Does The Silicon Valley Really Want A Serial Election Fraudster As A Congressman? Meet Ro Khanna

We've been doing some reporting here about what a sleazy character Ro Khanna is and how, from his earliest forays into politics, he's been subverting the rules to win. Predictably, Khanna is up to his old tricks in the CA-17 race against progressive icon Mike Honda. In their endorsement of Honda yesterday, the PCCC told their supporters that "Progressive Congressman Mike Honda is facing a conservative primary challenger on June 3 who calls himself a Democrat-- but is he really? Honda's opponent is open to cutting Social Security. And he opposes the congressional progressive budget that would tax millionaires, invest in jobs, and invest in education! Instead of fighting for progressive ideas, Honda's opponent says Democrats should try even harder to compromise with House Republicans." That's music to the ears of his wealthy Republican financiers.

Once Khanna betrayed India's fascist leader Narendra Modi, Modi operatives in the U.S. recruited a Republican, Vanila Singh, to run pulling conservative votes from him and making it look like he wouldn't make it out of the June 3 jungle primary. So Khanna recruited his own second Republican, Joel VanLandingham, to run against Singh. Josh Richman of the San Jose Mercury News has been reporting how Khanna supporters have been behind VanLandingham's campaign. Vanila Singh "insists Khanna and his supporters recruited VanLandingham to split the GOP vote and boost Khanna’s chances of getting into the June primary’s top two with Rep. Mike Honda. She has used this as an excuse for skipping candidate forums, saying she’ll not take part in any event in which VanLandingham participates."

Now comes new research from Margaret Okuzumi, a Honda supporter who is the Democratic Club of Sunnyvale’s incoming president.

Okuzumi claims Khanna’s campaign moved to “hijack” that club by having more than 45 of campaign staffers and supporters-- and even Khanna, who lives in Fremont-- become members in the latter half of last year in order to sway the endorsement vote.

“People would only do that if directed by a campaign to do so. Otherwise, they are hardly likely to know that our Democratic Club even exists or that our endorsement is considered of strategic importance, especially if they live as far away from Sunnyvale as Fremont,” she said. “I wouldn’t have minded as much if they’d actually recruited new people from Sunnyvale to join our club. Instead they recruited over 30 people who didn’t care about our city and who weren’t interested in our activities other than our endorsement.”

But Nancy Smith, the Sunnyvale club’s cofounder and former president, said Monday that Honda’s and Khanna’s campaigns both were notified of the club’s endorsement rules-– namely, that a person would have to sign up and attend at least one meeting before being allowed to take part in an endorsement vote. “I would have to say Ro’s campaign took that more seriously than Mike’s did,” she said.

The club eventually voted overwhelmingly not to endorse anyone in this race-– which some might see as a win for Khanna, given Honda’s incumbency.

However, five of those new Sunnyvale Democratic Club members-– including Shivani Sanan, Rajesh and Madhu Gupta, Priya Kapil and Tanu Kalra, all of Fremont-– later signed VanLandingham’s Alameda County nominating petitions, Okuzumi found. Another one, Mahesh Pakala, reportedly asked a Fremont couple affiliated with the temple to sign Vanlandingham’s petition. And several of VanLandingham’s petition-signers either themselves gave money-– more than $10,000 total-– to Khanna’s campaign or had immediate family members who did.

“Without Khanna campaign involvement, VanLandingham would not have received enough signatures to qualify for the ballot,” Okuzumi said.

“It’s clear that Ro Khanna’s supporters and donors made a concerted effort to help Republican Joel VanLandingham get on the ballot,” Honda campaign manager Doug Greven said in an email Monday. “If Ro Khanna himself really had nothing to do with this, he should publicly condemn his supporters who orchestrated this scheme, and refund the more than $10,000 in contributions he received from them.”

It's amazing that Khanna was caught in a campaign financial fraud case and forced to resign from office and then, a few years later, was caught lying, claiming he had been endorsed by Bill Clinton who was so angry that he endorsed his opponent and sent out a press release saying "I regret that Ro Khanna has misled the people of the 12th District in this mailing." Khanna doesn't learn from his errors and is at it again-- with a huge bankroll provided by some of the sleaziest anti-family right-winger financiers in American politics. Khanna's greasy attacks against Honda are something new. When he was trying to win seats in other districts, this is how he would talk about Honda: