But let’s ask the obvious question: Did Supervisor Piepho actually benefit from the IEs spent on her behalf? County-wide records for the past 8 elections dating back to 2002 indicate the answer is probably “Yes.” On average 60 percent of vote by mail ballots were returned in the last nine days of the election, with about 20 percent on the last day.

The data support the argument that the IEs in the District 3 race from Tom Koch and Chevron-Tesoro helped seal the deal. On June 3, Piepho’s 3,000 vote lead from absentee ballots alone settled the question early and held up throughout the night despite Houston outpolling her by about 100 votes on election day. These results could also lead one to speculate that Houston’s late Santa Claus piece and the Sheriff’s ballyhooed mailer were not effective messages that late in the cycle.

The same can be said for IEs in the District 5 five-person Supervisor primary where early absentee results for incumbent Glover and Erik Nunn, a better known challenger held up through the night in a race where the IEs kept their powder dry in anticipation of a November runoff.

That said, I am beginning to think of Independent Expenditures as the Super Delegates of free speech in our community. Sure, we’re all equal, but some animals on this farm are more equal than others—especially two-legged creatures orbiting the gravity well of the Contra Costa Council, municipal government, development, labor, or the government-subsidized public-employee-health-education-and-social-welfare-complex.

In essence, if you don’t labor in this cotton field or work for the country cousins, you’re not very equal. Nor powerful. And probably don’t have a government-backed defined benefit pension.

Furthermore, this alignment of big business and big government qua Corporatism has actually engendered a genuinely conservative, reactionary politics, that is given street cred by “progressive” rhetoric from pandering pols working in the big house that perpetuate the status quo in city councils, Martinez, LAFCO, ABAG, Regional Air Boards, and Sacramento.

No wonder then, that local IEs do not wander too far off this plantation, but tend to back pliant incumbents or upstarts, and fake reforms like Prop 99.

Could it be that this huge amount of money is probably more important to our polity than the distraction Vorderbrueggen has whipped up over dissecting each campaign mailer. This money will effect the future of Contra Costa County in so many ways: the Urban Limit Line, Prop 90, negotiations with the refineries concerning taxes, jobs, safety, and pollution, fiscal solvency, not to mention upcoming union negotiations, to name just a few critical items the Board of Supervisors must manage in the interest of taxpayers not the interests of campaign contributors.

Unfortunately, Lisa Vorderbrueggen doesn’t want you to know this number which is available at the County. She made damn sure Contra Costa Times readers knew Sheriff Rupf spent $12,500 of his own money on his mailer denouncing Piepho. But she chose not to spill the beans about the outrageous money being spent to defeat Guy Houston by her girl friends who not only have her ear but direct hundreds of thousands of dollars of PAC money and Independent Expenditures to keep a pliant Mary Nejedly Pieho in office.

Shame on Lisa Vorderbrueggen who has squandered the public’s trust.

Shame on the Contra Costa Times for allowing such unchecked bias.

Contra Costans deserve the truth. Not just what a bent reporter decides is in the best interest of her gal pals.

Time for full disclosure, Lisa!

Here Let me help.

CLICK HERE FOR INDEPENDENT EXPENDITURE DOCUMENTS LISA VORDERBRUEGGEN AND THE CONTRA COSTA TIMES FAILED TO REPORT

SEE PRESS RELEASE

UPDATE

Total as of 5.31.08
Realtors 40808.60
EB 103990.04
Big Oil 75000
Total 219,798.64

This is what it costs to buy Mary Piepho. Not a cheap date!