Democracy In Action

As fascinating as the battle over Donna Frye's San Diego mayoral write-in campaign has been, ultimately the candidate didn't land the job (she would have, had more of her supporters inked in the bullet on their ballot next to where they filled in her name).

So we turn our attention to Orange County, where you've got to love what was probably the most bizarre result of this year's elections. A complete unknown figure by the name of Steve Rocco somehow managed to win a seat as a Orange Unified School District trustee, beating out the candidate favored by just about everyone.

Parents, teachers and district officials finally got to see just who they elected, when Rocco was sworn in on Thursday. And in terms of crazy, the L.A. Times reports that he didn't disappoint:

With camera shutters whirring, Rocco used his first chance to speak as an elected official to offer a rambling, agitated, five-minute diatribe that summarized his belief that Orange County is controlled by a cabal of corrupt politicians, judges and officials.

In Italian, he paid homage to his late father. Then switching to English, he said, "I am and always have been the anticorruption candidate," adding later: "We are living in a time of secret organizations, living in a time of corruption and, most of all, living in a time of dictatorships."

From the outset, Rocco signaled that his would not be the usual tenure. Dressed in black, he never removed his dark sunglasses or ski cap.

The OC Register has the pic: Rocco's in the middle.


Rocco is apparently driven to avenge a 1980 conviction for shoplifting several rolls of film and a sausage from a Santa Ana grocery store.

This week's OC Weekly, meanwhile, extends the bizarre story of Rocco by discovering that the mysterious school board trustee is behind the website AndyKaufmanLives.com, a rambling mess of a site that echoes the popular notion that comedian Kaufman faked his own death, and includes a Q-and-A between Rocco and himself (as well as a primer on how he himself, Steve Rocco, would go about faking his death).

Tongue mostly planted in cheek, the OC Weekly concludes that, yes, Rocco is Kaufman.