Free Republic

There are certain elections that make you want to wash your hands before voting. And that usually has something to do with the candidates. In California's 10th Senate District, two Democrats who have served in the California Assembly want to fill the state Senate seat of termed-out Ellen Corbett. Former Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi is best-known for her conviction for shoplifting $2,450 worth of clothes at Neiman Marcus in October 2011. She vaguely blamed a "medical condition" for what she termed a "personal mistake." Does that mean she could not tell right from wrong? Or is her selling point that...

Maybe there's something about one of the Alameda County Board of Supervisor's five seats that attracts troubled Bay Area politicians. Less than a week after Nadia Lockyer resigned her seat on the board following weeks of scandalous revelations of drug abuse and a sexual affair with a meth adddict, disgraced Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi, D-Hayward, reportedly inquired about the post. Hayashi, who is termed out of the Legislature after this year, contacted three of the four remaining members of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to gauge their interest in appointing her to fill out Lockyer's term until 2014, the Bay...

The good news for Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi is she won't face felony charges for shoplifting a pair of leather pants and other clothing from Neiman Marcus.The bad news is a San Francisco judge did not buy the Hayward Democrat's excuse that she had accidentally stuffed $2,445 worth of clothes into a shopping back and waltzed out of the Union Square store without paying because she'd been distracted by her cell phone.Last Friday, Hayashi pleaded no contest to misdemeanor grand theft. She was sentenced to three years probation, fined $180 and ordered to stay at least 50 feet away from Neiman...

Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi voted on hundreds of bills last September. She returned to the Capitol last week as leader of a powerful committee. In between, her lawyer says, a benign brain tumor affected her judgment and contributed to a shoplifting arrest. The Castro Valley Democrat declined Monday to discuss the brain tumor, when it was diagnosed, or what role it played when she walked away from a Neiman Marcus without paying for nearly $2,500 in clothing – a pair of leather pants, a black skirt and a white blouse. Hayashi's attorney, Douglas Rappaport, said Friday that a brain tumor impaired...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi pleaded no contest Friday to stealing nearly $2,500 in clothing from the Neiman Marcus store on San Francisco's Union Square after a judge reduced the felony grand theft charge against her to a misdemeanor. Outside court, her attorney said Hayashi had been diagnosed with a benign brain tumor before the shoplifting, and that the condition may have influenced her behavior. Hayashi, 45, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor grand theft. She was sentenced to three years' probation, ordered to pay $120 to a restitution fund and $60 in court costs, and told to stay at...

Democratic Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi of Castro Valley has been charged with felony grand theft after being caught on video surveillance allegedly shoplifting more than $2,000 worth of merchandise from San Francisco’s Neiman Marcus store on Union Square, prosecutors say. Hayashi, 45, who has served in the Assembly since 2006 — and is married to Alameda Superior Court Judge Dennis Hayashi — was arraigned Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court. She had earlier posted $15,000 bail.