Published: May 18, 2010
Updated: 2:54 p.m.

Former NFL player, Obama birth doubter vie for state post

By MARTIN WISCKOL
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

It's hard to imagine two more unlikely candidates for the state's top elections job.

Irvine's Damon Dunn, the secretary of state hopeful with the most Republican endorsements, is a former Democrat – and former NFL player – who never voted before last year. He calls himself a "recovering non-voter."

Opponent Orly Taitz, a Laguna Niguel dentist and attorney, has built a nationwide reputation for her efforts to prove that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president. She has also claimed that Dunn is ineligible to seek office, although her complaint was dismissed.

The GOP winner will try to upset Democratic incumbent Debra Bowen in the fall.

Dunn grew up with nine others in a three-bedroom Texas trailer. His success in the classroom and on the gridiron helped lift him from his welfare-subsidized family to a scholarship at Stanford, were he earned a degree in public policy – and became an ordained Baptist minister.

The wide receiver and kick-return specialist played on several NFL teams, in the XFL, and in Europe. He then launched his current business, developing retail sites. At Stanford, he began working with kids at underperforming schools – work that he has continued in Santa Ana. That community work has helped lead him into politics.

"I thought, 'I've helped people in the community – now I want to help many communities,' " said Dunn, 34. "It's a natural progression."

Dunn registered to vote while in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1999 – he said he thinks he signed up when he was getting his driver's license and checked "Democrat."

"The reason 90 percent of African Americans are Democrats is not because of policy," he said. "It's because Democrats are the ones who showed up in the neighborhood. These are the people who cared."

It's policy, though, that led Dunn to re-register as a Republican and become politically engaged. His pitch has been persuasive enough to win endorsements from the conservative California Republican Assembly as well as 19 state and federal lawmakers.

He says secretary of state is a natural office for him to seek, particularly when it comes to the task of increasing voter participation.

"I know what it's like to think your vote doesn't matter," he said.

Also key to his platform: Requiring voters to show identification at the polls. And when it comes to the office's job of registering businesses, he'd like to extend that function to interviewing departing businesses for find out why they're leaving the state. That information would then be forwarded to lawmakers in an effort to help keep companies here.

Taitz was born in Moldova in the then-USSR and lived in Israel and Romania before moving to the U.S. in 1987 and becoming a naturalized citizen.

She has become one of the most prominent advocates of the allegation that Obama is not a natural-born citizen and has had at least three lawsuits thrown out – including one against Bowen for not verifying Obama's citizenship. She's has been fined $20,000 for legal misconduct by a federal judge, who called one of her filings "breathtaking in its arrogance and borders on delusional."

Like Dunn, she wants voters to be required to show identification when they vote. She also emphasizes the need to make sure candidates are qualified to run.

"It is important to bring legitimacy to elections," said Taitz, 49. "And I will be fighting to ensure the California corporations are not overburdened by regulations."

Taitz said this would include going to Washington, D.C. to fight some Environmental Protection Agency policies.

Part of her campaign is to attack Dunn as being ineligible to run.

"This is a person who wants to be in charge of all the voting records and he's tried to hide his own past records," she said. "It was with intent to defraud Republicans in California."

Dunn has talked openly about his prior registration as a Democrat. But Taitz points to Dunn's Orange County voter-registration card, where he failed to fill out the space about previous voter registration. She also points to a letter from the Jacksonville elections officials noting that Dunn had inquired in 2009 about deleting his long-lapsed voter registration. (He was told such deletions are not allowed.)

Taitz has also said – and a pending civil suit by a Taitz backer reiterates the claim – that Dunn's candidacy violated the requirement that a candidate not be registered with a different party for at least 12 months before filing to run. A district attorney's spokeswoman said Taitz's complaint was "unsubstantiated" and the case dropped.

Read a comparison of the candidates' biographies and positions at the Register's Voter Guide 2010, ocregister.com/elections.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/dunn-249 ... voter.html