Are Shelley's Watchdogs Barking up the Wrong Tree?

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley is sceduled to testify about some of the charges against him before the Joint Legislative Audit Committee under oath this Thursday. But a recent backroom deal suggests that legislators are going after the weakest of Shelley's wrongdoings, perhaps because they want to avoid bringing attention campaign finance violations that many legislators may also be guilty of.

Newspaper editorials have already written Shelley's political obituary. Other Democrats have already announced their intention to run for his office in 2006. The principle question is only how Shelley's career will end: by resignation, impeachment, recall or a simple announcement that he will serve out his term but not run for re-election.

There are three principle charges against Shelley. First, he won his last election with the help of $205,000 in contributions raised by Julie Lee. While in the legislature, Shelley helped arrange $500,000 in state grants to a non-profit group of Lee's. The FBI is investigating Lee for laundering some of that money into Shelley's campaign. Shelley then invented a job for Lee's son, which the head of California's Personnel Board calls a "classic violation of the civil service system."

The second allegation against Shelley is that he inappropriately and illegally used his government office and staff to raise campaign funds. A motel owner from Santa Cruz claims he gave Shelley a contribution in his state office and some of Shelley's former staff say he instructed them to pick up checks from donors.

Shelley's third blunder is using government staff to blatantly promote his own political career. He has expanded his office's political staff and borrowed other political staff from the legislature and the city of San Francisco. Shelley also misspent federal funds given to the state of California from the Help America Vote Act on consultants who seem to have spent more time attending political events on behalf of Mr. Shelley than they did registering voters.

The legislature is now focused like a laser on investigating Shelley's misuse of HAVA funds. But, Shelley has already admitted to making mistakes and put forth a plan to fix them. It's not clear that there is much smoke left in the HAVA gun.

Last week, leaders of both parties agreed to a backroom deal that will limit Shelley's upcoming testimony to only the misallocation of HAVA funds. This means that Shelley will not have to testify under oath as to any of the more serious campaign finance charges that he faces. Yet if true, the campaign finance abuses are clearly illegal and make a more compelling public case for impeachment than negligent management of funds.

Why would legislators of both parties avoid questioning him about the most serious charges against him?

Nicole Parra, the chair of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, could argue that campaign finance violations go beyond the scope of her committee. It is also the case that her committee contains both Senators and Assembly members and that the process of impeachment is solely the jurisdiction of the Assembly. If this is the rationale, then Assembly Speaker Nunez should immediately designate or create another committee to begin impeachment hearings that could consider all of Shelley's alleged misconduct in office.

The pact to limit the scope of Shelley's February third testimony suggests that legislators want to string this process out, rather than force Shelley out of office quickly. Democrats may want to delay or avoid a resignation, because that would give Governor Schwarzenegger the chance to appoint a Republican replacement. Shelley was publicly musing about resigning just before the deal was cut. He went back to his hard line of fighting to the bitter end the same day that the agreement to limit his testimony was announced. This suggests that he was threatening resignation in order to negotiate with Democratic legislators to scale back their investigation.

It's less obvious why Republican legislators would go along. The deal reached with the Democratic leadership does provide for an independent investigator, sharing of sensitive documents, and other steps to build a comprehensive case against Shelley. Perhaps they are just being careful jurists who want to slowly examine the evidence.

But it is also possible that Republican leaders want to string this saga out. They may fear that Governor Schwarzenegger would appoint a caretaker Secretary of State to replace Shelley, such as Bill Jones, who would be unable to run for re-election. Or, maybe Republicans relish the idea of months and months of news stories that drag a prominent Democrat through the mud.

The most troubling possibility is that legislators are trying to force Shelley out based on the misappropriations of funds because they want to avoid the precedent of forcing an elected official out of office for campaign finance abuses. If other politicians are living in glass houses, maybe they are a bit nervous about throwing certain stones.