As we all know, the "Save Sierra College" folks, which number Trustee Bill Martin among their strongest supporters, have endorsed the very liberal immediate past president of Women Democrats of Placer County, Elaine Rowen, to run for the seat that Jerry Simmons is vacating. Rowen is a long time liberal with roots in campaigns for such Democratic luminaries as Gray Davis, Bill Lockyer, and more recently, Rob Haswell, Charlie Brown and Barack Obama.

In that same press release, Martin and the "Save Sierra College" folks announced they would be endorsing an opponent against Trustee Aaron Klein, and that opponent is Emil John Vodonick, a Nevada City attorney.

Vodonick has already been out campaigning, telling people that balanced budgets aren't really important, claiming that the college's four balanced budgets have actually shrunk the reserves, and oh by the way, he also hates Tom McClintock with a passion and will vote for Charlie Brown for Congress (an unusual, but courageous strategy in this neck of the woods).

When "Save Sierra College" and their leaders, Bill Martin, Cheryl Maki and George Magnuson, go out and recruit candidates to run, the actions, judgment and agenda of that group are reflected in the candidates they choose.

Looks like someone forgot to "google" their own candidates.

Turns out that a simple Google search shows that Emil John Vodonick was suspended and placed on five years of probation for taking $53,000 of his client's money out of a trust account, and spending it on himself. He was caught in 1997, and ordered to make restitution by February 1999. When the deadline arrived, he had made no payments, set aside no money to make payments, and hadn't even bothered to ask for a time extension.
He was placed on probation on September 7, 2000, and after more deadlines came and went with no payments, and no attempt to make restitution, the probation was reinstated on December 17, 2004, and he was ordered to take ethics classes to learn how not to steal money from his clients.

Now, forget for a moment the fact that John Vodonick and Elaine Rowen are campaigning against the people who balanced the budget and brought accountability back to Sierra College.

If this is the kind of judgment that Bill Martin, Cheryl Maki, George Magnuson and the "Save Sierra College" crowd use in selecting John and Elaine to carry their banner, how can we trust ANY of their candidates to manage an $80 million college budget and protect the taxpayers?
What kind of judgment does Elaine Rowen have in choosing to run with a guy with a background as "probationary" as John Vodonick?

And who is funding the campaign to elect John and Elaine to office?

Martin, Maki and Magnuson need to come forward quickly and address these major issues with their team. They say where there's smoke, there's fire...but John and Elaine are already blazing.