Supporters of supervisor-elect Jaime De La Cruz, who is facing
criminal charges for allegedly illegally signing a nomination
petition circulated by someone else, filed a complaint with the
elections office Thursday claiming Supervisor Bob Cruz did the same
thing while campaigning for re-election.
Hollister – Supporters of supervisor-elect Jaime De La Cruz, who is facing criminal charges for allegedly illegally signing a nomination petition circulated by someone else, filed a complaint with the elections office Thursday claiming Supervisor Bob Cruz did the same thing while campaigning for re-election.
De La Cruz wants the county to pay for an independent investigation into Cruz’s campaign activities leading up to March’s District 5 election, which Cruz said he would welcome because then the “truth will come out” that he did nothing illegal and never had anyone circulate petitions for him.
“When you have nothing to hide, you should not be ashamed of anything,” Cruz said. “When you’re worried, when you’re going down for the third time is when you’re going to accuse everybody. But I’m not going down. Period.”
De La Cruz’s campaign adviser, Ignacio Velazquez, and his attorney Arthur Cantu, filed declarations signed by Hollister residents Pablo and Estela Arrizon stating two women asked them to sign a petition that would give Cruz a discount on his filing fee, and then Cruz signed the petition himself and turned it in to the
elections office, according to the declarations.
Velazquez said the couple didn’t know who the women were, and Pablo and Estela Arrizon did not return phone calls Thursday. Cruz adamantly denied having anyone circulate petitions for him.
In a letter, Cantu asked Registrar John Hodges to send the declarations to the appropriate law enforcement agency to investigate them. But Hodges said it’s not his responsibility to send the declarations anywhere – that the complaint needs to be filed with District Attorney John Sarsfield’s office.
“It’s up to him (Cantu) to go to Sarsfield,” Hodges said. “That’s where it starts. You go to the DA, if the DA thinks there’s something to work with, he’ll turn it over to whoever.”
But Cantu, who has had an ongoing feud with Sarsfield since losing to the prosecutor in the 2002 race for district attorney, believes Sarsfield is prejudiced toward De La Cruz and won’t be objective.
De La Cruz is facing four felony counts for election forgery. He said he mistakenly signed a petition with three signatures gathered by someone else worth a 75-cent discount toward his filing fee and submitted it to the elections office. Sarsfield also charged the supervisor-elect with three misdemeanor charges for illegal use of voter registration information and threatening an investigator.
The charges stem from an investigation commissioned by the Board of Supervisors after De La Cruz beat Cruz by only 10 votes. Twist after twist has tangled the issue into one of the year’s most controversial political topics. It erupted anew when Sarsfield pressed the charges against De La Cruz and the supervisor-elect fired back by filing a $5 million civil rights lawsuit against the county two weeks ago.
After the March election, both De La Cruz and Velazquez were investigated for election fraud – Velazquez was cleared of any wrongdoing in October – but Sarsfield said Cruz was not investigated because he never received information of possible misconduct.
But if the DA’s office receives a complaint that Cruz was involved in illegal activities he will examine it, Sarsfield said.
“If and when we receive a complaint we’ll look at it like we do all complaints… and we’ll refer it to the appropriate investigative agency,” he said.
Sarsfield didn’t know what agency would be in charge of an investigation, or if Cruz would be charged if it was discovered he acted illegally.
“I’m not going to speculate what may or may not happen,” he said. “We’ll see what the investigation says, if it ever gets that far.”
Velazquez said he wants an outside, independent agency to investigate the matter because he believes Sarsfield is maliciously prosecuting De La Cruz. He believes Sarsfield has a personal vendetta against the supervisor-elect because De La Cruz’s attorney, Mike Pekin, filed a motion in May that claimed the prosecutor was having an affair with his office manager.
“We don’t want any more of John Sarsfield’s friends or Supervisor Cruz’s friends conducting the investigation,” Velazquez said. “We want a complete independent investigation paid by the county. If they want to continue with this, that’s what needs to happen. They keep making false allegations so we have to go out and prove them wrong.”
Sarsfield has denied the accusations and believes he’s acted fairly and objectively in all of his actions involving the District 5 dispute.
“I’m not surprised someone who has been charged with a crime is not happy with the person who charged them,” he said. “Jaime was investigated by an outside law enforcement agency at my request – totally independent and their report is what generated this. I can’t be any more objective than that.”
Cruz denies the recent claims that he did not collect the proper signatures. He believes the declarations are fictitious statements De La Cruz supporters have cooked up try to take some of the heat off of them.
If an investigation was done and it was determined Cruz conducted some part of his campaign illegally, he said it would only be fair he face what De La Cruz is facing. But he said that’s not going to happen.
“You break the law you break the law, but I’m more than confident (I didn’t),” Cruz said.
Erin Musgrave covers public safety for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or em*******@fr***********.com.
