SLO County candidate accused of election fraud changes her mind, won’t lawyer up
Gaea Powell has changed her mind again.
After declaring not two days ago that she planned to find a lawyer, the former and current San Luis Obispo County candidate will continue to represent herself in her felony election fraud case as she heads toward trial, she told The Tribune on Wednesday.
Powell has been representing herself against nine counts of election and voter fraud — eight of them felonies — since September because she had “no confidence” in anyone else’s ability to speak for her in what she sees as a “politically motivated” and “bogus” case, she previously told The Tribune.
Despite her reservations, however, Powell said she decided to lawyer up due to her lack of legal experience or knowledge of courtroom procedures, which posed challenges for her during her preliminary hearing on April 3 and 4.
On Monday, she requested conflict counsel — an independent public attorney appointed in place of a regular public defender when a conflict of interest exists — but was denied by SLO County Superior Court Judge Timothy Covello, who said no conflict was apparent to the court.
After the hearing, Powell then told The Tribune she planned to request a public defender.
However, come Wednesday, she once again decided to continue representing herself — called “pro se” in court — mostly, to prove a point.
“The whole system is stacked against the average person who’s trying to defend themselves,” she told The Tribune. “It’s so overwhelming. The founding fathers said if the laws become so voluminous that the public can’t understand it, then, that you don’t even have a legal system.”
Powell said the prosecution’s evidence was “based on character assassination” and believes the District Attorney’s Office has manufactured the entire case against her to prevent her from running for office again in the future.
Her resolve to “expose” what she sees as systematic injustice is so strong that she would be willing to face a felony conviction to do so, she said.
“Of course, that’s a consideration, and it’s stressful, but I know that truth is on my side,” Powell said. “I think that their case is so thin that I will just try my best to research the best way to handle a trial and asking questions and putting in the evidence.”
Powell said she remains open to requesting a public defender if anything changes and hopes to put in another request for advisory co-counsel — which Covello previously denied her.
The charges lodged against Powell center on her split residency during two mayor campaigns in Arroyo Grande between one house outside the city limits, that she has long admitted to living at full-time, and a condo she said she rented inside the city limits but didn’t live at. One of the charges also relates to improperly reporting her campaign finances.
Throughout the length of her investigation and court proceedings so far, Powell has never wavered from her resolve that she did not knowingly break any residency rules, lie about her residency or commit the intentional fraud she is being accused of — because she does not believe such residency laws exist.
“You’ve accused me of breaking a law that doesn’t exist in order to manufacture a fraud case against me,” she said. “ ... The bottom line is, there is no residency law I have violated or I should have been charged with.”
California Election Code section 349 defines residency as full-time habitation of a place. While the rule is not a criminal code, other laws require candidates to live at the address they are registered to vote at, which must be within the jurisdiction they seek to represent.
As for the campaign finance violation charge, she admitted that she “made one mistake” on the statement of economic interests form 700, which she does not see as a “smoking gun” or evidence in the DA Office’s case against her.
She understands the gravity of the charges against her, but more than anything, Powell is simply unwilling to be silenced.
“It’s nerve wracking. I take it very seriously, but I can’t live in fear,” she said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
