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In The Public Interest
Notes from the Editor:

Will the Real Ron Calderon Please Stand Up?

Horse Wagering, Oldtimers Foundation and Your kids' Education

Posted Tuesday, May 30, 2006, 7:00 am
The Editor,
WatchOurCity.com

Huntington Park, CA -  Who is Ron Calderon?

I keep seeing red emblazoned “Calderon” yard signs all over Huntington Park and the southeast area.

Ron Calderon, Democrat, is in a June Primaries race against fellow Democratic Assemblyman Rudy
Bermudez for the 30th State Senate District seat. A third candidate, Marco Firebaugh died recently.

So who is Ron Calderon and why is he running?

For starters, Ron is not Chuck Calderon.

Chuck is Ron’s brother who was elected to the California Assembly in 1982 and represented Huntington
Park and some other parts of southeast L.A.

Reportedly, Chuck, had a thing for racking up big bills during his days in the California Legislature. The
Fair Political Practices Commission has a pretty thick file on Chuck. According to a report in the
Sacramento News and Review, “In 1995, the FPPC slapped Chuck with a $15,000 fine for failing to disclose
$32,407 in expenditures".

The Sacramento News and Review reports that according to FPPC documents, some of the campaign
money went for "modeling photographs, a costumed entertainer and a tennis outfit that were not related to
campaign purposes." Chuck was fined again in 2001, that time for $18,000. FPPC records show that
Chuck improperly used campaign cash to pay for a limousine to take his family to a movie premiere, buy
clothes for his wife and make a "a six-day stay with his family at the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort and
Casino in Incline Village, Nevada."

Ron is not Tom Calderon, either.

Tom is Ron’s other brother who, following in the footsteps of Chuck, was also a State Assemblyman,
elected to represent Montebello and surrounding East LA County areas from 1998 to 2002. According to
the Sacramento News and Review, “While he was still in the Assembly and running for insurance
commissioner, Tom paid his brother Ron $27,000 in political-consulting fees during 2000 and 2001--at the
same time as Ron was busy running for Assembly. After Ron took over Tom's Assembly seat, Ron paid Tom
$61,000 in political-consulting fees starting a few days after Tom lost the 2002 Democratic primary for state
insurance commissioner. There's no way to tell what kind of work either brother performed, because
campaign-finance forms aren't that specific.”

Who does Ron Calderon want you to think he is?
In early May Ron mailed out a slick 11x17 full-color campaign mailer that was “paid for by Ron Calderon for
State Senate”. It has a Montebello address. “Every kid deserves to go to college”, proclaims the banner in
bold text across this mailer.

No one can argue with that, it seems.

The text is superimposed over a picture of the USC campus. If you squint just right, you can make out
Tommy Trojan in the corner of the brochure. Another picture just below it has Ron surrounded by grade
school students inside a classroom.

Ron Calderon, who lives in Montebello, is running for the State Senate seat that is currently being held
by soon-to-be termed out Senator Martha Escutia.

Escutia's shoe: one size does not fit all
Escutia has had a good run in the California Legislature. Thanks to State mandated Term Limits, she's
run her course. Escutia authored some good measures which have positively impacted the daily lives of
families and students, both locally and across the state. State Senator Martha Escutia made a lot of
school districts scramble to meet her decrees.

Escutia’s formidable Sacramento career legacy lies in her singular vision to bring justice to educational
inequalities. She is a good intellectual mechanic. Her tooling around under the hood of the state’s
education infrastructure engine produced a well thought out and methodical dismantling of such
inequalities in educational resources allocation for low income and low performing schools. She executed
the plan with such consistently raw and brutal intellectual grace yielding both immediate and long term
results in the public benefit.

Some examples: There is the Escutia sponsored SB 19, which “sets nutritional requirements for certain
foods sold at elementary and middle schools and provides grants of between $4,000 and $25,000 to school
districts to develop policies on nutrition and school-based physical activities”.

Then there is the “Escutia Program” which impacts every school district in California, but hits LAUSD
hardest. Its aim is to “relieve playground space encroachment that occurred as a result of fulfilling class size
reduction mandates. The program consists of building on-site additions or new schools to replace and enable
removal of approximately 600 portable classrooms. As the permanent facilities are completed, portable
classroom buildings are removed from the campus, thereby restoring play space. Over 30 acres of space will
be restored though the planned removal of Escutia portables, enough space for 300 full-sized basketball
courts. Restoration of this play space also returns these campuses to compliance with District play area
standards”. (http://www.laschools.org/sep/pdf/sep-2006-010-scope-history.pdf)

It’s not for nothing that Escutia is a household name in every school district up and down the state of
California. Even when Escutia was in the Assembly herself, she authored some of the best legislation
providing assistance to some the most neglected and neediest of students.

In one year alone, 1998, Escutia sponsored no less than 5 solid Assembly Bills aimed at improving
educational inequalities. The energy and resources needed to carry just one bill through the legislative
process is daunting. It also takes intellectual fortitude and force of character to pass legislation that
yields the most benefit to the most number of people.

Another example is Escutia's AB 2216 in 1998. The bill placed $1.5 million to pay for fees for Advance
Placement testing for high school students from low income families. These are critical courses for the
seriously minded college bound low-income student. By all accounts it did wonders. It was a 5-year pilot
program. No word on its expansion.

Then there is Escutia’s AB 1746 Class Size Reduction which has had a major impact as well. Too well,
perhaps. Also, there is Escutia’s AB 1857, Child Care and Development Services which “authorizes one-
time expenditures to benefit child care, such as purchase of materials for maintenance of facilities, respite
care, implementation of capacity building activities” and gives priority to allocations to underserved areas”.

Not to diminish her tenure, Escutia also made some dumb mistakes during her time. Despite her
championing educational causes, she endorsed a candidate without a college degree who was
unemployed in Huntington Park. In 2001 Escutia donated $1,000 to kick-start the campaign of a
Huntington Park council candidate who claimed that he was a “Businessman and Police Volunteer”. It
turned out that the candidate hoodwinked Escutia, with Rosario Marin's help, by lying about being a
businessman, he never was one, and deceived the voters. More egregiously, on December 20, 2005,
Escareno pleads guilty to “Grand Theft” of public funds in L.A. Superior Court. This was Huntington Park’s
ex-mayor Edward Escareno, a man who was unemployed during nearly his entire 4-year tenure as
councilman from 2001 to 2005.

Escareno was not the only unemployed council member in Huntington Park. There is Ofelia Hernandez,
too. They both conspired, along with Mario Gomez in January 4, 2004 to sneak a pay raise for
themselves of $350 a month extra. Already Huntington Park’s salaries were the highest in the state of
California, according to a report in The Times.

WatchOurCity.com noted that HP’s city council members were paying themselves close to $950 an hour
for Redevelopment Commission work that met for on average of 15 minutes every two weeks, making
out like bandits at $1,900 a month.

The California Assembly and Senate took note and passed AB 11, which took effect on the 2nd
anniversary of Escareno and Ofelia’s pay raise. AB 11, authored by South Gate’s Hector De La Torre,
reduced such extravagant abuse of salaries by elected officials. In Huntington Park’s case, salaries were
reduced from about $36,000 a year down to about $14,000 per year. As AB 11 wound its way through
the many stomachs of the legislative digestive system, at one point the Senate version of AB 11 included
language that specifically mentioned Huntington Park’s exorbitant city council salaries as example of
salary abuse by elected officials and helped crystallize the need to pass the bill. AB 11 passed both the
Assembly and Senate unanimously.

Letting her guard down once taught the good Senator a lesson. In 2005, Escutia donates $1,000 to the
campaign coffers of Huntington Park council candidate Elba Romo, a Huntington Park High School grad
who went on to earn a degree from Stanford University, and is a science teacher in a local high school.
This time, Escutia seems to have picked a winner. Romo is now a council woman.

I won’t even get into the riff between Escutia and Albert Robles, the ex-Treasurer from South Gate. This,
the L.A. Times did a good job of covering. Suffice it to say that Escutia was a bit discomforted by some
ungentlemanly words Robles directed her way: he threatened to rape her, as The Times reported.

In 2001, one little-noticed education Senate Bill by Escutia was approved and "Chartered", that is, was
signed by the Governor into California law. SB 1380 allowed the State to pay for a study exploring the
feasibility of forming a new school district via splintering southeast cities away from the Los Angeles
Unifies School District: "This bill authorizes a reorganization study of the Los Angeles Unified School District
(LAUSD)".  

According to a legislative analysis of SB 1380 by the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools,
"Specifically, this bill: Provides that the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall enter into a contract with an
independent contractor for the purpose of conducting a study to determine the feasibility of reorganizing
LAUSD by removing from that district the schools in the southeast area of the district, including those schools
located in Bell, Southgate, Cudahy, Maywood, Huntington Park, Vernon, and the unincorporated areas of
Florence/Graham and Walnut Park" (see watchOurCity.com report).

Ron Calderon has some big shoes to fill with an uphill battle to match the tough and mighty legacy that
Escutia leaves behind.

So who is Ron Calderon?
If Escutia is the intellectual mechanic tooling around the hood of the legislature dismantling the engine
and reconstructing it again to increase the revolutions per minute, Calderon, based on his past record of
achievement in the California Assembly, is the dandy driver in a hurry to leave the garage shop because
he can’t wait to reach Las Vegas and burn through some campaign contribution dough or wager it on
some horse races.

In contrast to Escutia’s prodigious legislation focused on education, so far, out of a total of 42 bills
introduced by Ron Calderon during the 2005-2006 session, only, AB 2957 School Districts Governing
Boards, is education related, this according to Ron's own State Assembly website.

So why does Ron claim that “Every kid deserves the chance to go to college” on his recent mailer? The
whole propaganda page is all about education, like he cares.

Wanna bet who’s funding Ron’s State Senate campaign?
The majority of his sponsored bills seem to be focused on the horse race wagering, banking, and
insurance industries, his forte, it seems.

Calderon’s record of sponsored bills in 2005-2006, as noted in his own Assembly website, seems to tell a
different story that stands in stark contrast to the claims that Calderon is for Education.

What are the odds?
Ron Calderon has no less than 3 sponsored bills before the California Assembly dealing directly with
horse racing and wagering. To put in wagering terms, Calderon’s ratio of horse racing and wagering bills
versus education bills is 3 to 1. Factoring the rest of the bills he introduced, the ratio grows to a
grotesque 43 to 1.

Lucrative special interests seem to have the ear of Assemblyman Calderon, as do most other members
of the state legislature.

Now, Ron did have one other education bill he authored in the Assembly. The other special interest he
catered to? Himself. Ron’s brochure states that “As a father of a college student, I understand how
expensive tuition can be, Some families simply can’t afford it. That’s just plain wrong”. That’s why he
supports “free community college”.

So who is Ron trying to fool? Too bad school age children can't vote and don't give campaign donations,
or they’d be the largest special interest to have Calderon’s ear.

In all fairness, Ron did vote for the education measures that other legislators introduced in Sacramento
during his 4 year Assembly tenure.

One can quite easily argue that such a voting record is testament to his commitment to education.

One can challenge that argument with one eye blind, blindfolded on the other and with one hand tied
behind one’s back. To let others do the hard intellectual back breaking work and then claim credit is
easy. To have the moral compass and strength of character to create and shepherd a bill through the
many stomachs of the legislative system, one that yields the greatest public benefit, is a whole different
matter.

It takes just as many resources to deliver legislation that benefits hundreds of thousands of school age
children, as Escutia has done, than it does to work on legislation that only benefits a handful of horse
race venues. It exposes a certain intellectual and moral weakness. Ron’s interests, where he does do
the heavy lifting himself, is for special interests, like horse wagering, banking, insurance, and real
estate.  The force and authority of his assembly office and its potential impact to benefit the largest and
neediest constituency groups has been squandered in exchange for smaller purposes and narrow
private benefit, it seems.

There is actually no shame in catering to special interests. Everyone does it. Escutia did it. Even  
Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez does it (according to various media reports in the Times and the San
Jose Mercury News, $1.7 million raised at Pebble Beach by AT&T for Nunez; Nunez sponsors legislation
seemingly benefiting AT&T; Nunez says the legislation is in the consumer's best interest, all the while
allegedly benefiting AT&T at the expense of its competitors in the state's cable industry).

So, Ron, don't misrepresent your record. To give you the benefit of the doubt, you probably received
some bad advice from your campaign strategists on this one.

Just don’t deceive us, man. And as long as you round it out with pubic policy legislation that actually
matters to the hard working families in the 30th District and all across California, it's O.K.

Compared to Escutia on education matters, any reasonable person can conclude that Ron seems to lack
the energy, interest, inclination and intellectual depth and breadth to fill her shoes when it comes to
education.

Do residents care more about horse racing or educating their kids?

Ron’s slick brochure would make you think that he has your kid’s education in mind. You would think he’d
know better; he has two kids of his own, according to his own brochure.

Spring weeds
Calderon’s lawn signs (and his competitor's, Rudy "the Shield" Bermudez) are sprouting up like spring
weeds all over the place, and for sure he won’t pick up after himself when the June primaries are over.
No one ever does, win or loose.

Campaign contributions pay for such standard lawn sign branding.

In the case of Ron Calderon, campaign money also pays for lavish trips to the Bellagio Resort Casino in
Las Vegas, for plane tickets and dinners for 3-day staff retreats there. It also pays for extravagant
fundraisers costing $15,000 at Sky boxes.

According to a report by the Sacramento News and Review, “Spending trend
Assemblyman Ron Calderon burns through campaign cash on trips to Las Vegas”.

For the record, there are no horses depicted on Ron Calderon’s political campaign mailer.

There is, however, the picture of one slick high stakes gambler: the brochure's back page shows a
picture of Calderon shaking hands with L.A. City’s Antonio V who is quoted stating “Ron has always put
the interest of children first…”

Take it from two men who seem to know a lot about children's education.

One more curious thing about Ron Calderon: On July 13,  2005, Calderon donates $3,500 from campaign
donations to George Cole's Oldtimers Foundation in Huntington park, listed as a "Civic Donation",
according to the Secretary of State's Campaign Finance Reports. Hmmmm.

Ron Calderon seems to recognize that in order to appease George Cole, the school yard bully of the
Southeast cities, it's definitely a smart move to put out some of his milk money to the goon squad as
protection payment and entry fee if Calderon wants "In" on the school yard action here.
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