Court-Side Seats for GOP Games

* Re Kenneth L. Khachigian’s column, “Verdict Is In on D.A.’s Use of 2 Standards,” June 8:

Left out of this embarrassingly ignorant piece was the fact that the district attorney’s office gave former Rep. Robert K. Dornan a free ride when Dornan violated election law by giving a business address as his residence when he first carpetbagged here from Los Angeles.

Khachigian, apparently believing that Assemblyman Scott Baugh (R-Huntington Beach) should have been given a “bye” rather than have his home raided “in a predawn, Christmas-season raid to seize materials,” doesn’t say if all crime suspects should be exempt from raids during holidays or just Republicans.

He doesn’t offer an opinion as to whether Baugh and Rhonda Carmony are guilty of anything (he has no such reservations about the “educrats”).

He makes no comment on the offensive dirty tricks aspect of the decoy candidate ploy that helped bring this mess down on Baugh and company, a really stupid, nasty schoolboy/schoolgirl prank (elementary school, at that).

He doesn’t say the obvious right thing to do: If the district attorney believes he has reason to prosecute alleged Baugh-type political rule-breaking, he should do so, and it’s too bad if he neglected to do so in the past.

He gives no credit to Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi for standing up to statewide Republican appeals and political arm-twisting to drop the Baugh/Carmony case. It was, and is, intense.

I’m sympathetic to Baugh and Carmony. They probably believed their mischief was important, not just cute. But Khachigian--it’s old boys like him who inspire young people to meanness. He’s just too partisan for words. Like honesty, morality, condoning Baugh and Carmony.

MARK DAVIDSON

Costa Mesa

* The Los Angeles Times on June 3 quotes Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Brent Romney as saying, “I do not believe for one minute that Congressman Rohrabacher told Miss Carmony not to get involved” in the effort to recruit a Democrat to run in the special election to recall Assemblywoman Doris Allen.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) has said from the very beginning that he told Carmony not to be involved with any effort to recruit a Democrat. All the evidence supports Rohrabacher’s statement and there are no witnesses whose testimony disputes his statement.

Romney’s unwillingness to accept the fact that Rohrabacher was not involved underscores the fact that the prosecution of Carmony is really a politically motivated assault aimed at Rohrabacher.

Not able to go after Rohrabacher directly, because he has done nothing wrong, Romney and his boss, Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi, instead attack Rohrabacher’s fiancee. A cowardly act in anyone’s book.

The real crime is that Carmony is the victim of a political witch hunt directed by the district attorney.

MARSHALL RILEY

Glendale