Larry Bennett in 2012, trying, and failing miserably, to keep Dick Jones, Don Bankhead, and Pat McKinley from being recalled from office.

If you liked the Fullerton City Council before the Great Recall of 2012, then you’ll love City Council candidate Larry Bennett.  Larry Bennett’s list of campaign donors is filled with people who also supported the doomed Anti-Recall campaign, for which he served as treasurer in 2012. That effort crashed and burned under the crushing weight of inertia embodied by Dick Jones, Don Bankhead, and Pat McKinley, the three unresponsive City Councilmen swept from office by two-thirds of Fullerton’s voters. Their befuddled and crassly inadequate response to the killing of Kelly Thomas by Fullerton police officers a year earlier was matched only by the deafening silence of the trio’s indignant supporters, who considered outraged protesters in front of police headquarters and impolite speakers at Council meetings a bigger threat than uniformed police officers molesting or killing unarmed civilians at will.

Evidently eager to help restore a regime of rubber stamping puppets, many of those same supporters are now donating heavily to put Larry Bennett on the City Council in place of his fellow Republican Greg Sebourn.

Familiar names, recalled by Fullerton voters.

In this veritable forest of Fullerton’s monied elite and out-of-town lobbyists, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Larry Bennett’s recent FPPC filings show:

• $ 1,000.00 donated from none other than twice-recalled former Fullerton City Councilmember Don Bankhead himself.

• $ 1,250.00 given by Norma Jones, wife of recalled Councilmember and Mayor Dr. Dick Jones.

• And to round out the troika, $ 400.00 directly from retired Fullerton Police Chief and subsequently-recalled Fullerton Councilmember Pat McKinley.

• The list goes on:

• $ 500.00 from meddling former Republican State Senator Dick Ackerman, an Irvine resident who made robocalls on behalf of Fullerton’s police union two years ago.

• $ 250.00 from Paul Dudley, former Fullerton Community Development Director.

• $ 1,000.00  from Jim Blake, former Metropolitan Water District Director under Bankhead/Jones/McKinley, etc.

• $ 1,000.00 from Heroes restaurant and another $ 1,000.00 from Roscoes, both operated by Chamber of Commerce favorite Jack Franklyn, whose downtown swilleries Mr. Bennett cited as two of his favorite places in Fullerton during a Chamber of Commerce sponsored candidate forum last month

• $ 500.00 from Dexter Savage, who memorably made a mortifying out-of-order speech on behalf of soon-to-be-recalled Dick Jones, Don Bankhead and Pat McKinley while receiving a certificate of appreciation from then Mayor Sharon Quirk-Silva for his service on the Planning Commission.

• $ 250.00 from the campaign of Fullerton City Councilmember and lobbyist Curt Pringle employee Jennifer Fitzgerald, who also opposed the 2012 Recall.

• $ 250.00 from Todd Priest, lobbyist for Curt Pringle & Associates, and co-worker of Jennifer Fitzgerald.

The list goes on, but one name you won’t find on the list is the Fullerton Police Officers Association, because the tens of thousands of dollars they are spending on behalf of Larry Bennett (and Doug Chaffee) are officially independent expeditures from their PAC, making a union the single biggest entity supporting the election of Larry Bennett.