2020 roundup: House challengers in Orange County catch heat over Trump ties, ethical violation

One Republican congressional candidate from Orange County is being called out for receiving campaign help from a political operative closely tied to indicted Trump adviser Roger Stone.

Another is being chastised for using a city council email address for campaign business.

And another is fighting back against people labeling her a “white supremacist” because she’s a proud Trump supporter.

These are some of the news bites generating buzz on the campaign trail as local elections heat up, with seven months to go until the 2020 primary.

First up is news that Costa Mesa attorney Paul Rolf Jensen is helping Mission Viejo Mayor Greg Raths with his GOP campaign challenging Rep. Katie Porter, D-Irvine, for the 45th congressional district seat.

Email tipsters and redditors last week began noting that Jensen is best known for working with indicted Trump ally Roger Stone, for fighting gay rights within the Presbyterian church, and for representing a defendant who was part of the “birther” movement, questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

Jensen — a Laguna Hills resident who has donated $5,600 to Raths’ campaign this year — has said that he founded the tax-exempt group Stop the Steal, which was sued by Democrats for intimidation and eyed during special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Court records show Mueller also investigated Stone’s Super PAC Committee to Restore America’s Greatness, which received donations from Jensen’s Costa Mesa law firm and paid him more than $100,000 for legal services.

Jensen’s wife, Pamela Jensen, in 2016 also ran a short-lived Super PAC called the Rape Accountability Project for Education, or RAPE.  Stone said at the time that the Jensen’s PAC would pay for ads showing women who claimed to be victims of Hillary and Bill Clinton. And Pamela Jensen in 2011 helped create a tax-exempt nonprofit called “Should Trump Run,” a PAC that included Michael Cohen — Trump’s former personal lawyer who’s now serving three years in prison for tax evasion, giving false statements to a bank and violating campaign finance law by orchestrating hush money payments for Trump.

Some critics argue this all ties GOP candidate Raths with the “alt-right” movement, which could be seen as risky in a district that voted against Trump in 2016 and flipped its congressional representation blue in 2018. Others argue that these stances have become mainstream in the Republican party, from the White House on down. And it’s worth noting that Republicans still have a four point advantage in voter registration in CA-45.

When questioned about his decision to get campaign help from Paul Jensen, Raths — who is a staunch Trump supporter — said Jensen is his family attorney and neighbor. Raths said Jensen is volunteering his time as treasurer for his CA-45 campaign, and added that Jensen has decades of experience on Capitol Hill and is an “expert on FEC financial filing.” Raths also pointed out that Jensen has represented clients charged with everything from failing to control dangerous dogs to murder during his nearly 30-year legal career, saying it is “silly to ascribe the views of any criminal defendant to the lawyer representing him.”

Since starting work with his campaign, Raths said he isn’t aware of Jensen publicly expressing his own views on any related subject.

“I do know that guilt by association comes right out of the (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) playbook and will gladly put my 35 years of military and public service against liberal Katie Porter.”

Another Porter challenger is also taking some heat for an apparent ethical violation.

In addition to running for CA-45, Peggy Huang also sits on the Yorba Linda City Council. That city’s ethics code says city resources, including email addresses, can’t be used to do campaign work. But the DCCC did a public records request and found that during a three-month period ending in late June Huang used her city council email address to send a half dozen emails involving her congressional campaign. Records show the brief emails were all to campaign consultants and all dealt with routine campaign issues such as fundraising, scheduling and interview requests. She was not found to be using the city-sponsored email to reach constituents.

“Huang unethically used government resources for explicitly political purposes and completely broke the trust of those she serves in the city of Yorba Linda,” said Andy Orellano, spokesman for the DCCC.

When asked about the issue, Huang said she didn’t realize she’d accidentally used her city email to send those campaign messages until it was flagged by the city clerk following the DCCC’s records request. Huang said she has three email addresses — a personal address, city address and campaign address — that she had been accessing from her iPhone, and didn’t realize the phone had automatically populated those campaign messages with the wrong “sender” email address. As soon as she was notified, Huang said she deleted her city council email from her phone as a precaution so the mix-up can’t happen again.

Huang and Raths face four other Republican challengers plus Porter in the CA-45 race. The local GOP hasn’t endorsed anyone for the seat yet, making it tough to pinpoint a front-runner — though Laguna Hills Councilman Donald Sedgwick has the lead in fundraising.

Over in the 47th congressional district, GOP challenger Amy Phan West of Westminster is fighting back against people who are calling her racist and making disparaging comments about her husband and children because she posted a photo to Facebook of her holding a large banner that reads “Trump 2020 Keep America Great.”

West, who is Vietnamese American, recently entered the CA-47 race as a challenger against Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach. Lowenthal won reelection in 2018 by nearly 30 percentage points in a district that leans blue by more than 20 percentage points.

Redditors shared West’s photo with the pro-Trump banner in a forum called Asian Identity. Commenters seized on the fact that West’s husband is white, saying she must just be “parroting” her husband’s “evil” politics. And they made comments about her three young sons looking Latino, saying West and her husband “are just ecstatic that Trump is not putting their kids in cages.”

In response, West referenced singer and actress Bette Midler, who recently was criticized for using the term “blackground” to describe African-American people pictured at Trump rally.

“Progressives’ talking points are about how much they care for minorities,” West said. “But in reality, theirhate-filled comments show contempt for anyone who doesn’t walk lockstep with their Progressive Socialist agenda.”

Republican Sou Moua has also taken out paperwork to challenge Lowenthal in CA-47 but doesn’t appear to have started campaigning.

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