Sunday, February 26, 2012

Downfall: Nadia Lockyer Story Reaches Its Nadir



When Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer's sex-drugs-motel-beatdown first broke, I fearlessly predicted that the story would get a lot uglier. Since then, Lockyer has entered a substance abuse program, while the sordid details of her depraved sexual relationship with a meth addict (whom she met in a previous rehab stint) have surfaced, along with some frankly deranged texts and emails. And now, the surest sign that we are close to rock bottom is here: there is a sex tape. What can you say but "Jesus Christ?"

We're told that a sex tape of Nadia Lockyer and the man was given to her husband, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, about six weeks before the Newark incident. The treasurer believed that the man, who has a history of arrests for alleged methamphetamine use, might make the tape public if forced to break off a romantic relationship with the supervisor.
Here's the story, as we've pieced it together from sources knowledgeable about the law enforcement investigation into the Newark incident and the events that preceded it.
After receiving the sex tape and viewing a string of text messages between his wife and the man over the past three months, Bill Lockyer privately contacted Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley - a personal and political friend of the treasurer and his wife. Lockyer was at wit's end as to what to do about his wife, and he hoped to persuade prosecutors to seek a court order barring the man from approaching Nadia Lockyer. 
Bill Lockyer's argument was that his wife was being stalked by the man, a 35-year-old San Jose resident whom he portrayed as a former boyfriend of Nadia Lockyer.
The investigation went nowhere, however, because prosecutors came to believe that Nadia Lockyer, 40, and the man were engaged in a consensual relationship, based partly on text messages and X-rated photos found on her computer.

Oh, and the sleazy boyfriend (whom the Chronicle resolutely refers to as an "ex-boyfriend" despite overwhelming evidence that these two drugstore cowboys are still together) says that whatever injuries Lockyer may have suffered were the result of self-defense; he says Nadia attacked him. 

The man, a construction worker, says his relationship with Nadia Lockyer has lasted more than a year, beginning when the two met at a Kaiser outpatient rehab program in 2010. Sources say she was enrolled for abusing alcohol and he for meth addiction. 
The man also says he and Nadia Lockyer have communicated with each other since the hotel incident. 
As he tells it, Nadia Lockyer invited him to visit her at the Homewood Suites on Feb. 3, where records show she had checked in. 
He also says it was Nadia Lockyer who instigated the fight that night, because she suspected he was involved with other women.

Also, Stephen Chikhani says that Nadia and Bill have been lying about their relationship to the police and Alameda DA. 


Nadia Lockyer and her husband are political figures, but it's hard to treat this as a political story, except to say this: there is no way people around Nadia - like, say, her husband and her staff - were not aware that she was a troubled soul with serious psychological problems. She was in rehab in 2010, the same year she was running for office (and spending $1M of her husband's campaign funds). A normal person would have difficulty balancing a demanding full-time public job with being a mother to a young boy and wife to the State Treasurer. An unbalanced drug addict? Forget it. 


Also, what is going on with the Chronicle? They are not only stubbornly continuing the charade of calling Chikhani an "ex-boyfriend;" they won't even identify him by name because he "has not been arrested" (although he just got out of jail on Santa Clara County...), a standard of discretion and circumspection I had not previously been aware and a courtesy that would certainly not have been extended to a member of, say, Sarah Palin's family. Also, one not shared by other Bay Area media who have identified Chikhani and given him a chance to talk, rather than repeat Lockyer's spin. 


This is a tragedy playing out in semi-public. Nadia Lockyer was living a double life, and now the two strands have irretrievably collided. I can understand the Lockyers' desire, shared it seems with the Chronicle, to try to sweep things under the rug, but that's not going to do anyone any good. Nadia Lockyer is, by any definition, unfit to serve in any capacity. It's questionable whether she can even be an effective wife and/or mother. But, trying to preserve her shattered political career will do no good for anyone, let alone her. 



2 comments:

  1. It's the tragedy of a double life. Obviously, the short-term rehab didn't work on her emotional turmoil.

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  2. Most of the articles are terrible, full of weak conjecture based on a few random facts gained from other articles in the press, themselves based on weak conjecture based on very few statements gained elsewhere, etc. As far as I can tell, Nadia Lockyer hasn't said much of anything, likely because she is in rehab. I expect things will change if her side of the story ever gets out. In the meantime, the press goes on with a crazy feeding frenzy based on paltry information. Bill Lockyer has said that he was unkind to her, so that is why she checked into a hotel room; that she has a problem with alcohol; and that there is a sex tape. Not sure how any of these things could be classified as damage control; none of them are particularly self-flattering; seems like the same old embarrassingly direct Bill Lockyer to me. The press is mostly merely making various rehashes of these statements. Are we supposed to believe now that Nadia Lockyer went to the hotel room drunk and drugged to make an S/M sex tape taking her son along for good measure? Brilliant! That sums up all the "facts" rather nicely--and the public will *love* it. Another variation is: Bill beat up his wife; to cover it up, he blamed it on someone else, made up the story about the hotel, and then ran with this story, saying not only is there another man, but there is a sex tape, etc. For the most part, people's comments tend to portray Nadia Lockyer as some floozy. Typical victimization of the woman going on here. Many people compare her campaign to that of Meg Whitman in terms of spending; but if any lesson was learned from that campaign, it is the fact that votes cannot be bought; Jerry Brown--who endorsed Nadia Lockyer--won the campaign with very little spending. If Nadia Lockyer's resume is thin, male or female, mine is invisible. She went to UCLA; she has a law degree from Loyola; she served on the Santa Ana School Board, etc. She was in politics well before she met Bill Lockyer; otherwise, they probably would have never met. She seems to come from a fairly well-to-do background, let alone her own income as an attorney at an established law firm; her father was an accomplished lawyer and a local hero of sorts, as they named a school after him. Actually, in his endorsements for Nadia Lockyer, Jerry Brown said they he knew her all her life; that's because Lockyer's father helped campaigning for Brown during his earlier run for governor; Brown met Nadia when she was a kid. It was her father's prior success that helped to first propel her into the public spotlight. Most of this is public information that I gained from the internet. Most reporters are apparently too retarded to do so; or, at least, it simply doesn't serve the purposes of a sensationalistic and opportunistic article; of course, this has nothing to do with the *fact* that such an article is probably complete and utter crap.

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