Brown Attends Fundraiser For Republican D.A. In San Bernardino

There's a way to sort of excuse Jerry Brown for joining the partisan witch hunt and investigating ACORN, on the grounds that he is also looking into whether the two wingnut-welfare dress-up clowns who filmed the employees broke the law by taping without mutual consent. It's somewhat harder to spin away Brown's attendance at a fundraiser for Republican District Attorney Mike Ramos.

California Attorney General Edmund Brown, Jr. was the guest of honor and introduced District Attorney Mike Ramos at his campaign fundraiser tonight in Ontario. In introducing Ramos, Attorney General Brown said, “Mike Ramos is one of the best prosecutors in California, we served on the statewide Gang and Violent Crime Task Force together … he’s a real fighter.”

It is actually against the bylaws of the Democratic State Central Committee to endorse a Republican in a partisan race. Some members of the DSCC who want to support Republicans actually resign from the party. I'm trying without success to determine whether the DA race in San Bernardino County is a non-partisan race; typically, that is the case.

But there are lots of other reasons that a Democrat running in a primary would not necessarily want to endorse a Republican like Mike Ramos. Beyond the obvious reasons, Ramos has been accused of sexual harrassment by a woman who works in the DA's office. Ramos has called it an effort to derail a series of investigations against public officials in the county. Ramos has also received $30,000 in donations over the years from the business of Mark Leggio, who was indicted on charges of laundering over-the-limit campaign donations to various other candidates for office. Ramos recused himself from the investigation. Leggio pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months in prison. There's quite a bit of smoke here.

Between this and partying with the Lincoln Club of San Diego, the point is that Jerry Brown has started to run the general election, appealing to the center-right electorate that he feels wins elections. That may have been true in 1978, but maybe not so much now, given the demographic changes in the state. What's more, it's incredibly disrespectful to a Democratic primary electorate that is really being told they have nowhere else to go.