Free Republic

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California state treasurer Bill Lockyer is used to the public spotlight. Just not like this. After a political career spanning four decades, Lockyer is drawing attention not for his job but for his marital troubles, his wife's substance abuse and her claim that she was roughed up by an ex-boyfriend at a motel room. And with each new development, the story has taken ever stranger turns. An email last week that appeared to be sent from Nadia Lockyer, herself a promising San Francisco Bay area politician, went to a newspaper, accusing her husband, a former state...

It's painful watching the Lockyer family drama spin out of control. The alcoholic 40-year-old Alameda County supervisor, who is also battling drug addiction, checks in and out of rehab, then continues to behave erratically like a typical substance abuser. The codependent 70-year-old elected treasurer of the nation's largest state risks his four-decade political legacy trying to preserve a marriage to a woman who cheated on him with a methamphetamine addict. Then there's their young son, who was dragged along with his mother to the Newark motel where she says her lover beat her up. These folks need help. None of...

John Burton was well on his way to becoming a political icon when he resigned from Congress in 1982 to battle an alcohol and cocaine addiction, but he won't deign to say Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer should follow his example and step down. As a politician who famously climbed back into the public arena, Burton said Friday that whether an addict is a street-sweeper, a county supervisor or the president of the United States, you don't get well until you commit to getting well. Whatever comes next is "her decision," Burton said of Lockyer. "The only person who can...

More drama involving Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer - this time concerning an e-mail from her Web address that was sent to the San Jose Mercury News suggesting she was in serious distress and blaming her husband, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, for hooking her on drugs. After receiving the e-mail Wednesday, the Mercury News called police in Hayward, where officers and paramedics were promptly dispatched to the Lockyers' home to check on her. According to law enforcement and other sources, Nadia Lockyer insisted she was fine and denied sending the e-mail. However, she did tell a Mercury News reporter who...

The tragic unraveling of Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer took a disturbing turn this week when a message from her personal email account landed in a reporter's in-box: Her husband, California's Treasurer Bill Lockyer, the message claimed, bought and gave her drugs years before she met her drug-addicted former lover. . In an apparent call for help, the message also said she could no longer stand the torture and harassment of the ex-lover who she says beat her in a motel room two months ago. "I simply can't bear this any longer,'' the email said. "Goodbye to everyone.'' Fearing for...

Despite a trip to rehab and an ongoing investigation into her accusation that she was assaulted by an ex-boyfriend in a Newark hotel room, Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer allegedly has continued to contact her former lover, Stephen Chikhani. Most recently, she supposedly left him a voice mail message declaring, "Miss you beside me." According to a source familiar with the recording, Lockyer made the nine-second call to Chikhani just 10 days ago at 4:59 a.m. on March 25.The message is among the audio recordings turned over to the state attorney general by Chikhani's lawyer."I just want the attorney general's...

"All governments lie," the late muckraker I.F. "Izzy" Stone used to preach. Let's add this: They also deny. Denial of access is a government lie in and of itself -- especially when a bureaucrat tells the public it has no right to view the writings of top officials, particularly when those officials are in trouble. A pair of recent controversies shows how quickly governments become recalcitrant for fear of embarrassment, denying access to information that may further public understanding and full accountability. In one, lawyers have denied access to records involving a California power couple, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer and...

Sobering photographs of her bruised forehead and neck, new text messages of a tempestuous affair and a police report of a volatile marriage all emerged this week, adding new layers of recklessness and despair to the public fall of Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer. In her first descriptions of the night that made her private troubles public, Lockyer told this newspaper this week through a series of emails that she was "violently assaulted" at a Newark hotel by her ex-lover, Stephen Chikhani, who sent text messages trying to woo her back. "I'll have the room warm candles lit and I'll...

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Embattled Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer made her first public appearance Tuesday since returning from drug rehabilitation. Lockyer attended Tuesday's regularly scheduled supervisors meeting. She returned to work last week after treatment for alcohol abuse, which followed her claim that she was assaulted by her ex-boyfriend...

It’s hard to remember a time when so many public officials in the Bay Area were caught in embarrassing situations or accused of misdeeds at the same time. Indeed, demands for resignations, whether coming from the press or the public, seem to have reached an unprecedented level. But not every transgression is equal, of course (although many of them are depressing). So in an effort to sort out which public official has behaved the worst, the Express staff decided it was time to do some head-to-head comparisons. And to make it a bit more interesting, we decided to do it...

Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer is lying when she says she visited ex-lover Stephen Chikhani in jail last summer in her professional capacity as an lawyer, Chikhani's attorney said Wednesday. "I know she signed in as a lawyer, but they were not legal visits," said attorney Adrienne Dell, of San Jose. "She definitely abused that; there's no question in my mind. They were still in a relationship." The Bay Area News Group's public-records request uncovered jail logs denoting two of Lockyer's visits to Chikhani in Santa Clara County's Elmwood jail in Milpitas, on June 15 and June 22, 2011. Dell...

A little more than a month after enrolling in a substance-abuse program following a violent clash with an ex-boyfriend in a Newark hotel, Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer unexpectedly showed up for work Tuesday at a board retreat - and stepped right back into a controversy. Her husband, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, accompanied her to the Alameda County Conference Center in downtown Oakland and returned later in the day to pick her up. The supervisor's return, however, was marred by a new report that she had visited her ex-boyfriend, Stephen Chikhani, three times last summer while he was in lockup...

Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer visited her ex-lover in a Santa Clara County jail twice last year and signed in as his lawyer, allowing her to see him more privately and for a longer time than if she were a friend or family member. Lockyer faced questions from the Bay Area News Group -- which learned about the visits through a public-records request -- when she returned to work Tuesday, more than a month after announcing she was entering rehabilitation for an undisclosed addiction following an purported assault by the former lover in a Newark hotel room. "His dad asked...

Success in life is a wonderful thing, but it's always sweeter when you earn it. Nadia Lockyer, an Alameda County supervisor currently enrolled in a substance abuse treatment program, has yet to earn the success she has enjoyed in the political world. The goodwill that's been extended to her by voters, colleagues and employers, and even her annual $143,000 salary, seem more like an honorarium paid on behalf of her husband, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, one of the state's most powerful Democrats. Supervisor Lockyer has attended only 17 of the 31 board meetings held since she took office in January...

To understand why state Treasurer Bill Lockyer is considered such a heavyweight in East Bay politics, look no further than the $1.7 million he pumped into his wife's 2010 campaign for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. In a spending spree that shattered all records for the board, Nadia Lockyer - now embroiled in a sex and substance-abuse scandal - spent more than 40 times what her predecessor, Gail Steele, spent in any single campaign for the south county seat in nearly two decades in office.The $1.7 million from Bill Lockyer's campaign fund obliterated any chance his wife's election rival...

In the past week, producers for "Inside Edition" and the "Dr. Phil" show have reached out to state Treasurer Bill Lockyer. They were not asking about his $1.9 billion refinance of state bond debt. Lockyer, a 70-year-old elder statesman of Capitol politics, finds himself mired in personal controversy and the subject of media attention after his wife said she was injured in a violent assault and acknowledged undergoing treatment for chemical dependency. The latest twist: She also made a sex tape with the methamphetamine user she says attacked her, a development reported by the San Francisco Chronicle and confirmed by...

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, a fixture in the capital for 40 years, is at the center of an emerging sex scandal between his wife, who’s an Alameda County supervisor, and another man. The San Francisco Chronicle reports Treasurer Lockyer was sent a sex tape of his wife with the man. Thinking he was being blackmailed, Lockyer called the Alameda DA to his wife a stay-away order imposed against the man, identified by the Chronicle as 35-year-old Stephen Chikhani, a construction worker from San Jose. But the DA’s investigation concluded her relationship with the man was consensual and...

<p>The man at the center of the sex and substance-abuse scandal engulfing Nadia Lockyer is "not a stalker" and never assaulted the Alameda County supervisor, contrary to what her state treasurer husband has told the press.</p> <p>That was the assertion Tuesday of Adrienne Dell, the attorney representing Stephen Chikhani in a recent arrest for allegedly being under the influence of methamphetamine.</p>

The man at the center of the drug-infused, sex-laced scandal that has rocked the political careers and shaky marriage of state Treasurer Bill Lockyer and his wife, Nadia, strode into a San Jose courtroom Tuesday, his hair slick, his shirt untucked and told a reporter, "There's a way bigger story than the sex tapes." Before he had a chance to explain much more, his private defense attorney interrupted: "Do you want me to be your lawyer?" It was Adrienne Dell, a no-nonsense lawyer in a St. John Knit, telling him to clam up. Stephen Chikhani, 35, with wraparound dark glasses...

When Nadia Lockyer ran for a seat on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors in November of 2010, she looked about 120 pounds. But as 2011 wore on she grew increasingly gaunt. People questioned whether she had an eating disorder or addiction. Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley, a former colleague and political ally, said she was concerned about Lockyer's health. She also got text messages from Lockyer suggesting that she was "in a downward spiral -- in crisis." Now after Lockyer's shocking 911 report to police that she had been beaten by her ex-lover in a Newark motel room,...