Johnson-Norris: Misleading Statement and Corruption in One Night
Misleading Voters:
On August 20, 2018, I attended the Democratic Party of Orange County’s endorsement meeting. Unexpectedly, I was given a minute to speak before the Central Committee cast their votes to endorse two of the three democrats running for Irvine City Council: Farrah Khan, Kev Abazajian, and Lauren Johnson-Norris.
My message was clear: We have two candidates who have vowed not to accept any form of developer money, special interest, or corporate-PAC money and one candidate who has accepted developer money. Someone in the audience asked who that candidate was. I answered, “Lauren Johnson-Norris”.
On Johnson-Norris’ 460 forms, you will see multiple contributions from the Strader family (max contribution amount per person is $490). Patrick Strader is the lobbyist/attorney for the developer FivePoint/Starpointe Ventures.
After I spoke, Johnson-Norris took the mic and boldly stated, “I have not accepted any money from any developer.” Did Johnson-Norris lie? Technically, no, because the contributions listed were not from “FivePoint” but from FivePoint’s lobbyist. But is it developer money? Absolutely. Did she intentionally mislead everybody? Yes.
This was not the first time Johnson-Norris has provided misleading answers when asked about accepting developer money. Here is a thread from April 2018 between me and Johnson-Norris where she dodged my question as to whether or not the Strader family represented FivePoint:
Corruption:
After Johnson-Norris spoke, the Central Committee members began to cast their votes for the DPOC endorsement. One Central Committee member, Carina Pantone, cast her vote for Johnson-Norris. On pages 38-39 of Johnson-Norris’ July 31, 2018 form 460, it shows Carina Pantone received a total of $7,500 from Johnson-Norris within a 7 month period for her services as a “campaign consultant”. Yet Carina Pantone did not recuse herself from voting for Johnson-Norris. This is a blatant conflict of interest and an example of corruption in its simplest form.
Here’s the audio of Carina Pantone’s vote for Johnson-Norris:
And here’s the audio of her husband, James Pantone’s vote for Johnson-Norris:
Johnson-Norris’ close ties to FivePoint’s lobbyist is a conflict and problem that we cannot afford to have in our city. And her willingness to mislead voters deems her untrustworthy.
Let’s help clean up our city and vote in two council members who have absolutely no ties to the major developers so we can place some much needed checks and balances against them. We need a city council that will put residents first and one way to do that is to ensure we do not vote for those who, either directly or indirectly, receive developer money. And in case it wasn’t clear, “developer money” includes developer lobbyist money.
6 Comments
scottsicle
October 5, 2018 at 6:18 pmWe received a scorched earth-style mailer attacking Ms. Johnson-Norris. “California Taxpayer Protection Committee” sent the nasty mailers. Following the money trail via the California Secretary of State website, Irvine Company is a major donor to groups that fund the PAC. Lennar is also a donor. My sense is that it may be hard for a “pro-developer” label to stick when Irvine Company and to a lesser extent Lennar appear to be aggressively opposing her campaign.
scottsicle
October 5, 2018 at 6:24 pmP.S. The link to the Secretary of State page where one can follow the money trail leading to “California Taxpayer Protection Committee” (with enough time…it takes awhile to find all the donors) is: http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1287571&view=received
caponet
October 6, 2018 at 9:58 pmThe article never claimed she was a puppet for the Irvine Company or Lennar. It was pointing out a relationship with FivePoints. FivePoints and IrvineCo may in fact be fighting over control of Irvine development.
Karen Jaffe
October 8, 2018 at 8:28 pmI think the article is pointing out the lack of ethics and deceit on the part of Ms. Norris. When we have so much at stake in the city and so many candidates to choose from, why would anyone cast a vote for someone who is proven to be unscrupulous at best.
scottsicle
October 10, 2018 at 5:23 amThese are good points. Campaign finance in Irvine is endlessly fascinating. I don’t know Ms. Johnson-Norris – haven’t met her yet. But my sense is something is amiss with a charge of dishonesty over these donations by individuals totaling $1250 (if I’m reading the receipts posted here correctly). Another article on Irvine Watchdog indicates that candidates Kuo, O’Malley & Wagner are receiving money from FivePoint and Starpointe Ventures via a complicated web of PACs. The amounts are big: Kuo ($40k), O’Malley ($22k) and Wagner ($170k). My sense is that if FivePoint et al was funding Ms. Johnson-Norris, they’d use the same complicated, hard-to-trace PAC web they’re using for the other 3 candidates, right? Best, Scott Hansen
Karen Jaffe
October 10, 2018 at 5:11 pmHi Scott-
Agreed that campaign financing is both endlessly fascinating and tremendously obtuse. There are other monies that have been funneled through Councilwoman Fox from the Victory Fund (https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/01/politicians-use-a-once-obscure-committee-to-launder-campaign-money/) With regards to the PAC web that you mention, my suspicion is that there is a party line issue. LJN is meant to be a democrat whereas the other three are identified republicans. The other parts of the article, however, point to other ethical concerns that would cause me to take a hard look at the rest of the field before casting my vote. Yet another item to ponder is that LJN is Melissa Fox’s appointee. I voted for Ms. Fox and have regretted my vote ever since. If we as a constituency want to really make change, we need to look outside the current city electeds and commissioners. Same goes for Kuo on this front. That’s my thinking at least.
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