Third Congressional
We have an ugly race here in Sacramento for the open congressional seat. Doug Ose decided not to seek reelection and the fight is on between the congressman's sister Mary Ose, State Senator Rico Oller and former Congressman and Attorney General Dan Lungren. I have never met Mary Ose, so I have no opinion about her. I really like Dan Lungren and I think Rico is scary.
When Rico first ran for Assembly in 1996, he faced a popular (and extremely attractive) opponent in Steve Sax, former Dodger second baseman. Someone ran a really ugly whisper campaign against Steve (do I think the person running the whisper campaign was Rico?) complete with totally false and outlandish accusations. For example - on a particular date Steve was accused of being arrested for a DUI in new jersey - only the truth was that on that same day Steve played in a televised baseball game in a different state. When he was accused of being a coke head and having been in rehab, the Dodger team doctor wrote a letter stating that it was Steve Howe not Steve Sax who had that problem and that the person who had a child out of wedlock was Steve Garvey not Steve Sax. Sax dropped out of the race, telling us at the time that when they accused him of killing his dog it was the last straw. Politics was just too ugly for him.
After Steve dropped out, the leading opponent was Kirk Uhler. In a series of very hard hitting mailers, Rico publicized the fact that Kirk had provided liquor to minors ... never telling the public that Kirk was 20 at the time.
Two days ago, the Bee reported that the Governor had asked Rico to quit using his likeness in Rico's ads but Rico refused. It's pretty duplicitous for Rico to pretend he supports the Governor and that the Governor supports him and lie about the Governor's role in selecting Rico to carry the driver's license bill when just a few month's ago Rico told the Lodi Sentinel
Friday, August 08, 2003
The man who hopes to assume Ose's seat after Ose retires from Congress next year finds The Terminator a bit too liberal for his liking.
"He isn't my kind of guy," state Sen. Rico Oller, R-San Andreas, said of Schwarzenegger. "He's far too liberal in many ways. He supports, as I understand it, gay adoption, gay marriage and spending tax dollars for all sorts of social programs. It's not my view of government's legitimate role."
Just a couple days before the Bee had reported about the restraining order that Rico's wife got against him 15 years ago after he physically threatened her.
But the story that intrigues me the most is the one about bear hunting. In 1998, Rico and his campaign manager were charged by the Siskiyou County District Attorney with "failure to show a bear on demand, and waste of game, violations of the state Fish and Game Code" I know nothing about hunting, but my hunting friends say that leaving an animal is a terrible violation of the outdoorsman's code. My Montana friend says that once she and her sister had to help their dad look for an elk for 8 or 10 hours after the animal was wounded but not killed. I'm very curious -- did the jury trial ever take place? What would be the penalty for this type of crime? Why hasn't the outcome been reported. Is it because Siskiyou is a tiny rural county that doesn't have their newspaper or government records online? Would it be normal for an experienced hunter to do something like this? Is a bear really a pig?
