| Join Our Mailing List |
| Bell Campaign Central: Bell Residents Await Leo Briones' Dirty Campaign Mailer Wednesday, March 2, 2011 Editor, WatchOurCity.com Bell, Ca - Leo Briones, the paid political hit man of Southeast L.A. cities, has a history of sending dirty mailers that slam his opponents 4-5 days before an election. Briones' tactic is designed to hit hard with distortions late in the campaign so the candidate slammed has little or no time to respond before the election. The people of Bell await his next late mailer sure to arrive in Bell mailboxes on the weekend before Election Day. Some speculate the likely target will be Nestor Valencia who has been Briones' nemesis ever since Nestor decided not to join BASTA, the fabricated community group created by Briones and funded by the Bell Police Officers Association, a group which the L.A. Times warned Bell residents about. The business ties Leo Briones has to George Cole are well documented. George Cole is the former Bell councilman who, in late February 2011, was ordered to stand trial on charges of corruption by a judge in L.A. Superior Court. Bell residents remember the mailer filled with lies that Cole mailed the week before the March 2009 election. A report published by EGP News, “Montebello Committee Paid For Mailers Against Bell Candidate”, reveals that George Cole financed the hit piece on Nestor Valencia in 2009 with funding from a Montebello based committee, and we know now how corrupt politics in Montebello can be. WatchOurCity.com has documented Leo Briones' role in the whole Bell corruption scandal here, here, and here. Briones' role was given life by the Bell Police Officers Association who hired him in June 2010 as a highly paid consultant to advocate for the police force's redemption in the wake of their collective role in the Rizzo and Cole orchestrated looting of the city treasury. Briones' fees are paid from union dues collected from each officer, salaries which are paid from public funds, which come from the same illegally collected property taxes, illegally collected business fees, illegally collected car seizure collection fees, and other sundry sucking of the community's meager resources. Briones lives in a $1.8 million dollar home in Whittier. Seems Cole and Briones were not only business partners but share the same campaign style. In 2009, Leo Briones and George Cole partnered up to bid on a multi-million dollar water conservation education project. Millions of dollars would have been spent on a multi- year basis on George Cole and Leo Briones to educate school kids and the community about water conservation. Some would argue that the education hook was simply a platform geared to generate handsome profits for Cole and Briones. In 2009, George Cole attacked Nestor Valencia with a hit piece, accusing Nestor of having gay sex with a campaign volunteer (see WatchOurCity.com report from March 2009 "George Cole and his Gay Issue"). Nestor did have a campaign volunteer who does happen to be openly gay, and is a resident of Bell. When Times reporter Hector Becerra interviewed Cole about the nasty and character destroying hit piece against Valencia, Cole responded to the reporter "Yeah, I sent that hit piece, so what?"(Cole's Oldtimers Foundation has a contract with L.A. County to manage an HIV/AIDS clinic serving the local gay community). Copyright 2011, WatchOurCity.com ____________________________________________________________________________________________ Montebello Committee Paid For Mailers Against Bell Candidate By Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou, EGP Staff Writer September 30, 2010 A Montebello political committee sponsored by local waste haulers was also at one time involved in an opposition campaign against a city council candidate in Bell, according to documents obtained by Eastern Group Publications. Save Our City, a prominent group during the lead up to the Montebello city council recall election this past March, seems to have had a past life supporting former Bell Councilman George Cole’s campaign against Bell resident and community activist Nestor Valencia, who ran for the Bell city council in 2009. The two campaigns are unrelated, according to Chris Robles, a Montebello-based political consultant who runs the committee. He says committees can support un-related campaigns much the same way a Democratic Party committee might make expenditures in support of different campaigns. “The contributions were made from different people with different interests. I’m the one that decided where the money was going to be spent,” Robles said. Save Our City was set up in February 2009, beginning as a state-level committee, but has since become a city-level committee, according to a spokesperson in the State Secretary’s office. “The goal of this committee is to support candidates… issues important to the communities in Los Angeles County and to get information out to the voters. It’s pretty basic,” Robles said. Robles paid for his own political consulting company Pericles Group to create flyers against Valencia at the request of Cole, who on Feb. 22 contributed $8,000 into the committee fund, which at the time was named Taxpayers Against Corruption. Cole was not a member of the Bell city council at the time of his donation. The mailer was sent out during the lead up to the March 2009 election in Bell. At the time, candidate Valencia was regularly sending out e-mails questioning Bell council members’ actions, as well as requesting media coverage of the southeast city. Cole was among eight Bell officials who were recently arrested and charged with misappropriation of public funds. Robles says he knows Cole, but he wouldn’t say he “has a relationship with him.” In April 2009, Robles’ committee began receiving contributions, mostly from trash hauling companies, and its name was changed to “Save Our City Sponsored by Montebello Residents For Honest Government Sponsored by Waste Disposal & Recycling.” The committee received $64,000 from another committee called Montebello Residents for Honest Government on April 22. Other companies began contributing, mostly in the amount of $5,000 each, in the following months. Those companies include NASA Enterprises, Serv-Wel Disposal, Universal Waste Systems, AAA Rubbish, American Reclamation, Haul-Away Rubbish, Key Disposal, and Commercial Waste Enterprises. One of the mailers funded by Save Our City was to “try and get a recall vote for Robert Urteaga & Kathy Salazar, all on the Montebello City Council.” The two council members were part of a three-person majority that voted for an exclusive trash-hauling contract that would edge out several other commercial waste hauling companies with agreements to do business in Montebello. The committee put expenditures into petition circulators, campaign literature and mailings, printing and postage costs, and professional legal or accounting services. Robles’ company Pericles Group was paid for campaign literature and mailings, campaign consultation, and salary. The committee also owed Robles money for petition circulation. Copyright EGP News. |
| Editor, WatchOurCity.com March 4, 2009 George Cole and His Gay Issue |
| Zev's Blog L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky on Nestor Valencia in Bell: August 9, 2010 County Tastes Bell-Style Politics |