One person can make a difference. I have known Aaron Starr for about thirty years. He has always been taking on government. As one time he was the California Chair of the Libertarian Party. Now his “hobby” is suing the corrupt government of Oxnard—and winning. Yet, he is not an attorney.
“Here’s what’s next on the docket
In addition to the campaign contributions lawsuit, a handful of lawsuits between Starr and the city remain active.
- Auditor: On Nov. 26, a county judge ruled in favor of Starr that Oxnard violated a state code restricting how many years in a row cities are allowed to hire the same third-party auditor. Rozell said the city does not plan to appeal.
- Riverpark tax: Starr sued the city in July over the validity of a city ordinance — connected to Riverpark special tax ballot measures — that bars the city from replacing some special tax expenditures with general fund money. A hearing is scheduled in that case in Ventura County Superior Court on Jan. 7.
- Lease revenue bond: Starr sued the city in December 2022 over its adoption of lease revenue bonds. A county judge awarded an initial victory to the city in December 2023; Starr appealed. The case is scheduled for a March 24 hearing in the state 2nd Appellate District Court.
- Pension obligation bond: A county judge and state appeals court affirmed Oxnard’s handling of pension obligation bonds. The suit is now sitting in the California Supreme Court’s docket, where Starr said it is expected to move forward after the court decides a similar case out of San Jose.
Now that he is a city councilmember, will the city continue violating the law? Will city staff now answer his questions with data and documents? Aaron Starr is the type of person we need on every city council and school board.
Oxnard’s legal battles with new Councilman Aaron Starr aren’t over. Here’s what to know
Isaiah Murtaugh, Yahoo, Ventura County Star, 12/26/24 https://www.yahoo.com/news/oxnards-legal-battles-councilman-aaron-003525907.html
For years, Aaron Starr has worked to change Oxnard policy from outside City Hall, putting forward ballot measures and battling the city in more than a dozen lawsuits.
When he was sworn into office as a City Council member on Dec. 11, a handful of legal cases remained active. Two weeks later, one of them thrust its way onto the council’s agenda.
On Dec. 20, a federal appeals court published a decision siding with Starr in his 2020 case against the city’s campaign contribution limits.
Aaron Starr is sworn onto the Oxnard City Council on Dec. 11. The longtime critic of Oxnard government has active legal cases against city that will now play out while he is on the dais.
On Monday, the City Council will meet in closed session to consider its response to the appellate court ruling. The meeting offers a first look into how the city will handle legal battles with Starr now that he’s inside the fold alongside three other council newbies.
A sitting council member battling its own city in court is not unprecedented — former Oxnard Mayor Tim Flynn, for example, sued the city in 2007 and 2008 — but not many match the volume of Starr’s Oxnard litigation.
Starr said he has taken Oxnard to court over the years only when the city rejected his various concerns about the legality of its actions.
The council member, who has already sparred with some of his new colleagues in his weeks on the dais, wouldn’t rule out future legal filings. But he noted that as an elected official, he has options outside of the courts.
“I have every reason to believe it’s going to work out much better,” he said.
Chief Assistant City Attorney Kenneth Rozell said the city doesn’t expect any changes in its approach to outstanding lawsuits with Starr, barring a decision from a council majority.
“We are ready, willing and able to work with him,” he said. “We have a very professional staff.”
California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, known commonly as the FPPC, bars officials with any “disqualifying conflict of interest” from making or using their positions to influence government decisions connected to that conflict.
Rozell said that means Starr will be required to recuse himself from council discussions of his cases, including Monday’s.
The Independent
In an interview Dec. 16, before the appeals court decision, Starr said he still needed to take a close look at the FPPC rule and believes there is a chance he could participate in some of those discussions under certain conditions.
He declined to say Tuesday whether he plans to recuse himself from the upcoming closed session discussion.
The council meets at 5 p.m. Monday in chambers at 305 W. Third St. Public comments will be limited to the lawsuit, which is the only agenda item.
Campaign contribution limits case
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, headquartered in San Francisco, ruled in a split decision Dec. 20 that the city had targeted Starr with a 2020 ballot measure capping how much individuals could donate to political campaigns.
The ruling from the three-member panel reversed an earlier decision from a federal district court and sent it back to the court with an order to rewrite its judgment.
The city still could respond to the appeals court ruling, though Rozell declined to say Tuesday what options will be presented to the City Council in the upcoming session.
Starr’s nonprofit, Moving Oxnard Forward, filed the lawsuit after Oxnard’s Measure B — a city-initiated ballot measure that included caps on individual contributions to political campaigns — passed with 82.5% of votes in the March 2020 primary.
U.S. Circuit Judge Daniel Collins authored the court’s decision, which found that Oxnard singled out Starr both in the framing of the measure and its promotion.
Starr ran unsuccessfully for seats on the council five times between 2014 and 2020, and Moving Oxnard Forward backed several ballot measures, mostly successful, during that time frame. Across those campaigns, Starr tended to raise most of his money from a small number of donors contributing in large amounts, the decision said, making him an outlier among Oxnard campaigners.
Measure B, the court wrote, “would have little practical impact on any recent candidates for municipal elections except for one — Aaron Starr.”
The city’s own material promoting the measure used Starr as a “poster child,” the opinion said, when a pair of slide presentation pages featured Starr’s campaign contribution records as an example, though the city did not directly name him.
In a dissenting opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge Mark Bennett wrote that the record supported the city’s assertion it was trying to block potential corruption.
Starr said it was “very clear” to him that he was the target of the contribution limits.
“The person who was most impacted by this were not the incumbents,” he said. “It was me.”
Starr’s council campaign this year, governed by the city’s campaign contribution rule, was largely self-funded.
Rozell said the city was not after Starr but wanted to continue the city’s break with the 2010 corruption scandal that engulfed city hall. City attorneys believe the measure complies with current law, he said.
A state law passed in 2021 put default campaign contribution limits in place for when cities and counties don’t have their own, according to the FPPC.
Here’s what’s next on the docket
In addition to the campaign contributions lawsuit, a handful of lawsuits between Starr and the city remain active.
- Auditor: On Nov. 26, a county judge ruled in favor of Starr that Oxnard violated a state code restricting how many years in a row cities are allowed to hire the same third-party auditor. Rozell said the city does not plan to appeal.
- Riverpark tax: Starr sued the city in July over the validity of a city ordinance — connected to Riverpark special tax ballot measures — that bars the city from replacing some special tax expenditures with general fund money. A hearing is scheduled in that case in Ventura County Superior Court on Jan. 7.
- Lease revenue bond: Starr sued the city in December 2022 over its adoption of lease revenue bonds. A county judge awarded an initial victory to the city in December 2023; Starr appealed. The case is scheduled for a March 24 hearing in the state 2nd Appellate District Court.
- Pension obligation bond: A county judge and state appeals court affirmed Oxnard’s handling of pension obligation bonds. The suit is now sitting in the California Supreme Court’s docket, where Starr said it is expected to move forward after the court decides a similar case out of San Jose.
The Constitution provides that an oath-breaking insurrectionist is ineligible to be president. This is the plain wording of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. “No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” This disability can be removed by a two-thirds vote in each House.
Disqualification is based on insurrection against the Constitution and not the government. The evidence of Donald Trump’s engaging in such insurrection is overwhelming. The matter has been decided in three separate forums, two of which were fully contested with the active participation of Trump’s counsel.
The first fully contested proceeding was Trump’s second impeachment trial. On Jan. 13, 2021, then-President Trump was impeached for “incitement of insurrection.” At the trial in the Senate, seven Republicans joined all Democrats to provide a majority for conviction but failed to reach the two-thirds vote required for removal from office. Inciting insurrection encompasses “engaging in insurrection” against the Constitution “or giving aid and comfort to the enemies thereof,” the grounds for disqualification specified in Section 3.
The second contested proceeding was the Colorado five-day judicial due process hearing where the court “found by clear and convincing evidence that President Trump engaged in insurrection as those terms are used in Section Three.” The Colorado Supreme Court affirmed. On further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the court held that states lack power to disqualify candidates for federal office and that federal legislation was required to enforce Section 3. The court did not address the finding that Trump had engaged in insurrection.
Finally, there is the bipartisan inquiry of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. More than half of the witnesses whose testimony was displayed at its nine public hearings were Republicans, including members of the Trump administration. The inescapable conclusion of this evidence is that Trump engaged in insurrection against the Constitution. In particular, Trump unlawfully demanded that his vice president, Mike Pence, throw out votes in the Electoral College for political opponent Joe Biden, a power he did not have. While the riot was in progress, Trump used Pence’s rejection of his demand to further enflame the crowd and cause them to chant “Hang Mike Pence!”
Some will argue that the Supreme Court decision in the Colorado case, Trump v. Anderson, precludes Congress from rejecting electoral votes when they convene on Jan. 6, on the basis of 14th Amendment disqualification. This view lacks merit for three reasons.
First the majority’s suggestion that there must be new implementing federal legislation passed pursuant to the enforcement power specified in the 14th Amendment is what lawyers call dicta. Dicta are the musings of an opinion that are not required to decide the case. The holding that Section 3 is not self-executing may be an alternate holding, but thoughts about the kind of implementing statute required are plain dicta. Dicta are not precedential. The four dissenters strenuously objected to this part of the opinion as overreach to decide a question not presented. This overreach is a power grab which Congress is not required to credit.
Second, counting the Electoral College votes is a matter uniquely assigned to Congress by the Constitution. Under well-settled law this fact deprives the Supreme Court of a voice in the matter, because the rejection of the vote on constitutionally specified grounds is a nonreviewable political question.
Third, specific legislation designed for this situation already exists. The Electoral Count Act was first enacted in 1887 and later amended and restated in 2022. That statute provides a detailed mechanism for resolving disputes as to the validity of Electoral College votes.
The act specifies two grounds for objection to an electoral vote: If the electors from a state were not lawfully certified or if the vote of one or more electors was not “regularly given.” A vote for a candidate disqualified by the Constitution is plainly in accordance with the normal use of words “not regularly given.” Disqualification for engaging in insurrection is no different from disqualification based on other constitutional requirements such as age, citizenship from birth and 14 years’ residency in the United States.
To make an objection under the Count Act requires a petition signed by 20 percent of the members of each House. If the objection is sustained by majority vote in each house, the vote is not counted and the number of votes required to be elected is reduced by the number of disqualified votes. If all votes for Trump were not counted, Kamala Harris would be elected president.
The unlikelihood of congressional Republicans doing anything that might elect Harris as president is obvious. But Democrats need to take a stand against Electoral College votes for a person disqualified by the Constitution from holding office unless and until this disability is removed. No less is required by their oath to support and defend the Constitution.
