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Contributors
Patrick
Mallon -
Columnist
 What
Happened to Kevin Shelley?
A falling liberal star...
[Patrick Mallon] 2/7/05
According
to the LA Times ("Allegations Lead to Rising
Star's Fall" - Feb. 5):
"Though his wide grin belied a furious temper, Kevin Shelley
- son of congressman and protégé of a political
legend - had been the darling of San Francisco Democrats until
his future swerved out of control.
"In a year, accolades
that Shelley earned for smoothly steering the first election
to recall a California governor were
overtaken by accusations that he broke laws, berated employees
and ran a sloppy office as secretary of state."
In a nutshell, Shelley's office has been besieged by charges
that:
- a He received a $125,000 campaign contribution from a backer
who benefited from a special state grant that Shelley had coordinated
for a community building that was never constructed.
- b He violated federal rules in the allocation of millions in
federal election funds, specifically Help America Vote Act (HAVA)money
earmarked for improving voter registration and the use of electronic
voting equipment. State records show Shelley used a chunk of
the money to promote his personal political objectives, allocating
HAVA resources to partisan causes, and paying consultants who
acted as Shelley operatives at Democratic political events.
- c He failed to adequately prepare the state for a federally-mandated requirement that California have a statewide
voter registration database in place by January 2006.
Conversely, as the state's head of administering elections,
Shelley did an admirable job in introducing new electronic voting
equipment into California's 58 counties.
Responding to pressure from voter advocacy groups, he successfully
convinced the legislature to pass a bill requiring that voting
machines include a printer to provide voters with a receipt and
paper audit trail.
He was also sincere in demanding high standards for California
election security.
The Real Problem: Anger Management
But Shelley's real problem was controlling his temper. He could
explode at staffers in a moments notice, blew up over mistakes
as trivial as the wrong size font in his briefing notes, and
created a work environment so hostile that his office experienced
some of the highest personnel turnover in the state.
This reporter covered
the topic for NewsMax.com back in August 2003 in "Anger
Management and Subverting the Recall."
Back in 1998,
when Shelley was the Democratic leader in the California Assembly,
his temper "terrified employees in
both his Capitol and district offices," reported Robert
B. Gunnison of the San Francisco Chronicle. At the time Shelley
openly admitted:
"I'm talking to people who are helping
me with both my demeanor and my anger and to the extent
that it gets misdirected. I've always been a hothead and had
a temper, and
I'm trying better to control that."
After a number of informal complaints about Shelley's behavior,
the Assembly rules committee had to resort to hiring a private
$160-an-hour lawyer to evaluate the assemblyman's performance.
His father was a longtime labor leader and mayor of San Francisco.
He served six years on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
He was elected to chair the Democratic Caucus soon after he arrived
in the legislature, and was then elected by his Democratic colleagues
to be Assembly Majority Leader. In many ways, Shelley felt entitled
to his advancement, because he knew no life other than politics.
He also has a short
fuse. Various news reports describe him as "bullying," "mercurial," "abusive," "belittling" and "a
tyrant."
When he fired
a female worker during his stint as an assemblyman, he pursued
the woman
down the hallway and, according to the Chronicle:
"...stood
in front of her as she tried three times to get on the elevator.
The incident was recorded by a California Highway Patrol
security camera, and the tape was reviewed by the Chronicle.
"'I'm
intense. It is the very thing that achieves great success
for me, but I'm so myopically focused on it that the
downside of it is it creates an unpleasant environment,'
said Shelley."
Fast forward from 1998 to 2005, Shelley apparently still couldn't
get his anger issues under control.
According to the San
Francisco Chronicle ("When Shelley
needed friends the most, he found himself alone," February
5, 2005):
"A former San Francisco supervisor, a former assemblyman
and one of only 10 statewide elected officials, Shelley had left
a wake of bitter former staffers, legislators who found little
reason to stick up for him and plenty of people who weren't bashful
about bad-mouthing a mortally wounded politician.
"'He
was volatile, he was manipulative and he was a nightmare,'
said Fred Hamdun, a former deputy director in the secretary
of state's office who described working for the mercurial
Shelley
as 'morbid.'"
And yet, some Democrats
continued to offer a life raft for Shelley, especially Assemblywoman
Nicole Parra, D-Hanford, chairwoman
of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee responsible for conducting
the Shelley investigation. Parra has granted several "courtesy" time
extensions to the formal date for testimony, a date that may
now never happen.
Now, Gov. Schwarzenegger will appoint a new secretary of state
to the office Kevin Shelley will vacate on March 1.
In the 2002 fall elections, Democrats won all eight constitutional
offices, a level of dominance some may have taken as a signal
that no opposition existed to their reign. Hunkering Democrats
now must face the reality that they're lost two of those offices,
and they have no popular statewide standard-bearer to carry the
torch, nor the policies that create any enthusiasm with registered
voters. In fact, the state legislature has never been more unpopular,
and they are stuck with two uncompromising stances on illegal
immigrant driver's licenses and gay marriage.
So yet another promising Democrat from California watches his
career fizzle out, largely because he failed to adhere to one
of the most important lessons in modern politics, treat everyone
else the same way you expect to be treated, because you never
know who your friends are when you're on the way out. CRO
Note: Patrick will be on the air with Linda Chavez on Monday
morning, Feb. 7, at 8:35 a.m. EST (Liberty Broadcasting (WMET,
AM 1160,
Washington, DC)
Patrick
Mallon is a political journalist and author of California
Dictatorship: How Liberal Extremism Destroyed Gray Davis.
[read an excerpt]. Patrick
is a regular guest on talk radio programs throughout
the state
and nationally. His website is at PatrickMallon.com and
can be contacted at patrick@patrickmallon.com
copyright
2005 Patrick Mallon
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