What otherwise promised to be a low-key race for Orange County treasurer/tax collector has been anything but, with one candidate stung by allegations that he mismanaged the assets of a bankrupt trailer company, resulting in a district attorney's investigation.
At a time when first-time candidate Chriss W. Street should have been introducing himself to voters and building support, he has lost three key endorsements -- including one from Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas -- amid the controversy.
He has also found himself deflecting charges that his friend and political mentor, Treasurer/Tax Collector John M.W. Moorlach, bent county hiring rules in January to bring Street on as his assistant, giving him a leg up on the job.
Leaders of the county's employee unions pounced on the allegations, Street said, in an attempt to discredit him and, by association, their chief nemesis on the June 6 ballot: Moorlach.
Moorlach, who has endorsed Street, is running for county supervisor on a pledge to reform the county's pension system.
"This is all about the unions going after John Moorlach," said Street, 55, an investment advisor registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, who brings a crowded resume of private and public financial experience to the race.
"For someone who went along as long as I did ... to be trashed like this is amazing," Street said of his role with the trailer company, Fruehauf Trailer Corp.
Challenging Street for the nonpartisan county post is Patrick Desmond, 59, an auditor-appraiser with the county assessor's office also running for the first time.
Desmond's candidate statement says he joined the county in 2002 after working for a car dealership and as controller for technology companies. He also worked for accounting firm Deloitte & Touche.
He denied that the county's employee unions recruited him. Some treasurer's office employees asked him to run, he said, because they disliked Street and didn't want him to be able to walk into the job unopposed.
He said Street was tainted by a sweetheart job deal from Moorlach and by the district attorney investigation, which prosecutors have declined to characterize.
Whoever wins will be in charge of the county's $5.6-billion treasury and sit on the board that oversees the $6-billion Orange County Employees Retirement System fund.
The allegations about Street's business dealings have dominated the campaign.
