Love, California Politics Style

You can’t make this stuff up. You just can’t.

First, meet the cast. This is Bill Lockyer:

Mr. Lockyer is the State Treasurer for California. It’s debatable how difficult a job this might be, given how the only thing he has to keep track of is how much money California has. That would be none. Unless he also has to track the state debt, in which case he’s a very busy man.

Mr. Lockyer is a career politician. He was in either the State Assembly or State Senate for more than 25 years, following which he was elected State Treasurer after exhausting his eligibility for the legislature and then serving a stint as State Attorney General. (As an aside, whenever people scream that term limits are the key, remind them that California has had them in place since 1990. See what a great job they’ve done returning power to the people? But I digress.)

Now, let’s meet Nadia Lockyer (she’s the one on the left):

No, Nadia Lockyer isn’t Bill Lockyer’s daughter. She’s his wife (third one, to be precise). Thirty years his junior. They have a child together who must have been born seven months premature, since they had been married only two months when the little tyke made his appearance.

Now, in 2010 Nadia Lockyer decided she wanted to be an elected official just like her sugar daddy… er, beloved husband. So, she decided to run for a seat on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. As it so happened, among her opponents was one Liz Figueroa:

Ms. Figueroa is a former State Senator… who just happened to be an item with Mr. Lockyer before the current Mrs. Lockyer arrived.

Since all is fair in love and politics, Mrs. Lockyer accused Ms. Figueroa of not living within the district she sought to represent. Naturally she protested this, but she was running against Mrs. Lockyer whose campaign was financed by Mr. Lockyer, who in his decades of devoted service to the people of California without a thought of self-advancement had nevertheless accidentally managed to accumulate more money than your average zillionaire. Mrs. Lockyer won the election. Ms. Figueroa is currently the California VP of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood.

Alas, despite her political triumph all was not well with Mrs. Lockyer. She was a slave to demon alcohol, and entered rehab for this in the same year she won her seat on the Board of Supervisors. It was during this time she met one Stephen Chikhani.

This is where things get complicated.

Apparently, or allegedly if you prefer, during their time together in rehab — Mr. Chikhani was seeking relief from assorted chemical (i.e. drug) dependencies — he and Mrs. Lockyer decided to engage in some mutually beneficial physical therapy. Now, Mr. Chikhani has a reputation as something of a ne’er-do-well, one constantly in trouble with the law. It would seem that should the story be true Mrs. Lockyer found this to be something of a roguish charm.

We now descend into a rather odd world of he said-she said-he said. The first he is Mr. Lockyer. He accused Mr. Chikhani of stalking and harassing Mrs. Lockyer. Mrs. Lockyer said much the same thing, and asked the strong arm of the law to intervene. Said arm took a look, yet found a different tale than the one being told; evidence on Mrs. Lockyer’s computer indicated her relationship with Mr. Chikhani was both ongoing and consensual.

Things came to a head (no pun intended… well, sort-of not intended) earlier this month when police were summoned to a motel room. In it they found Mrs. Lockyer, suffering from head and neck injuries she said had been inflicted (allegedly) by Mr. Chikhani. The injuries were serious enough to require hospitalization for Mrs. Lockyer.

Now, Mr. Chikhani’s side of the story. In addition to insisting the evidence found on Mrs. Lockyer’s computer validated his assertion of the relationship being consensual, his version of what happened in the hotel room was that he was defending himself from Mrs. Lockyer after she attacked him amidst accusations of his seeing other women. That’s his story and he’s sticking to it. It warrants mention that to date no charges in this matter have been filed against Mr. Chikhani.

A slight backtrack. Mr. Lockyer’s original account of what happened that night went thusly:

Lockyer told the (San Francisco) Chronicle that he and his wife had had a phone argument. After they hung up, he said, she went to the motel to comfort her suicidal ex-boyfriend. “He seems to have a long history of involvement with the criminal justice system,” Lockyer was quoted as saying, “but her only fault is occasionally having one too many drinks.”

Since then, the story has moved more in the “no comment” direction other than to note that Mrs. Lockyer has once again entered rehab for alcohol and drug addiction, also admitting there had been an affair. It would seem the earlier “occasionally” was a tad low in its assessment of the situation.

Oh, and now there’s talk of a sex tape.

And yes, all politicians involved are Democrats.

It’d be funny if there wasn’t an innocent eight year old boy, namely Mr. and Mrs. Lockyer’s son, being victimized by all this.

Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up. You just can’t.