Anaheim Insider here.

Adam Elmahrek’s hit piece…excuse me, article…on Lucille Kring was forwarded to me earlier today. Not to put too fine a point on it, but what a shoddy piece of…journalism.

It’s a long article, but here’s the gist: Elmahrek claims Kring changed her position on four issues in response to campaign contributions.  He offer no proof. Even the liberal “watchdog” types the Voice always calls for quotes to support their slant scoff at Elmahrek’s allegations.

Elmahrek does dredge up Cory Briggs, a liberal environmental ambulance-chaser from San Diego to echo his allegations and chirp that Kring should hire a lawyer. Briggs is the same guy brought in by OCCORD to ask the AG and the DA to prosecute Kring and the other three councilmembers on trumped-up conflict-of-interest charges.

If Elmahrek is truly interested in writing about flip-flopping Anaheim politicians, how about Mayor Tom Tait (I realize that is ridiculous since Tait has blanket immunity from the Voice)? How about the story of how the mayor’s broken promises to council candidate Steve Lodge helped break his candidacy, a story now well-known in Anaheim political circles?

In late 2011, Tait gave Lodge his strong endorsement for City Council. He headlined his inaugural fundraiser and hooked Lodge up with his political consultants.

Then came the 2012 vote on GardenWalk, which Lodge publicly supported. Initially, Tait’s attitude was one of reasonable people can disagree and stuck with his endorsement.  A few months later, during the summer, Tait told Lodge that unless he flip-flopped on GardenWalk and came out against it, then Tait would pull his endorsement.  Lodge posed a question to Tait: would he, personally, trust a candidate who flipped-flopped like that? Tait answered that he wouldn’t, but insisted Lodge do it anyway. Lodge refused. Tait pulled his endorsement but promised to keep the un-endorsement quiet and not work against Lodge’s candidacy. He also promised not to endorse another council candidate.

Not long afterward, Lodge’s political consultants let him know that unfortunately, they would no longer be able to run his campaign. Despite promising not to hurt Lodge’s campaign, Tait forced Lodge to scramble to put together a new campaign team several weeks before voting started.

Then, Tait endorsed John Leos, an OCEA hack who was Tait’s polar opposite on union and other issues, breaking his promise to Lodge not to endorse anyone else in the race.  Tait then threw all his energy into electing Leos, breaking his promise not to work against Lodge’s candidacy.

This story of serial promise-breaking occurred at the same time as the e-mails Elmahrek points to, and is much more specific than Elmahrek’s dubious claims about Kring’s campaign stances.

This story is well known in Anaheim political circles, if Elmahrek is genuinely interested in writing stories about politicians flip-flopping and breaking promises.

It’s not difficult to see what is happening. Liberal special interests are trying to pulverize the Anaheim council majority into submission with a steady stream of negative media stories and legal threats. Adam Elmahrek is their scribe. The pattern of his coverage and story angles is so obvious you would have to be a blind man not to see it.

Creepy Jason Young, who moved to Fullerton a few months ago, and unstable Cynthia Ward file public record act requests and act as Elmahrek’s volunteer research assistants. Kring doesn’t vote the way they want, so they want to pay her back like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Tait’s council aide, Mishal Montgomery, leaks info to Elmahrek, Ward and Young and others in hopes of damaging anyone she sees as an enemy or critic of her boss.

We all know the deal here. It’s an open secret that Kring is going to run against Tom Tait for mayor next year, so this is the beginning of Voice of OC muddying her up to provide ammo for anti-Kring hit pieces.

The political agenda here is evident not only from the stories Elmahrek writes, but from the stories he knows about and doesn’t write. Someone forwarded this to me a while ago; it’s a screen capture of Adam Elmahrek’s bio from when he was communications intern for the Orange County Professional Firefighters Association (the job he had before going to work for Voice of OC). Look at his closing quote:

Elmahrek OCfirefighters bio

Does Elmahrek want his reporting to be measured against that quote, the way he is measuring Kring against a few examples of heated rhetoric?

Everyone has an agenda. My political agenda is pretty obvious. So are the political agendas of others who blog and comment here and elsewhere.