In This Case, the Charge Should Be Farsifying an Election

Like trying to follow characters racing from the boudoir to the wine cellar to the pantry in a Noel Coward farce, it’s hard to keep up with the cast surrounding Scott Baugh’s election to the Assembly in 1995.

There’s Rhonda Carmony, a congressional aide now on trial for being in the middle of the plan to put a decoy candidate in that ’95 special election.

There’s Dana Rohrabacher, the Republican congressman and Carmony’s boss, who wanted his hometown Baugh to be elected. Early on, Rohrabacher played the bully who tried to get the D.A. to drop investigations of Baugh and Carmony. And, whoa, in a wacky plot twist, he’s Carmony’s fiance!

There’s Laurie Campbell as the decoy. She was a longtime friend of Baugh’s, although no one was supposed to know. Recruited by the GOP to run as a Democrat, dilute that vote and help Baugh get elected, she claimed to be a credible candidate although she never campaigned and eschewed press requests to discuss her candidacy.

And somehow she wound up in a car with Carmony and another GOP aide outside the registrar’s office on filing day. But she insists Carmony had nothing to do with falsifying signatures on nominating papers that Campbell was about to turn in.

There’s Jeff Gibson, the GOP aide who was in the car with Carmony and Campbell, but who remembers things entirely differently than Campbell does.

There’s Jeff Flint, the chief of staff to Orange County Assemblyman Curt Pringle and the man who, according to Carmony’s attorney, was one of the key strategists behind the phony Campbell candidacy. Flint says he doesn’t know nuthin’ from nuthin’ and bolstered that by invoking his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination and not testifying during Carmony’s trial.

There’s Pringle, who rode Baugh’s tie-breaking vote to the Assembly speakership in 1996, only to lose the post when the Democrats won back the lower house. Like Flint, he was shocked to find out there was petition falsification and a decoy on the premises.

And then there’s Baugh himself. He is also in the role of someone who didn’t know what was going on, all the while apparently having no ethical misgivings about his old friend Campbell appearing on the ballot in disguise.

Give or take a bit player here and there, that pretty much accounts for the stars in this petty little production.

Denouement nears.

Three GOP underlings pleaded guilty to minor charges last year, and a jury now is determining Carmony’s fate. A trial date on separate charges awaits Baugh.

In true Cowardian style, this whole thing plays better as comedy than drama. Dark comedy, perhaps, but still funny in a plot-twisting sort of way.

Funny in that the enemy for all these folks was supposed to be those rotten, low-down Democrats. The Republicans figured the best way to ensure that the Assembly wouldn’t fall into Democratic hands was for the local GOP’s evangelical-tinged leadership to tilt the ballot a bit to the right.

Ain’t it a hoot the way things turned out?

As the Carmony trial has showed, the GOP has found the enemy and it is they.

As for honor among thieves, well. . . .

The GOP underlings who pleaded guilty remember Carmony calling the shots. Carmony’s attorney says Pringle and Flint were the masterminds. Laurie Campbell, with her old pal Baugh still in the soup, once said Carmony seemed to be in charge. But now she has testified that Carmony just sat in the car that day and did nothing, and that Jeff Gibson was in control. And somewhere, Rohrabacher probably is still screaming that Capizzi, a Republican, is way out of bounds.

The GOP is right about one thing. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t a huge case. I think the district attorney knows that.

It was a tawdry little gambit almost pulled off by people who purport to be holier than thou, and it wouldn’t even have been illegal except for a few technicalities. But it’s just that tawdriness that makes it worth pursuing.

Or, who knows, maybe the D.A. just has a soft spot for Coward and a highly developed sense of irony.

If, in the pursuit of all this, the rest of us must watch the local GOP operatives turn on each other to save their own skins, I guess we’ll just have to put up with it.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.