Thread: How San Diego Elected a 'Birther' Judge

How San Diego Elected a 'Birther' Judge

Posted: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 4:44 pm | Updated: 5:57 pm, Wed Jun 27, 2012.
by Keegan Kyle

One of the most intriguing results from the June 5 election involved two candidates for San Diego Superior Court judge: Gary Kreep and Garland Peed.

Kreep, a constitutional law attorney and head of a nonprofit legal foundation, narrowly defeated Peed, a 27-year county prosecutor. The countywide result came down to less than 2,000 votes.

Judicial elections typically receive little public attention, but Kreep's victory attracted national scrutiny because he is prominent advocate for the “birther movement,” which claims President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Kreep has participated in commercials questioning Obama's eligibility for office.

The two candidates' last names have also drawn a fair amount of snickering and mockery. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, for example, struggled to discuss the election on her June 7 show while trying to retain her composure. Still laughing, she wiped tears from her eyes at the end of the segment.

Together, these factors have fed speculation that the roughly 400,000 people who voted in the election were ill-informed and randomly picked candidates based on their names. Had voters been adequately informed about Kreep's background, the argument went, his opponent would've won.

"I doubt that more than a handful had any idea who he was when they marked their ballots," wrote Andy Cohen for the San Diego Free Press, a progressive news website. "More likely the voters saw his funny name and thought it would be a riot to put a guy named 'Kreep' onto the bench."

In an editorial, the alt-weekly San Diego CityBeat directly chastised county voters for supporting Kreep. It wrote, "Did you really think he was the best man for the job? Or did you choose him because his last name tickled your fancy?"

In an interview with Kreep last week, KPBS' Joanne Faryon also asked whether the names had played much of a role in the election's outcome. Kreep called the suggestion ridiculous and rebuked Maddow and Cohen for making it.

"[They] said today my election is the reason people shouldn't be allowed to vote for judges," Kreep said. "The liberal elitist establishment believes that the common people are too stupid to make the decisions."

Instead, Kreep told Ramona Patch last week, his victory should be attributed to his campaign strategy. He purchased a "tremendous amount" of slate mailers from various organizations and robo-calls to voters. (He spent $14,000, CityBeat reported.)

It's impossible to measure whether the names greatly influenced the election's outcome without exit polling, but I decided to examine precinct results for any indication of a discernible pattern. The map below shows who won each precinct, according to unofficial results released by county election officials.


The map doesn't show a random pattern but rather a clear geographic divide between rural and urban parts of the county.

My takeaway? The results undermine the idea that many voters randomly selected the candidates based on their last names. If that factor had been widespread, a very distinct and bizarre difference exists between what urban and more rural voters find funnier.

At first glance, the geographic divide appears to follow a more historic split between conservative and liberal voters, but party affiliation doesn't appear to be a consistent indicator in this case. (See this U-T San Diego map of party registration for reference.)

Peed, for example, won precincts with some of the highest concentrations of registered Republicans (like Point Loma and Rancho Bernardo) as well as areas dense with registered Democrats (like Hillcrest and North Park).

Kreep's support also extended beyond rural areas historically won by Republican candidates. Much of the South Bay, where a majority of registered voters are Democrats, backed Kreep for judge.

So what do you think? What might explain the trends above? Please share your insight in the comments section below or email me directly. If you voted June 5, who did you vote for and why?

Keegan Kyle is a news reporter for Voice of San Diego. He writes about local government, creates infographics and handles the Fact Check Blog. What should he write about next?

Please contact him directly at keegan.kyle@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5668. You can also find him on Twitter (@keegankyle) and Facebook.

How San Diego Elected a 'Birther' Judge - Voice of San Diego: Government

Fine may not be last problem for Kreep

Other judges fined by FPPC have received judicial sanctions

By Greg Moran | 5 a.m. Sept. 16, 2015


Gary Kreep [U-T file]— Eduardo Contreras+Read Caption

San Diego Superior Court Judge Gary Kreep’s election victory in 2012 attracted national attention because it placed the conservative activist, most famous for challenging the citizenship of President Obama in court, on the local bench.

Since that win, Kreep’s campaign has also attracted attention from the state’s campaign watchdog agency, twice, over not properly disclosing how his effort was being funded and who was being paid.

His troubles may not be over. As a state court judge, Kreep is also subject to discipline by the state Commission on Judicial Performance, which oversees the conduct of judges in the Superior Court and appeals courts and is charged with handing out discipline.

Kreep, who is assigned to the downtown courts and hears civil cases and landlord-tenant eviction cases, declined through a court spokeswoman to comment on the settlement with election regulators.

The Fair Political Practices Commission announced Sept. 4 that the judge had agreed to pay a $6,000 fine to settle allegations that he spent $41,796 of his own money on campaign expenses and didn’t properly report it. The campaign was also cited for not reporting accrued expenses – money owed, but not paid – for slate mailers sent out before the election.

The settlement is expected to be approved by the commission at its regular meeting Thursday. Whether there will be more fallout from the fine isn’t known: the judicial commission does not comment on whether a judge is the subject of a pending complaint or disclose private discipline, said the commission’s longtime executive director, Victoria Henley.

Records show that the campaign ethics regulators have penalized a handful of state judicial candidates over the years.

Since 1991, the FPPC has fined 18 state court judges for violations of campaign finance rules, records show. The fine Kreep has agreed to pay is the tied for the third largest ever levied on a judge.

In 2006 a Santa Barbara County judge was fined $15,000, and removed from the bench, for lying about the source of $20,000 in campaign money. In 2006 a Butte County judge was fined $7,000 for not disclosing that his father was the source of a $71,000 loan for the campaign. A Humboldt County judge was fined $6,000 in 2002 for filing late and incomplete reports.

Of those 18 judges, three were later publicly disciplined by the judicial performance commission. Some could have received an advisory letter or private admonishment, both of which are not made public.

The formal stipulation from the FPPC that outlined the Kreep case said that he made the expenditures – which paid for campaign literature and mailings mostly – from a personal bank account, and not from a campaign bank account as the law requires.

The $41,796 amounted to 82 percent of the total campaign expenditures in the race, which Kreep won by 1,500 votes out of more than 400,000 cast over a veteran prosecutor.

The FPPC said the violations got around the requirement that expenditures come out of a designated campaign bank account, a rule that exists “to facilitate tracking and verification of campaign finance activity and ensure campaign funds are sued for campaign-related activities.”

This was the second time that campaign regulators have focused on Kreep. He received a warning letter in October 2013 for not properly disclosing payments to campaign vendors in his official disclosure reports. The warning letter carried no fine.

In both cases the FPPC noted that Kreep and his campaign cooperated fully with investigators. In the most recent case the agency said there wasn’t any evidence the campaign tried to conceal the expenditures.

The violations that led to the fine were first uncovered during a random audit that the Franchise Tax Board conducts of election campaigns, according to records from the tax agency.

The audit uncovered the source of the money, and said that $38,023 was disclosed as loans from the candidate to the committee.

The audit was not completed until after the FPPC issued its warning letter to Kreep in the autumn of 2013.

Kreep has been the subject of at least one complaint to the judicial commission in April 2013 stemming from the 2012 campaign, but no public discipline was even announced. Under the commission rules judges can be sanctioned publicly or privately with a letter.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/...ge-discipline/