Just before the opening of this year’s Del Mar Fair, Gov. Jerry Brown’s staff hurriedly rushed to inform three long-time Del Mar Fair Board members their services would no longer be required: Chairman Barry Nussbaum, Kelly Burt, and Vivian Hardage. All three are Republicans.
A controversy is now swirling around the dismissals, and there’s a whiff of Sen. Christine Kehoe’s influence in the air. The terms of seven of the nine fair board members have expired, but only the three prominent Republicans were selected to be removed from the board precisely at the time when board members’ support is most needed: the opening of the fair.
Normally, outgoing Board members are informed they’re leaving contemporaneously with the appointment of replacements chosen by the governor. Curiously, no new board members were named.
Barry Nussbaum is a Republican, yet he was first appointed by Democrat Governor Gray Davis back in 1999, and has been directly involved in fairgrounds operations, often as a full time volunteer, ever since. Regardless of party affiliation, Nussbaum’s purging is the most damaging to the facility and was made without a reason given.
Kelly Burt is a prominent Republican donor and leader with close ties to former Massachusetts Governor and now Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and Vivian Hardage is a charity leader in Rancho Santa Fe. Her husband is Sam Hardage, the former county Republican chairman.
Governors often rely on input from local state legislators when making decisions about fair board appointments, and Kehoe has been directly involved in issues surrounding the fairgrounds and even has a bill in the legislature to move forward with the (questionable) sale of the facility to the tiny City of Del Mar. It’s hard to believe Brown’s office would have dismissed the three Republicans without input from Kehoe.
Why would Governor Brown purge fair board members just before the opening of the fair without naming replacements? Why would Barry Nussbaum, who is an expert on the fairgrounds and was deeply connected to its daily operations, be thrown overboard without explanation? Who is calling the shots? Are there any adults working in Jerry Brown’s Appointments office? Finally, what role did Christine Kehoe, who is moving towards a run for San Diego Mayor and may want to reward supporters by maneuvering them onto the Board, play in the dismissals?
Assemblyman Martin Garrick, who has also been involved with fairground issues since even before becoming a legislator, put it this way in the U-T a few days ago: “I am surprised by the action when there were not replacements identified and no input from locals…On the very day of the opening of the fair they terminate their services. Sounds more like political revenge than it does management of a wonderful state asset.”
As Matt Drudge would say, developing…