word on thousands of questions that hardly anyone cares about at all – questions like what the cable television rates should be on one of Hawaii’s islands, or how much nitrogen can be discharged by a wastewater treatment plant in Massachusetts.”

Try to unpack the elitism in that statement. Many people care about those questions, as they directly infringe on the freedoms and finances of Americans who are on the receiving end of arbitrary rule-making. Loper Bright involves small New Jersey fishing fleets that were required, by edict from the National Marine Fisheries Service, to pay $700 a day for federal monitors to protect against overfishing.

Congress wrote a law requiring government overseers to tag along on these boats when they entered certain waters, but the fishermen objected to paying the observers. That was never in the law. Enforcement specifics were ambiguous. The self-serving payment scheme was the idea of the agency – and then Chevron deference basically forced courts to defer to its decision. But no one cares, right?

The decision will not obliterate regulations, even if many businesses use it to file lawsuits against similarly absurd agency creations. As Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority: “The very point of the traditional tools of statutory construction … is to resolve statutory ambiguities. That is no less true when the ambiguity is about the scope of an agency’s own power – perhaps the occasion on which abdication in favor of the agency is least appropriate.”

In other words, courts might not be experts in herring populations, but they are experts in dispute resolution. And it’s no surprise that government agencies, when given carte blanche to rule on their own powers, will almost certainly err in their own direction. As Public Choice Theory explains, government officials are not unbiased doers of the public good. They pursue their own institutional interests.

The court also noted that agency decisions change over time, so how are normal citizens supposed to comply with such arbitrariness? Contra progressive hysterics, this ruling does not stop judges from considering agency expertise. It’s just the agency no longer is judge, jury and executioner. Maybe Congress might even spend more time drafting laws in a precise manner. (And courts have long expected adjustments to Chevron, so it’s unlikely to cause earthquakes.)

Related Articles

Ironically, progressives are now hyperventilating (and perhaps with good reason) about the prospect of another Trump administration. Some Trump allies have released a 900-plus page document (Project 2025) that advocates having the likely new administration exert “unitary” political control over federal agencies. If that happens, shouldn’t they celebrate Loper Bright, which lets judges rather than agency officials make the final call?

Some progressive critics have forgotten – or maybe never knew – that Chevron deference originally was viewed as a conservative victory as it forced the Environmental Protection Agency to defer to President Reagan’s administration appointees. It’s a warning for conservatives, too. Be careful that your short-term victories (did someone say presidential immunity?) don’t cause you 40 years of sorrow.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute and a member of the Southern California News Group editorial board. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

​ Orange County Register 

South Coast Repertory to perform final outdoor series at San Juan Capistrano Mission

• July 5, 2024

It’s the last chance to catch the Outside South Coast Repertory play series this summer at the San Juan Capistrano Mission.

Going on four seasons, this is the final year for the outdoor theater program at the Mission, said SCR spokesperson Brian Robin.

Since 2021, the Mission has collaborated with SCR, the theater company behind the Emmes/Benson Theatre Center in Costa Mesa, when the COVID-19 pandemic prevented live indoor performances, said Robin.

“It was our way of returning to live performances, and we approached the Mission about partnering with us,” Robin said. “We have enjoyed our time at the Mission and are grateful for our collaboration with them.”

Representatives from the Mission did not respond to requests for comment.

SCR is still exploring options for future outdoor productions, Robin said.

The final show hosted at the Mission, located at 26801 Ortega Highway, through the Outside South Coast Repertory series is “The Old Man and The Old Moon.”

Related Articles

The play, directed by SCR’s Associate Artistic Director Kim Martin-Cotten, follows a moon-keeper who wakes to find his wife has gone missing, according to the Mission’s website. His search leads him through bizarre encounters and into the belly of a fish, all in pursuit of his wife.

This show will run from July 20 through Aug. 11, starting at 7:30 p.m. each night. An American Sign Language version of the show will be performed on Aug. 4 at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets can be purchased on South Coast Repertory’s website.

​ Orange County Register 

2 killed, 3 hurt in Huntington Beach attack; 1 in custody

• July 5, 2024

A stabbing in Huntington Beach left two people dead and three others injured with non-life threatening wounds, with one person in custody, authorities said.

The attack was reported about 11:15 p.m. Thursday, July 4, near 16th Street and Pecan Avenue, according to Huntington Beach police.

It is a neighborhood of multi-family buildings.

“Upon arrival, officers located several victims with significant injuries,” police said.

“The investigation is still ongoing and more information will be provided as we are able to,” police said.

Authorities told Fox11, the victims had been stabbed. It was unclear if the person who was in custody was one of the injured.

Related Articles

​ Orange County Register 

Legislators fail on CEQA mend for rest of us

• July 5, 2024

When ordinary Californians trying and failing to build something complain to the Legislature about the petty, nothing-to-do-with-the-environment constraints of the 50-year-old California Environmental Quality Act, their elected representatives tell them to shut up and just swallow the red tape.

When the Legislature wants to build something for itself — a swanky new office building for the electeds at the annex to the state Capitol — and runs into CEQA problems, it passes a midnight budget bill entirely exempting the project from the act that it passed and that only it could fix for the rest of us.

How these people live with their hypocrisy is entirely unclear.

But that doesn’t mean they ought not be called out for it. Next time your Assembly member or state senator asks for your vote for re-election, you might ask for an explanation of this arrogant, for-thee, but not-for-me manner of governance.

Bill Fulton, the urban planner and former mayor of Ventura, put it this way to the Los Angeles Times: “This is another example of what I call Swiss cheese CEQA. The Legislature doesn’t try to take a logical approach. Whenever they get upset about it, they punch a hole in it.”

The leadership of the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature justifies the vote as a cost-saving measure for taxpayers, saying that the exemption was necessary after the long-planned Capitol offices renovation project became tied up in lawsuits.

Uh-huh — welcome to the club, California politicians.

Except when the rest of us try to build something and get stopped for CEQA not-in-my-backyarders, we can’t just pass a law that makes the problem go away.

Here’s the back story, as explained by reporters Mackenzie Mays and Taryn Luna in the Times:

“The project involves tearing down the 70-year-old portion of the building known as the ‘annex’ — which contained the governor’s office suite, committee hearing rooms and offices for dozens of lawmakers — and replacing it with a larger, more accessible structure. … Then-Gov. Jerry Brown approved the project in 2018; although demolition has already taken place, construction has been delayed by lawsuits over the preservation of the Capitol park’s impressive array of trees, historic architecture and access to the west lawn, the site of many protests and news conferences.”

It’s not that we don’t empathize, after a fashion, with the concerns of lawmakers trying to get something built, although it must be said that fancy new offices for themselves somehow don’t rank for us up there with the desperately needed housing for regular folks that so often gets blocked by CEQA.

It’s that they fail to understand how just plain incomprehensible it is to other Californians that they don’t see the irony in their complaints, such as this, from Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco: “The situation here is actually one of the things that frustrates all of us about CEQA — that CEQA is being used for reasons that have literally nothing to do with the environment to stop a project.”

Rather than pushing for actual comprehensive reforms to the miserable status quo, both the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom have instead settled for piecemeal exceptions to CEQA, especially for the construction of sports arenas in the state, and occasionally for actually worthwhile projects, including much-needed student housing in California’s university towns.

It’s not just unseemly here that the latest exception is for a $1.1 billion project that benefits only themselves and their legislative staff by providing fancier, roomier offices for the political class — it’s scandalous.

Where are the legislators who will use the understanding they have gained about the problems posed by the law to benefit the people of California? Where are the Democrats who hold the power who will join with the likes of Assemblymember James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, who says: “I think we have a duty to act better when we’re talking about these things … let’s do CEQA exemptions across the board instead of just one-offs for state office buildings for ourselves.”

​ Orange County Register 

Work on popular OC freeway ramp about to be completed

• July 5, 2024

Q. Dear Honk: Could you explain what they are doing with the transition road from the southbound 55 Freeway onto the 73? What was once a smooth, seemingly good road was taken from two lanes to one a long time ago. Workers are clearly undergoing some major project there, and it is now a traffic pinch point. Rarely do you see active work in process. What is the goal of this project? Will it return to two lanes? When do they anticipate completion?

– Cindy Talbott, Newport Beach

A. To some in Honkland that ramp is as popular as a Piccolo Pete.

Readers have asked about the project for years, and Honk finally brings good tidings:

“The project is expected to be completed by the end of August,” Caltrans spokesman Nathan Abler said in an email. “Once the project is completed, both lanes of the connector will be open.”

Work began on it in late 2021, with a target completion date of late last year.

“Caltrans is replacing the steel outside barrier with a concrete barrier, bringing the connector to current safety standards,” Abler said.

But trouble brewed.

In February 2023, Caltrans wasn’t happy with a contractor’s work and gave it the heave-ho and then had to go through the process of hiring another one.

Much of the work has been done at night.

“Upon completion, the project (calls) for the roadway to provide a smooth driving experience,” said Sheilah Fortenberry, a Caltrans spokeswoman.

Related Articles

HONKIN’ UPDATE: Go, residents of Honkland, go!

Some electronic message boards have been changed along the 405 Express Lanes in Orange County after Honk readers raised issues about them in the ol’ column.

Destinations are listed on the overhead signs telling drivers how much it costs to exit at certain points.

Huntington Beach’s Vic Leipzig noticed that if motorists left the northbound tollway for the 405 Freeway at the “Magnolia” exit, they bypassed the 405’s off-ramp for Magnolia Street.

So “Magnolia” on signs was recently changed to “Beach Blvd.”

Also going northbound, signs referred to “I-405” as a destination – but what did that mean?

Drivers were already on the 405 Express Lanes, in the median of the 405 Freeway, for goodness sakes. Honk reader Mike Wick of Lake Forest pointed this out.

“I-405” was supposed to tell motorists that is where the express lanes ended and they spilled out back onto the freeway itself.

It now says “Palo Verde,” referring to the next freeway off-ramp one could take after the express lanes drivers end up on the freeway.

“We heard from Honk readers, we heard from others, that these signs (to some) didn’t make sense,” said Joel Zlotnik, a spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Authority, which runs the 405 Express Lanes. “(So) we have changed a couple of the sign destinations.”

All along, he said, officials had expected tweaks would need to be made to the 405 Express Lanes after the tollway opened on Dec. 1.

To ask Honk questions, reach him at honk@ocregister.com. He only answers those that are published. To see Honk online: ocregister.com/tag/honk. Twitter: @OCRegisterHonk

​ Orange County Register 

Start now to defeat $20 billion in wasteful bonds advanced by the Legislature

• July 5, 2024

Last March 5, voters barely approved Proposition 1, the $6.4 billion homeless bond, 50.18% to 49.82%. Despite that, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature have now put two new bonds, totaling $20 billion, on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Proposition 2 is $10 billion in bonds to upgrade K-12 and community college facilities. Proposition 4 is another $10 billion in bonds to deal with “severe climate change-related events.” 

California’s financial shape isn’t good enough to support more statewide bonds. Only last week Newsom and the Legislature finished whittling down the state’s original $73 billion deficit for fiscal year 2024-25 – two weeks after the June 15 constitutional deadline to pass a budget. And on June 26 the governor declared a fiscal emergency, allowing state reserves to be tapped.

On the new bonds, the Legislative Analyst’s Office soon will produce a financial analysis. But matters have not changed much from its analysis earlier this year of Prop. 1, which found the cost to pay off the $6.4 billion bond over 30 years would be $310 million annually. Using the same math, the $20 billion for the new education and climate bonds would cost $937.5 million a year from the general fund. That means it would just make the current fiscal emergency worse. Over time, the bonds will waste billions of dollars that could’ve gone toward productive uses and instead go toward paying off bond interest.

On the education bond, the legislative Floor Report on the new state budget listed 2024-25 per pupil spending at $24,313 for all funds. For a class of 30, that’s $729,390. One class. Yet test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress continue to be dismal. 

For example, for 4th graders in 2022, the last year available, just 30% ranked proficient or advanced. That was a drop from 34% in 2019. Much of that decline stemmed from the severe lockdowns Newsom and local schools mistakenly imposed during the 2020 COVID pandemic. It makes no sense to shovel more money to a system failing its students. No wonder in 2020 voters turned down Proposition 13, a similar school bond for $15 billion, with 53% voting against it. 

Related Articles

As to the new climate bond, in 2018 voters approved Proposition 68, a more modest $4 billion bond for parks, environment and water projects, with 58% in favor. But that was a time when California had a governor in Jerry Brown who at least had some degree of fiscal sense. The same cannot be said for Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

A Public Policy Institute of California survey conducted May 23-June 2 found 64% thought it a “bad time” for new bonds. With inflation still digging in, especially for housing, it’s going to be tough sell to get voters to put themselves – and their children for the next 30 years – on the hook for payments of nearly $1 billion a year.

Putting these bonds on the Nov. 5 ballot shows the governor and Legislature continue the fiscal irresponsibility that has been their hallmark this decade. Californians must stop enabling the spending addictions of their irresponsible representatives in Sacramento. Vote No and No.

​ Orange County Register