There are two parts to this: what is known, and what was reported.

It is known that the aforementioned Bera owned a transient hotel in California that had a registered sex offender (case involved a minor) living there in April of 2010.  It is also known that living at the location in question would be effectively banned for sex offenders under the California Penal Code, as it is too close to both a playground and a high school.  Lastly, it is known that the property was sold in December of 2009.  These things are all known.

It has been reported to RedState that in April of 2010 an agent of the Bera campaign ran a focus group on Bera’s ownership of this hotel and the residency of the sex offender.  If the information provided to RedState is as reported, then the Bera campaign was both aware and actively worried about the possible implications of it being revealed that their candidate was renting to sex offenders (the information provided to RedState used the plural).  It also indicates that at least one sex offender was living on the premises when Bera owned it; obviously, it would hardly reflect badly on the candidate if a pedophile moved in after Bera sold the property.  In short, there seems to be a bit of potentially-disturbing development going on here.

Now, it is entirely possible that the answer to the question Did Ami Bera knowingly violate the California Penal Code by renting to a pedophile? could be ‘no.’  However, given that this was apparently important enough for his campaign that Bera had an outside group focus test it among voters, it seems clear that the question should be asked.  If it turns out that the candidate had merely not done due diligence as per the law… well, that’s bad, but it’s not really nasty.  But regardless of whatever is going on here,  it certainly needs to be resolved.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Dan Lungren for CA-03.