Convicted US senator stepping down
US State Senator Roderick Wright has resigned from the California Senate after being sentenced to three months in prison on felony perjury and voting fraud charges for lying about living in his Senate district when he ran for office in 2008.
“Effective Sept. 22, 2014, I hereby resign from the California State Senate,” the Democrat senator from Los Angeles County said in a letter on Monday to the Senate secretary.
“It’s painful,” Wright said, adding that at the end of the day you want to consider what the best thing for the house is and my resignation “was the best thing for the house.”
Wright fraudulently listed an Inglewood property as his residence so he could run in 2008 to represent the 25th Senate District, but the court found that he lived in Baldwin Hills, in a different Senate district.
He was convicted in January over charges of lying about his legal residence, and was then suspended from the Senate but his annual pay of over $90,000 kept coming while he was following a possible appeal. He will be removed from the payroll on September 22.
Now Gov. Jerry Brown has 14 days to call for a special election to fill Wright’s seat.
Wright’s explanation “didn’t pass the smell test and it doesn’t now,” said Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy on the case which began in 2010. There was “arrogance” in his conduct and in the suggestion “that the law doesn’t apply to him,” the judge said.
Wright was one of the three Democrat legislators facing separate corruption and bribery charges in Sacramento, California, where the 40-member State Senate is located.
Sen. Leland Yee, a San Francisco Democrat, and Sen. Ron Calderon, a Los Angeles-area Democrat, are also on trial. They are both suspended from office but receiving full pay, which makes them essentially a useless burden to tax payers.
AN/GJH