Curious what the point is here. I had people dropping leaflets of this reprinted "ethics" commentary by Cosmo Garvin about Hansen on my doorstep during the campaign. Oddly, there were about six copies of the same leaflet attractively fanned out as though intending to taunt (I had Hansen lawn signs out front). After reading the piece, I had to laugh, because the author clearly seemed to be under the impression that he was presenting a game-changing expose of corruption. And my only response was, "Who gives a shite?" I have friends who are government staffers at one level or another and I had to listen to a lot of snark directed at Hansen, but I just never heard anything that was more than snark. The bottom line is that Hansen simply campaigned the socks off of his other opponents. Yes he had money to do send out a gazillion mailers. But what he had even more of was his own time and his passion. He personally visited my neighborhood numerous times when his opponents did rarely or not at all. When there were town hall meetings, he did not reply with issue checklist responses, but with little tutorials on the issue that set the context for how he formed his opinion. Sacramento suffers from a bad case of the status quo. For years we've had to endure government by a culture run by developers and government professionals--or neighborhood activists who--surprise!--end up being developer wannabes or government professionals. It's a maddening do-si-do of sameness. I think Hansen disrupted that sameness and that's what his detractors find so annoying.

It's always an interesting discussion, this "crooked politician" moral posture. It pretends that morality is an absolute, objective phenomenon and that thinking that it's not is somehow cynicism. Taking moral high ground about politics is often itself just political gamesmanship. Whenever power and money and influences are at play, the room starts to stink morally, that's just a fact. How severe we think that stink is--how willing we are to tolerate or "forgive" it-- is relative to a lot of other factors. For example, a fat pimply guy we don't know who breaks wind is far more offensive to us than a beautiful loved one who breaks wind. We're more willing to put up with moral lapses or even moral ambiguity in someone we like than someone we don't. The same with ideological affinities in government, I think. Outright calling someone "crooked" and the like is just dumb unless you have proof of a legal crime. In which case, you should call the cops. Absent that, you're just trying to cast a pall over someone you didn't support. It's true that ethical conduct and legal conduct are not the same thing and that someone can be morally repugnant and not criminal per se. It's also true that sometimes rules need to be broken to serve another goal. But the minute you acknowledge that morality and ethics functions that way, you're admitting the grayness and subjectivity of it, and you should really consider not using it as a political crutch.

Ps: I say this as someone who wasn't there.

This is great coverage and superior to the Bee's. the Bee, typically, seemed more interested in playing to the mall PR concerns, whereas this article, supported by evidence, accurately conveys the scope and the emotional context of the pandemonium, while still adhering to facts. Job well done.

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