New Orange County COO was previously convicted for election fraud

Mark Giancola, Bill Campbell and Mark Denny

When the new Orange County Executive Officer Michael B. Giancola announced this week that he had selected Mark R. Denny, currently Director of OC Parks, to become the County’s first Chief Operating Officer (COO) I knew right away that Giancola was going to be another corrupt and worthless O.C. hack.  If any of you expected Giancola to be anything else, this pick ought to put those thoughts to rest.

Denny was once a former staff aide to Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle – but that ended when he pleaded guilty in March of 1996, “to participating in a Republican scheme to manipulate the ballot in last year’s 67th Assembly District election, becoming the third GOP worker in less than a week to be convicted in the election fraud case,” as reported by the Los Angeles Times.

Denny, 27 at the time, was a a paid employee of the speaker (Pringle) until he admitted that he illegally circulated nominating petitions for decoy Democrat Laurie Campbell. Denny resigned his post as a field representative in Pringle’s Garden Grove office. He also named Rhonda Carmony, a top aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach), as instrumental in the plan, according to their sworn declarations to the court.

The scheme that busted Denny did work though as Scott Baugh got elected to the State Assembly.  He went on to lead the state Republicans then returned to Orange County where he eventually supplanted Tom Fuentes as head of the Orange County Republican Party.  Corruption comes naturally to all of these people!

Denny was not done after the Baugh fiasco. He was hired as chief of staff by then Orange County Supervisor Bill Campbell a few years later, in 2003.

By 2006, Denny was running the OC Parks Agency, according to his Linkedin Page. He was wholly unqualified for that job just as he is not qualified to be the new Orange County COO.

This is a scam people!  Pringle’s army of hacks get appointed or elected to government jobs then they quickly hire each other and give each other big contracts.  They are using our County government like their own piggy bank.  It is just awful and there really is no end in sight.  We can only hope that the Orange County Grand Jury’s 2013 reports will nail these political opportunists.  Here are those reports in case you have not yet read them – the FPPC is already acting on one of them:

• Detention Facilities Report: Part I – Adult Jails 06/27/13, 10MB
• The Goal of Equal Employment Opportunity: NO VICTIMS 06/27/13, 562KB
• An Investment and Compliance Review of the Orange County Treasurer 06/24/13, 550KB
• To Protect And To Serve: A Look at Tools to Assist Law Enforcement in Achieving Positive Outcomes with the Homeless Mentally Ill 06/19/13, 818KB
• Orange County Water Sustainability: Who Cares? 06/19/13, 715KB
• Jail Rehabilitation Programs, Are They Effective??? 05/31/13, 224KB
• Fixing the Law – Cutting Through the Tangle of Child Support and Custody 05/30/13, 2.6MB
• Detention Facilities Report: (Part II-Juvenile) “How Do We Know If We Are Taking Care of Our At-Risk Juveniles?” 05/23/13, 448KB
• The Culture of Harassment: Change on the Horizon 05/08/13, 424KB
• Registrar of Voters Earns High Marks for 2012 Election 05/01/13, 394KB
• A Call for Ethical Standards: Corruption in Orange County 4/15/13, 694KB
• OCTA’s ACCESS Service – The Way to Go!!!! 03/28/13, 373KB
• “Best Interest of the Child” Lost Child Support Costs $1.3 Billion 02/15/13, 247KB
• CalOptima Burns While Majority of Supervisors Fiddle 01/25/13, 179KB