Republican in Texas was behind scheme to split California's Electoral Votes

[ck4829]

A high-powered California-based Republican Party-connected legal outfit with ties to a Texas homebuilder/GOP donor who gave significant amounts of money to finance attacks on Democrat John Kerry's Vietnam War record in the 2004 presidential campaign is promoting the ballot initiative called the Presidential Electors Initiative.

According to the New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg, "one of the most important Republican lawyers in Sacramento (has) quietly filed a ballot initiative that would end the practice of granting all fifty-five of California's electoral votes to the statewide winner. Instead, it would award two of them to the statewide winner and the rest, one by one, to the winner in each congressional district."

The initiative is sponsored by a group calling itself Californians for Equal Representation. "But that's just a letterhead -- there's no such organization," writes Hertzberg. "Its address is the office suite of Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, the law firm for the California Republican Party, and its covering letter is signed by Thomas W. Hiltachk, the firm's managing partner and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's personal lawyer for election matters."

According to its website, Bell, McAndrews & Hiltachk, LLP "specializes in campaign, election and administrative law and litigation at all levels of government."

In early September, the Associated Press reported that the law firm "is one of the most politically involved law firms in the state .... (a)ccording to a news story on its Web site, Bell keeps a life-sized cardboard image of President Bush in his office."

The "law firm banked nearly $65,000 in fees from a California-based political committee funded almost solely by Bob J. Perry that targeted Democrats in 2006," AP reported. "Perry, a major Republican donor, contributed nearly $4.5 million to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that made unsubstantiated but damaging attacks on Kerry three years ago."

http://www.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=211

Maybe Congress should investigate this, see what comes up.