Mck Press - Gallegos gets Democratic Party's endorsement after emotional debate

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The HCDCC voted to endorse one democrat over another. Worse, they characterized a lifelong Democrat as a "Republican Stalking Horse" - all part of the bizarre and twisted politics that surround District Attorney paul Gallegos nad his failed Palco lawsuit.

Gallegos gets Democratic Party's endorsement after emotional debate
By Daniel Mintz Press Staff Writer

An endorsement of District Attorney Paul Gallegos' re-election has put the county's Democratic Central Committee in his challenger's campaign gunsight and came after former and current prosecutors urged the group not to favor a candidate in the volatile power contest.

The committee's Gallegos endorsement was approved by a 20 to one vote at its Wednesday, April 12, meeting, yet a long and dramatic debate preceded it along with a public comment session with split opinions. Deputy District Attorney Worth Dikeman, the veteran prosecutor challenging Gallegos, had detailed his objections to the committee's endorsement during last month's meeting and in newspaper columns, portraying the group's stamp of approval as the spoil of political engineering.

Members of the influential committee, including Chairman Patrick Riggs, are well-known Gallegos supporters and Dikeman has accused them of "back room" manipulation. But committee members said the endorsement follows the group's bylaws and argued that free speech would be crimped if the action is squashed by political resentments.

Gallegos and Dikeman weren't at the meeting but their supporters debated the endorsement, sometimes with urgency, with comparisons to Republican behavior being a shared tactic. And after the pro-Gallegos vote, an attempt at blade-twisting came in the form of a motion to demand that Dikeman endorse his opponent and quit the race.

The motion was seconded but voted down, and finished a long night that began with objections from a veteran prosecutor who was fired by Gallegos in the aftermath of the internally explosive 2003 recall election.

'Gutted'

Allison Jackson, who prosecuted sex crimes and domestic violence cases for 10 years prior to being fired by Gallegos, is a non-voting member of the committee and said she's watched the D.A.'s office lose its grip on the types of prosecution she once specialized in.

She said the office's domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse units have been disassembled or "gutted," and added that "Democrats need to be aware of those issues and we should be discussing them as opposed to whether or not we're going to endorse one democrat over the next."

But Gallegos became a local hero to some when he filed a fraud lawsuit against the Pacific Lumber Company shortly after being elected. Dikeman has described the legal action as Gallegos' gift to the "special interests" that support him, and the lawsuit ran into trouble in court. It was dismissed but Gallegos has filed an appeal, and Committee Member Greg Conners portrayed the D.A. as an anti-corruption crusader who deserves another term.

A former Eureka city planning commissioner, Conners said he's "seen corruption at the local level as if it were a sewer I was walking through up to my waist" and "you couldn't get the local district attorney to touch those issues with a ten-foot pole."

But it's different now, Conners continued. "Paul Gallegos is the first district attorney that I know of, in my lifetime - and this a courthouse brat who's been involved in local politics talking - who's had the balls to go after corporate corruption and political corruption," he said.

Republican taints?

Conners is the chairman of the committee's Campaign Services Subcommittee, which unanimously voted to recommend the Gallegos endorsement the week prior. Deputy District Attorney and environmental crimes prosecutor Paul Hagen, however, said the "comprehensive review" of the process that he'd asked for at the previous meeting had been given only token consideration.

Hagen said he'd refuse to endorse any Democrat if there was more than one running in a race. And he told the committee its behavior is downright Republican.

"I don't think we look very good - to say the least," he continued, adding that party-line groupthink is a GOP trait. "We're supposed to be about debate, we're supposed to be about diversity, we're supposed to be about open process and transparency - did we have any of that last month in this very critical endorsement issue? The answer - obviously not."

Most of the other members of the committee spoke in favor of favoring Gallegos. Pam Service speculated that the reason why a Republican hasn't entered the D.A. race is because Dikeman is a "stalking horse" for the GOP, and is fulfilling that political role.

"In this race, although both are technically registered Democrats, we've got a fairly obvious situation where one is really the Republican candidate," she said.

Hagen's vote was the only dissenting one in the ensuing vote to endorse Gallegos. But another strong majority defeated Committee Member Betty Boyd's motion to ask Dikeman to endorse his boss and drop out of the contest.

Then the committee took up a somewhat related matter - Supervisor Jill Geist and Committee Member Pat Higgins, the leading candidates in the Fifth District supervisor race, had given presentations earlier and the group considered making an endorsement but voted not to do so.

Before the vote, one committee member explained that the supervisor election differs from the D.A. race because its most credible candidates are both progressive Democrats.