The former best man in Tony and Audra Strickland's wedding and Tony Strickland's former campaign manager Joe Giardello probably summed it up best when he told the Ventura County Star: "I don't think he's in this for anything other than Tony Strickland."

Manipulators of both campaign donations and the truth to suit their own purposes, the Stricklands do whatever it takes to win, ethical considerations be damned. Tony is currently running for State Senate District 19; Audra for re-election in Assembly District 37.

Blatant campaign distortions
Tony Strickland's entire State Senate campaign is based on his claims of being a "renewable energy businessman" and "independent thinker." Yet records show that the wave energy company he is associated with was started by his political friends and has no paid employees or even a permit to do business. Strickland's "whoppers" have drawn jeers from environmental groups everywhere based on his 1.67% voting record on environmental issues. Even more laughable is his self-proclaimed "independent thinker" label after being president of the far-right California Club for Growth, a group known for destroying the political careers of moderate Republicans.

County School Board shenanigans
The Stricklands worked behind the scenes to stack the Ventura County Board of Education in Karl Rove-like fashion with politically minded right-wing zealots. Tony's former aide, Chris Valenzano, who was elected to the county board after financial help from his boss, first proposed hiring lobbying firms in 2006 and the board entered into a $396,000 contract with two outside lobbying firms who have both donated money to Strickland. These lobbyists have produced little more than additional bills for local taxpayers and a possible partnership with one of their own clients, a private Christian college in Indiana, which could help build the college a new $8.5 million building but do little for Ventura County students. Valenzano is in a very tight race for re-election against well-known and respected community leader Dr. Mark Lisagor. It is expected that Dr. Lisagor will win this race in large part because of obvious mismanagement of taxpayer dollars like this.

Corporate influence shows trail of pay-to-play politics
Beginning in his 1998 Assembly race and from every year thereafter, Tony Strickland took money from tobacco, alcohol, gambling, insurance and oil interests like Enron, and once in office repaid his benefactors by sponsoring bills for them and voting in their favor. This led to legislation such as his bill which was vetoed by the governor for "unacceptable expansion of gambling in California." His wife is equally drenched in these dubious campaign contributions.

Allegations of campaign finance misdeeds
According to the Los Angeles Times, "Over a little more than five years, Tony Strickland and his wife, Audra, who replaced him as a member of the state Assembly, paid more than $138,000 raised by their supporters to businesses owned by them and a staffer living in their Moorpark home. An additional $20,000 in campaign money was deposited into a nonprofit organization run by Tony Strickland."

Even Republicans were outraged. "How could people be so arrogant to blatantly transfer money like this?" Jere Robings, a Republican activist from Thousand Oaks told the Times. "It is obvious they are trying to circumvent the law," he said.

The Stricklands' money laundering practices would be investigated many more times, usually by fellow Republicans.

Out-of-control employees
In June, Audra Strickland's chief of staff  (and Tony's former top aide) Joel Angeles got into a well-publicized fracas with anti-tobacco protesters outside the Hyatt Westlake in an apparent attempt to keep them from being seen by people entering the fund-raiser Tony Strickland was doing with Mitt Romney. He allegedly knocked a former minister to the ground in a scuffle in front of many witnesses, including the press. The man later underwent surgery for a torn rotator cuff. The Star reported the case is now with the State Attorney General after Republican Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten needed to recuse himself because of his extensive campaign activities for the Stricklands. Sheriff's investigators typically do not send files to the District Attorney's office unless they believe charges should be filed. The photo above shows him yelling at protestors and Obama supporters.

And the list goes on. This kind of corruption and cronyism must end. The Stricklands must go.

In the barrage of late campaigning, a new Independent Expenditure Committee working on behalf of Tony Strickland reared its ugly head. This one dropped $88,361 last week on behalf of the far-right contender for the Senate District 19 seat.

Now this one really makes us laugh. It's called the California Citizens for Ethics in Government. It sent out a mailer presenting itself as a champion of truth and ethics in government and let us know that they had "investigated" the charges Hannah-Beth Jackson has made against Strickland for his numerous ethical lapses. (Which, incidentally, are quite true). The group also made robocalls over the weekend.

In fact, they claim, "Tony Strickland's record is far more independent."

But who is behind this "Ethics" group? Why, none other than the California Republican Party's lawyer, Charles Bell. That's him listed as treasurer in a campaign filing report on the Secretary of State's website.

This law firm recently sent a threatening letter on behalf of the California Republican Party to the San Bernardino Democratic Central Committee, the Ventura County Democratic Central Committee and Vote Blue of California. It was signed by one Charles H. Bell Jr., General Counsel to the California Republican Party.

Guess who is funding this group? The Republican Party and Indian tribes.

Here's a caveat to voters: Do your homework before you vote. These Independent Expenditure Committees aren't always who they profess to be. If you're sick of all the campaign mailings, check your local newspapers for their recommendations on who to vote for in the SD-19 race. Both the Los Angeles Times and Ventura County Star have endorsed Hannah-Beth Jackson.  

The laissez-faire Bush era of hands-off has produced disastrous results, as we are seeing in the current financial markets.

"This is bigger than the private sector can fix by itself," Reagan's former Secretary of the Treasury James Baker said on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" Sunday. "Now we have to figure out a way to regulate out of it."

Too little, too late, some may say.

Last December, Martin Eakes, CEO of The Center for Responsible Lending, told the New York Times, "If the Fed had done its job, we would not have had the abusive lending and we would not have a foreclosure crisis in virtually every community across America."

Who is to blame for this nightmare? Free-market ideologues like former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan helped perpetuate this nonsense that business does not need regulation.

This approach allowed the bottom feeders of the mortgage industry, like Countrywide Financial in our own backyard, to grow and thrive and feed on the naiveté of families sucked into sub prime loans they could not afford. The bigger and riskier the mortgage, the higher the fees these mortgage brokers and lenders raked in.

These loans were in turn sold to investment banks and other investors. And suddenly the bottom fell out. Meanwhile CEOs have taken home millions of speculative dollars.

The banking industry has too much influence in politics. In 1987, the Keating Five scandal ensnared John McCain, who along with other senators, was accused of trying to improperly intervene in a federal investigation of Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. McCain accepted $112,000 from Keating and was flown to the Bahamas.

Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed in 1989, at a cost of over $3 billion to the federal government.

Back in 2001, California had a chance to crack down on predatory lenders with AB489. Tony Strickland, now a candidate for State Senate, served in the Assembly Banking and Finance Committee where he was supposed to be looking out for consumers and protecting them from unfair banking practices.

Instead, Strickland took $47,575 in contributions from the banking and finance industry and helped them water down AB489, so it protected almost nobody.

It is time to end this disastrous influence corporations have on the decisions which affect our future.

Our own Republican Daddy Warbucks - uber right-wing Tony Strickland, running for the 19th State Senate seat in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties against moderate Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson, has reportedly refused to debate her in a Sept. 24 forum sponsored by none other than the Ventura County Star and the local Chapter of the California Association of Political Centrists.  

Jackson, on the other hand, had no trouble agreeing to this debate or a question-and-answer forum with Strickland last spring sponsored by the Camarillo Chamber of Commerce. Jackson performed quite well there in "Strickland Country."

The forum provided by the Star will likely be televised and would have given all voters a chance to see the two candidates in action. It's a shame they aren't being given this opportunity.

I must conclude he doesn't want to answer questions local voters want to put to him.

Since he's basing his entire campaign on his new company, GreenWave Energy Solutions, and not his actual record in the Assembly before he was termed out, I'd like voters to know more about it. Here's a link to Star Reporter Timm Herdt's article on the company. GreenWave has no paid employees, no technology, no business and its requests to study a wave energy project off the coast were sent back by a federal agency as deficient.

But his voting record on environmental issues and alternative energy was among the very worst, getting a 1.7 percent rating from the California League of Conservation Voters.

OK, so maybe he doesn't want to talk about that.

Maybe he's also afraid of questions about the $50,000 donation from Altria, parent company of Philip Morris, made to the Ventura County Republican Central Committee on his behalf. Here's Herdt's story on that. Apparently he has an excellent pro-tobacco industry record as Assembly member, voting against two bills which would make it harder for minors to buy cigarettes. He might also not want to talk about the almost $85,000 he's taken directly from tobacco companies.

Those are just a few questions he wants to duck.  So how do we put the truth screws to Strickland if he is afraid to debate Jackson? Tell it like it is on blogs like this. And as Shakespeare wrote in the "The Merchant of Venice" - "truth will out."