Howard Kaloogian

From dKosopedia

Category: California Republicans

Pro-Iraq War candidate and wingnut talk-show host Californian Howard Kaloogian was recently caught running a photo on his campaign website that purported to show a pacified Baghdad neighborhood but was in fact a photo of a suburb of Istanbul, Turkey. The photo was removed on Wednesday March 29, 2006 after its exposure as a fraud or mistake. The caption on the photo read, "We took this photo of Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be."

Numerous other false claims made by Kaloogian are itemized in his wikipedia page.

The Armenian-American Kaloogian was born on December 30, 1959 and earned a Bachelor's from Michigan State University and J.D. from Pepperdine University. He was elected to three terms in the California Assembly from District 74 in San Diego, from 1994 to 2000. California's Armenian community is hardly responsible for Kaloogian. The largest concentration of Armenian-Americans is in California, but in the Los Angeles area--the eastern part of the Hollywood district of Los Angeles now named "Little Armenia"--and not around San Diego.

In 2003, Kaloogian became the chairman of the Recall Gray Davis Committee, organized to exploit California's periodic temper tantrum populism to oust the state's then Democratic governor, Gray Davis. Despite notoriety or perhaps bacause of it he has trouble persuading even California Republicans to take him seriously. On April 11th, 2006 Kaloogian finished third among the field of Republican challengers in a special primary election for CA-50 and was eliminated from the runoff.

Sources

"House Candidate Draws Fire for Web Photo". Associated Press. March 30, 2006. news story