PD - PROSECUTOR STOEN DROPS SENATE BID

PROSECUTOR STOEN DROPS SENATE BID
Published on December 13, 2003
© 2003- The Press Democrat
BYLINE:    MIKE GENIELLA
PAGE: B1

Humboldt County prosecutor Tim Stoen's zig-zagging political career is providing fresh fodder for backers of a recall campaign against his boss, District Attorney Paul Gallegos.

Stoen, who over the past decade has switched political parties a number of times to run for state and federal offices, last weekend abruptly ended a bid to run for the U.S. Senate just one day after he paid a $3,000 filing fee and announced his campaign to become a Republican opponent of Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Stoen first announced he was withdrawing so he could ``fully focus on prosecuting crime in Humboldt County.''

By Tuesday, Stoen was citing the entrance of Bill Jones, former California secretary of state, into the Senate race as the key factor in his decision to drop out.

Stoen and Gallegos could not be reached Friday for comment on the fallout surrounding Stoen's latest political venture.

But backers of a campaign to recall Gallegos in the March primary are having a field day with Stoen's political antics, including his initial declaration that he was running to expose at the state and national levels the ``forces of evil'' behind the recall.

``The triggering event for my entering into this campaign was Pacific Lumber Company's disreputable act of spending thousands of dollars to fund the current recall campaign,'' Stoen said then.

Pacific Lumber immediately fired back, saying Stoen's statement confirmed what the company suspected all along: that Gallegos' decision to allow Stoen to file a controversial civil fraud lawsuit against the company shortly after assuming office earlier this year was politically motivated.

``Stoen's short-lived campaign reinforces that he is ill-informed and ill-advised,'' Pacific Lumber spokeswoman Erin Dunn said Friday. ``It also reinforces the company's position that the lawsuit is without merit and has been politically motivated from the beginning.''

Besides the notoriety surrounding Stoen and the lawsuit against Pacific Lumber, the prosecutor's past is coming under new scrutiny from critics of Gallegos.

The recent 25th anniversary of the mass murder/suicide at Jonestown has brought fresh reminders of Stoen's early role in the Peoples Temple. Stoen was chief legal adviser to cult leader Jim Jones, and helped orchestrate Jones' rise to political power in Mendocino County and later San Francisco.

Stoen broke from Jones a year before the 1978 Jonestown tragedy, but his 6-year-old son died along with more than 900 others in the jungle of Guyana.

``If the hiring of an ex-cultist is the best Gallegos could do after an alleged nationwide search, then that says a lot about his abilities,'' said Rick Brazeau, an Arcata political consultant who's managing the March recall campaign against Gallegos.

``We want to make sure the voters understand that,'' Brazeau said.

You can reach Staff Writer Mike Geniella at 462-6470 or mgeniella@pressdemocrat.com