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What
was he thinking?
by KEITH EASTHOUSE
If Tim Stoen isn't kicking himself,
he should.
Last Thursday, as just about
everybody in Humboldt who reads a newspaper or gets their news
electronically knows, the assistant district attorney filed papers
with the Humboldt County Elections Office stating his intention
to run for the U.S. Senate. On Friday, he said he was running
to counter the "powerful forces of evil" arrayed against
his boss, District Attorney Paul Gallegos, who will undergo a
recall vote in March. He said he was also seeking the seat occupied
by Sen. Barbara Boxer, the incumbent Democrat, to raise awareness,
both statewide and nationally, of the misdeeds of the Pacific
Lumber Co.
Stoen, of course, is handling
the county's fraud lawsuit against PL. In other words, it was
the allegations contained in the suit, allegations of deceit
committed by the company during the negotiations with state and
federal regulators leading to the 1999 Headwaters deal, that
Stoen said deserved a brighter spotlight.
In a written statement he made
available that day to the media, he gave a broader sense for
what kind of candidate he would be. He said President Bush's
attempt to democratize the Middle East was a "moral imperative;"
he expressed support for the president's vow to use preemptive
force against states and groups that could threaten the country;
he called for policies that would better protect the environment
and investors; and he said he would work for corporate reforms.
This last brought him back to
the PL suit. It seems company attorneys are arguing that even
if PL did mislead the government, it's shielded by a "right
to lie" legal doctrine. Stoen also blasted agreements PL
has reached with state and federal regulators that force the
agencies to side with PL when disputes erupt as "fraud pacts."
If elected to the Senate, Stoen said he would work to change
the laws so that PL wouldn't be in a position to mount the kind
of legal defense it has.
By the time I learned of this
last wrinkle, on Saturday morning, I was sitting in a coffee
shop in Old Town with my wife and daughter. Referring to Stoen's
vow to reform corporate statutes, I asked my wife: Does that
mean the law is on PL's side in the fraud case, and that the
DA's litigation is going to tank? Is that why he's running, because
he's given up on the suit and is turning to the legislative branch?
And another thing, I said between mouthfuls of bagel, where is
he going to get the time to litigate a highly complex, highly
controversial lawsuit against a powerful corporation and at the
same time run for the U.S. Senate? And doesn't "powerful
forces of evil" seem a bit, well, hyperbolic? And, beyond
everything else, doesn't he know he doesn't have a chance of
winning?
You get the picture. I was skeptical.
More than skeptical. Incredulous. I overheard a woman at a grocery
store that evening saying she thought the whole thing was "kooky."
And that's precisely why Stoen's decision to run for Senate was
such a spectacularly bad idea. Just as the nasty rumor campaign
against him because of his affiliation with Peoples Temple leader
Jim Jones in the 1970s was beginning to lose its oomph, Stoen
takes this rash step and all of a sudden questions about his
judgment, his ability to "separate fact from fiction,"
as PL President Robert Manne put it, have currency again.
To his credit, Stoen quickly
recognized he'd made a misstep. On that very Saturday when I
was raising objections in the coffee shop, Stoen decided to bag
out. He said he was withdrawing from the race to devote all his
energies to the PL suit. OK, that seemed sound, but then on Monday,
unable evidently to keep his mouth shut, he said that what really
caused him to get out was that former Secretary of State Bill
Jones, who's pro-life, had entered the race.
"I believe abortion is
the moral issue of our time," Stoen said, claiming that
the main reason he'd gotten in the race in the first place was
because none of the other Republican candidates were pro-life.
Well, the fact of the matter
is that while he did mention abortion to a Journal reporter
last week, he didn't emphasize it, and he definitely didn't say
that was why he was running.
But in a way I'm glad he did
make that last stumble, because it allowed me to see a solution:
Mr. Assistant District Attorney, get a press secretary.
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