Local News in Brief : Candidate’s Guilty Plea Becomes Issue
An 18-year-old misdemeanor guilty plea by Democratic challenger Robert D. Epple has surfaced as a campaign issue in his battle to unseat Assemblyman Wayne Grisham (R-Norwalk) in the closely contested 63rd Assembly District race.
The Southern California seat is one that Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) wants the Democrat to win to help him to retain his powerful leadership post.
The Grisham campaign disclosed information on the charges Tuesday morning. Epple, 39, declined comment, and his campaign said he was ill with the flu.
An Epple spokesman acknowledged that the Cerritos College trustee had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of public drunkenness and another misdemeanor count of failure to report an accident in connection with a 1970 auto accident.
Spokesman Dirk Brazil said Epple, who was “22 years old and just out of the Army,” was alone in his car returning from a holiday party when he hit an unoccupied parked car in the Long Beach area.
“He learned a valuable lesson from this incident that turned his life around,” Brazil said.
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