California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. (Photo: SOS youtube)
Secretary Alex Padilla Facing Lawsuit Over $35 Million Contract with ‘Team Biden’ PR Firm
‘California’s one-party rule has us sliding ever closer to third world status’
By Katy Grimes, October 13, 2020 12:15 pm
California Globe recently reported California Secretary of State Alex Padilla awarded a $35 million voter outreach contract with a “Team Biden” consulting firm with obvious ties to the Democratic Party.
Last week, state Republicans announced California State Controller Betty Yee rejected the Secretary of State’s contract with SKD Knickerbocker, a Washington, D.C.-based public affairs firm whose managing director is Anita Dunn, a senior advisor on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and White House communications director under President Barack Obama.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association said Padilla has been spending millions of taxpayer dollars on this contract illegally. HJTA demanded the Secretary of State stop the spending immediately, and warned if the spending did not stop, they would seek immediate relief from the court.
“This can and will affect the outcomes of elections – indeed, that is what targeted ‘get out the vote’ is intended to achieve,” HJTA President Jon Coupal said. “From a governor who issues a sweeping executive order banning gasoline powered vehicles to record levels of poverty and rampant homelessness, it is now difficult to distinguish much of California from Venezuela.”
“One-party rule is also associated with corruption. Under normal circumstances, when government enters into contracts for goods and services with the private sector, taxpayers are protected against waste and fraud by a stringent oversight process mandated by state law. This includes a transparent bidding process to prevent cronyism.”
Jon Coupal announced Friday the HJTA filed suit against SOS Padilla, seeking an injunction against any further public spending on an unauthorized $35 million contract with a national political consulting firm, SKD Knickerbocker.
In an op ed with the Press Enterprise, Coupal explained in more detail:
“The contract is fraught with other problems as well.”
“Only a limited number of firms were approached to ‘bid’ on the advertising contract and the ‘invitation’ was directed only at partisan political consulting firms rather than traditional non-partisan advertising agencies. This process did not comply with the Public Contract Code as the required public notice was not provided.”
California Globe noted the Secretary of State’s office left us with more questions than answers and asked:
- Why are they hiding the contract?
- What’s in it?
- Why didn’t they clear it with the Department of Finance or the Controller’s Office first?
- And why play into Donald Trumps hand about the legitimacy of the election?
Coupal noted that the State Controller’s office rejected Padilla’s contract, saying the Secretary of State had not identified any budget authority to spend local assistance funds on its contract with consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker, as his office claimed. And, Secretary of State Padilla “has not been responsive to inquiries regarding his intentions about further spending on the invalid contract.”
“For that reason, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association filed a lawsuit against him on Friday. The lawsuit seeks an injunction against any further spending that has not been approved by the State Controller.”
Coupal correctly says, “California may be starting to resemble a third world country. But that doesn’t mean that citizens who remember how good California used to be have to put up with it.”
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association lawsuit is available HERE.
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November 30, 2018
With court packing and adding states this is what Democrats want for the entire country, doing away with the Constitution’s checks and balances.
Very glad to be updated on the Secty of State Alex Padilla scandal.
Speaking of Secty of State Alex Padilla, below are more problems with Vote by Mail; stories of duplicate and ballots with unknown names arriving in people’s mailboxes, in spite of notifications of death and moving out of state, stacks of ballots belonging to unknown people appearing at apartment house mailboxes, etc.
John Phillips at KABC-AM 790 had his own ballot problem and decided to field calls from others who had their own ballot problem stories.
Listen to the 12 pm hour, 10/13/20. Begin at the 16:15 marker:
https://www.kabc.com/the-john-phillips-show/
Every day I experience a wave of outrage that we are unable to have a clean election in this state so that we can vote these Dems (many of them crooks) OUT and weigh in on the state propositions. Am I alone? I don’t THINK so!
Then SOS Padilla and AG Becerra, after fiddling with our precious, hard-won vote by 1) the SOS’ refusal to clean up voter rolls of dead people, illegal aliens, out-of-staters, etc., and 2) the AG’s refusal to write accurate ballot summaries, come out of hiding to stand on their soapbox to deny problems, whine about suppression of Dem voters, and issue threats about “unofficial” GOP ballot boxes without even a flicker of embarrassment that as long as only Dems do it ballot harvesting is A-OK.
Never mind that they have over-complicated in-person voting, changed voting rules under the radar, and given an unqualified thumbs-up to this nightmarish mess that is CA’s vote-by-mail election.
It’s ENOUGH. There must be consequences for what they have done.
You are not alone. These people, Newsom, Padilla, Becerra and the like (recall!)…maybe or likely were never elected because the voting has been rigged in this state since Pat Brown. You know the Governor that was awarded the waterway in 1961? I want to know if we are ever going to have a fair election in this state, country. Recall is the only way we have to get them out. They are all in the state…..no one republican in the bunch and when things are so out of balance it goes south really fast.
We cannot use the mail in ballots ANYMORE!! Vote in person only with driver’s license!!! People have to be onto the Covid Scamdemic by now. Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc and Azithromax, vitamin D-3.
It’s getting closer and closer to French Revolution on Sacramento.
‘California’s one-party rule has us sliding ever closer to third world status’ “One-party rule is also associated with corruption…. (Wow, that’s 49 of 50 states)
One-party rule in 49 states legislatures reflects flaws in democratic process.
Across the U.S., Republicans control 30 statehouses and the Democrats control 18.
Minnesota is currently the only state where there’s not one party in control of the state legislature.
You are not alone. These people, Newsom, Padilla, Becerra and the like (recall!)…maybe or likely were never elected because the voting has been rigged in this state since Pat Brown. You know the Governor that was awarded the waterway in 1961? I want to know if we are ever going to have a fair election in this state, country. Recall is the only way we have to get them out. They are all in the state…..no one republican in the bunch and when things are so out of balance it goes south really fast.
Alex Padilla spent $35m of our tax dollars to help Democrats win elections? Let’s give him 2 options:
A) Spend another $35m of our tax dollars to help Republicans win elections, and we’ll call it even.
B) Go to prison for a long time.
Paying an ad firm is not his job.