Doug, Dunn & Domer: Protecting Pilfering Paulette?

Paulette Stolen Sign
Caught Red Handed

Fullerton can be a funny town with funny stories.

Consider if you will a version of Fullerton where Doug (Chaffee), (Acting Chief) Dunn & (City Manager) Domer have come to an agreement.

In exchange for not referring the Mayor’s wife to the District Attorney’s Office and not investigating the true extent of just how many signs Paulette stole, the Chaffees agreed to suspend Paulette’s campaign. They’ve agreed that she’ll stay out of the public eye through the election.

Doug will also skip the next Council meeting and the city will make no public statement on the matter until December. All parties agreed this was the best way to minimize impacting Doug’s campaign for Supervisor.

That wouldn’t be so hard to believe.  That level of corruption feels about right for these idiots in the town we call home.

Even we have a hard time with the next part.

Apparently, Doug, Dunn, and Domer agreed to send a city vehicle to collect Paulette’s various sign caches. The collection is substantial and the triple alliance can’t decide if they’ll move the signs to the city yard to be reclaimed by their owners or to destroy them.

Keeping a crime quiet is one thing. Using city resources to cover it up? Well. That’s quite another.

How does your version of Fullerton align with this potential reality?

In any case, this clearly needs to be taken up by someone well outside Doug’s reach. It’s clear that Doug has influence over Fullerton’s management, but he may also control the purse strings of county officials soon. That means we can’t trust that favors haven’t already been exchanged with the District Attorney and Sheriff offices.

Stealing signs may be Petty Theft, but using government resources to cover up a crime is not. We hate to make a federal case over something so insane, but if Doug, Dunn & Domer really are colluding to cover up Paulette’s crime to benefit Doug’s campaign, that’s serious business.

In any case, this much is clear: we’re owed an explanation. Has Paulette and Doug’s property been searched? What about their cars where videos show her putting the stolen property? Did Doug, Dunn & Domer meet? If so, when and where? How long did the meeting last?

So far, the city has said nothing. Not one word. Not one iota of acknowledgement. Nothing from PD. Nor the Mayor. Nor the Council. Not even the City Manager. Not a word has been uttered publicly from anybody.

Even for Fullerton, that’s odd.

The County has been equally as silent. Our DA is too busy campaigning to make sure this is handled in an expeditious and honest fashion.

We think that all this silence means that at least part of this leak. . . hypothetical . . . might be true. Here’s why:

In Fullerton we’re accustomed to our city hiding behind disclosure laws to “protect the city from liability” while managing to only protect bad apples from being thrown in the waste bin. We watched it after the Kelly Thomas murder and we watched it again with the Felz Sappy McTree coverup. We’ve seen it countless times before and since.

Our rotating crop of City Council members, City Managers and staff just default to incompetency, lies and dubious readings of the law out of habit. It’s the natural state at City Hall.

Keystone Cops

Usually POBAR (the Police Officer’s Bill of Rights) can be blamed for a lot of this when a cop is involved.

Sometimes we’re told nothing for no reason whatsoever (How did that Parks & Rec vehicle end up on it’s roof and who was to blame?).

But this time is different.

Just yesterday a City Council candidate, Paulette Marshall Chaffee, dropped out of the race for the District 5 seat on council because she got caught red handed being a thief.

Paulette Sign Thief
Oops, She Did it Again

Her pity-me-party dropout letter is nonsense and we all know she’d be at the candidate forum tonight were it not for the videos we posted here to FFFF.

This time, there’s no scapegoat. There’s no underling for the Chief of Police to blame, there’s no entry level parks employee to take the heat, and there’s no crazy homeless person to label as the problem.

This time, it’s the very rich Mayor’s wife. The Mayor who’s about to become a County Supervisor and control the very large budgets for some very powerful people.

Maybe we’ll get lucky and somebody at City Hall will do the right and honest thing and tell us what’s happened so far and what’s happening.

We’ll have our eyes on the city yard otherwise.

CHAFFEE QUITS

Anyone know what to know a defining feature of shitty politician?

They never, ever, apologize.

Enter, Paulette Marshall Chaffee. Over the past week, FFFF’s crack investigative pool embarrassed Pilfering Paulette into suspending her campaign after posting not one, but two separate videos of Mrs. Chaffee taking down political signage and driving away with property that isn’t hers.

Hat tip to Sharon Kennedy at the Fullerton Observer for getting a statement from Chaffee:

“I have too much respect for the people in this community to put them through this clearly toxic campaign. therefore I have decided for the good of the community to suspend my campaign for Fullerton City Council District 5.”

Really? Too much respect?

Let’s consider that. Pilfering Paulette has “too much respect for the people in *this* community to put them through this clearly toxic campaign”, but not enough respect not to steal.

(more…)

Oops, Did She Do It Again?!

In case you missed it, Paulette Marshall Chaffee looks to have been caught on video stealing signs from private property in her pretend district while illegally parked in a red zone because if one rule doesn’t apply to her – why should any amiright?

But Oops. It looks like she did it again.

Is it kleptomania? A spontaneous sign stealing spree?

(more…)

Sign Thief’s Vehicle Traced Back to Mayor Chaffee’s Estate

We just received word that the vehicle seen used by the Fullerton sign thief was discovered this morning parked in the driveway of the home of Fullerton Mayor, and 4th District Supervisor Candidate, Doug Chaffee.

Despite Mayor Chaffee living up the hill in the 2nd District, his wife Paulette recently moved south to the 5th district, where she also happens to be running a city council campaign. Why would the vehicle in question drive all the way down to South Fullerton to meddle in a different district’s election?

If you watch the video which was posted earlier today, you’ll see a mysterious figure stealing a campaign sign from private property near downtown Fullerton. Looking at the video it certainly seems to match the Grand Cherokee that was discovered at Chaffee’s house by an intrepid Friend.

It is sadly common for those running for office to try and silence their opposition but it’s hard to believe the wife of a sitting Mayor would be so brazen, especially with both of them running for office simultaneously.

This is petty theft and is a misdemeanor with a maximum punishment of either 6 months or 1 year in a county jail, and/or a $1,000 fine.

That’s a decent sized risk for the rest of us but I suppose the Chaffees are above such considerations.

** UPDATE **

A request for comment was sent to both campaigns with neither responding by the time of publishing.

Should anyone hear from the Chaffees, please let us know.

District 5 Ballot Loses a Candidate

Well, it looks like District 5’s ballot is going to be one candidate shy come election time this November as our prospective progressive/socialist climate warrior neighbor Jose Trinidad Castaneda III didn’t quite make the cut.

If you don’t know – you need 20 registered voters to sign a petition for you to run for city council and they must be valid signatures. 20. Castaneda, with his “deep roots” in District 5 opted to turn in just 23 (leaving the 7 extra spots blank) and a few were disqualified. Apparently Castaneda couldn’t be bothered to do the bare minimum which is to turn in 20 valid signatures.

Socialists of a Feather

Upon finding out that turning in just above the bare minimum number of signatures, despite some bloviating on his campaign Facebook page, wasn’t good enough owing to disqualifications he did what any good socialist does and he sued.

CastanedaSues

And today he lost that lawsuit.

CastanedaWritDenied

Let that sink in for when he runs his write-in campaign or perhaps carpetbags in 2020. He couldn’t be bothered to meet the bare minimum threshold and then sued because he didn’t think the rules should apply to him. This is not a mentality Fullerton needs or can afford and yet the mentality that typically is attracted to our City Council.

It seems that in this 60% Latino District the top two Progressives are a Caucasian Carpetbagger and a Syrian Showman. Which of the race baiting district election supporters saw this coming?

*Editorial Correction – In the original version of this post we said that District 5 lost a candidate. According to Castaneda’s lawyer, Greg Diamond, “Trini” plans on running a write-in campaign. So while he may still be a losing candidate, there will in fact be one-less than anticipated candidate on the ballot.

The original post also stated that Castaneda did the bare minimum. The law is to turn in 20 valid signatures and thus stating that Castaneda did the bare minimum is factually incorrect. Had he met the minimum threshold he would have qualified. He factually did less than the bare minimum and attempted to do just above the bare minimum.

Chaffees Buying His and Hers Campaigns

I’m not sure what’s funnier, that Doug Chaffee is hiring canvassers to beat Tim Shaw in the top-two general election race or that he and his wife are spending an equal amount of money to help her buy a seat in District 5 in Fullerton.

It’s going to be hilarious to see how much money Doug blows to be outvoted 4-1 every meeting.

As for Paulette, you’d think with such deep roots in District 2 5 she’d be able to get grassroots support instead of simply paying for AstroTurf. But hey, you know how those his and hers gifts come as a packaged deal.

Chaffee Gigs
His and Hers Campaigns

We should also take note that she “prefers” that you live in 92831. Kind of like it’s only preferred that Paulette lives in and is not carpetbag into District 5.

Fullerton’s Mixed Primary Results

Recall Bull

Bulls**t or not, Josh Newman got crushed by the voters in the mid-term primary which is currently sitting at nearly 60/40 in favor of Recall (though the totals will change slightly). Newman’s supporters seem to be caterwauling about how (D)s only show up in Presidential races and low turnout caused Newman’s electoral demise but to that I say “so what?”.

If your electoral success is predicated upon people who are too lazy to mail back an absentee ballot more than once every four years I don’t have much sympathy in your loss.

Josh Newman could have easily survived this recall had be run as the man I interviewed on my podcast but instead he ran into the arms of Brown/deLeon and got the shellacking he deserved. A little less contempt for voters and a lot more explaining of facts/reasons would have gone a long way but alas that’s not how he rolled. His staff is now unemployed owing to his arrogance.

It is true that I likewise lost in the recall. Current results have me at about 12% of the vote across the 3 counties. Obviously I would have preferred a better showing but if this is the way I go out I’ll take it because removing Josh Newman was more important.

SD29 Primary Results

I’ll suffer through L2 if it means humbling a man who lied to my face at his swearing in ceremony. My bet is that Newman will be back in 2020 but for now he has 2 years to consider this an abject lesson in how Representative Democracy works in California. You don’t raise our taxes and then insult our intelligence without some consequences.

In other election news two of Fullerton’s own, and yet worst, appear to have made it passed the June 5th Primary in contentious races: Doug Chaffee & Young Kim.

In the still being counted Supervisor race, for the seat being vacated by Shawn Nelson, Chaffee is ahead of Kerr by a few hundred votes for Top2. Kerr may still have a shot to knock him out of it but it seems unlikely. It is also likely that provisional ballots could swing left and Kerr/Chaffee could knock Shaw out so I wouldn’t want to be sitting in Shaw’s seat right now.

Chaffee as Supervisor
Really? Doug for Supes?

In the big money race for Royce’s seat we see that Kim managed to absolutely STOMP local boy Shawn Nelson with the help of DCCC attack ads and other (R)s splitting the vote.

Young Kim over Nelson
The End of Nelson?

Young Kim owes Huff and Libertore a round of drinks for their hard work in keeping Nelson out of Royce’s seat and then the (R)s will likely need to apologize to Nelson after Cisneros stomps Kim should she agree to a debate.

There were only two people running for Assembly so they both advance and that race stays uninteresting until November.

Did you vote in any of these races? Are you happy with the election results? What did the voters get right/wrong? What do you think we should expect in November?