ENCINITAS — A judge has ordered San Diego County’s registrar of voters to remove a portion of a local school board candidate’s ballot designation, ruling the term “educator” was “false and misleading” as a description of his principal occupation.
Following a hearing on Wednesday in downtown San Diego, Judge Wendy M. Behan issued the order on Aug. 28 regarding Kevin Sabellico, a local political consultant who is running for the San Dieguito Union High School District’s Area 4 board seat against incumbent Trustee Michael Allman.
Last week, Allman filed a lawsuit against county Registrar of Voters Cynthia L. Paes, with Sabellico named as a real party in interest. The petition challenged his opponent’s ballot designation as an “Educator/Board Member.”
A ballot designation is a short descriptor that appears under a candidate’s name on the ballot. As incumbent, Allman’s ballot designation will read “Governing Board Member, San Dieguito Union High School District.”
Allman argued that Sabellico’s title was misleading, as it does not accurately describe his principal profession. Sabellico, vice president of political consulting firm Amplify Campaigns, is best known for his work on several local campaigns, including as field director for Congressman Mike Levin’s 2018 campaign and campaign manager for Catherine Blakespear’s 2022 state senate bid.
Sabellico is also a San Diego delegate for the Democratic National Committee and recently spent a week in Chicago for the party’s national convention.
The judge agreed in part, denying the use of “educator” as it “did not meet statutory requirements and could mislead voters,” but allowing Sabellico to describe himself as a “board member” due to his recent appointment to the county’s Environmental Health and Quality Advisory Board.
“I’m glad Judge Behan saw through the dirty politicking and the lies told by Sabellico and his team,” Allman said in a statement. “He is not nor has he ever been a teacher, and he has never been employed by the District. Today’s decision was the right decision, preventing Sabellico from misleading the voters about his occupation.”
In his candidate documents, Sabellico requested the designation of “educator,” stating on his candidate forms that he was employed as a substitute instructional assistant in the San Dieguito district as of Aug. 7.
However, the district confirmed to The Coast News that while Sabellico had “expressed interest” in becoming a substitute instructional assistant, he was not and never had been an active district employee and was still “in the process of completing the requirements necessary” to work in the role.
The judge found that since Sabellico had not worked in the district and had no prior professional work experience generating income as an educator, the term would potentially mislead voters.
“While Sabellico was issued an emergency 30-day substitute teaching permit in April 2024, Sabellico does not report any income as a substitute teacher,” Behan wrote in her opinion. “Moreover, Sabellico concedes that he has not yet worked for SDUHSD as a substitute teacher. The evidence indicates that ‘educator’ is not the candidate’s principal profession, vocation or occupation.”
In response, Sabellico, while acknowledging the loss of the term “educator” on his ballot designation, said he felt mostly vindicated by the judge’s ruling.
“I’m happy to run on any part of my record, but MAGA Mike Allman is clearly desperate to change the subject from his extreme Trump politics and disastrous record of failing San Dieguito kids,” Sabellico said in a statement to The Coast News. “We’re happy the judge rejected Michael Allman’s frivolous challenge to the majority of my ballot designation, and the community is more united than ever to get MAGA Mike Allman’s extreme Trump politics out of our children’s schools once and for all.”
In the days before this week’s ruling, Sabellico’s attorney, Evan Sorem, continued to insist that his client believed he was a district employee.
“Mr. Sabellico is an employee of the San Dieguito Union High School District,” Sorem said. “He is proud to be working in the same public school system that gave him so much opportunity in life, and he looks forward to beginning to work once he’s returned from Chicago.”
Sorem also provided The Coast News with documentation that he claimed proved Sabellico’s employment status with the district, including emails with HR staff about his submission of hiring documents, including an onboarding checklist.
A district representative again told The Coast News this was not true and confirmed that Sabellico had never worked for the district and is not a current employee.
Laura Place contributed reporting to this article.
3 comments
Sabellico is a grifter living off whatever fauxgressives throw at him.
He is unqualified and a well known liar.
Why would anyone ever vote for him?
There is no doubt significant gloating in the Allman camp after yesterday’s Court decision. While one would hope that voters could inform themselves about the candidates’ qualifications, it is not unheard of for candidates to enlist the courts in efforts to discredit opponents before voters have a chance to weigh in.
While the Court held that Sabellico could not describe himself as an “educator” based on his employment history, the campaign to label him “dishonest” made accusations well beyond those supported by the evidence. Commentary on social media parroted the same falsehood—that he had claimed in his application to be a “substitute teacher”. He did not, but, in fact, specified a different position posted on the SDUHSD job portal, “substitute instructional assistant”, for which he had completed the paperwork and believed had been secured. The Court found this to be insufficient to support his claim to be an “educator.” On the other hand, the Court did not agree with Allman’s assertion that Sabellico could not describe himself as a “board member” on Allman’s suggested interpretation that the word “board” could only mean “school board.” Sabellico has truthfully served on several boards and is entitled to claim as such.
Allman’s supporter and wingman in this campaign is J. Garvin Walsh, a prolific opinion writer who likes to tell everyone what he thinks. Based on his outspoken presence in the media, Walsh savored the prospect of attacking Sabellico. Walsh initiated the inquiry with the district of whether Sabellico was employed as a “substitute teacher” then declared him a liar when the reply was “no”. His emails were offered as evidence of the alleged lie. The fact that Sabellico never said he was a substitute teacher didn’t matter to him.
We’ve all heard the admonition “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” In the original parable, the prospective punishers stood down, recognizing that they, too, were sinners. In stark contrast to these teachings of tolerance, Walsh stands beside Allman at the vanguard of the lynch mob, arm raised to cast that first stone. Crowing on social media that a “judicial finding [of ‘false and misleading’ statements by Sabellico] will live on forever”, Walsh seems blissfully unaware that his own history of lies, abuse, and deceit is well-documented in New Jersey court records that are easily found through a simple internet search. As recently as 2015, a New Jersey Appellate Division decision described Walsh’s fourteen year crusade against his former wife as a “personal vendetta” and “abuse of the judicial system”. (Walsh v. Walsh, Superior Court of NJ, Appellate Division, Docket No. A-6161-12T3, 4/29/2015.) The Court’s opinion recounts Walsh’s behavior, including, inter alia, failure to file tax returns for many years, artificial deflation of his financial situation, and repeated false allegations of fraud against his ex-wife, with a demand that she cover his increased tax bill after she filed a separate tax return to avoid liability for his failure to file. Walsh resented having to pay alimony amounting to roughly one-quarter of his half-million plus annual income – in his opinion, it was more than she needed. In the end, the Appellate Division affirmed the prior awards to Walsh’s ex-wife, additionally requiring him to pay the legal fees and expenses she incurred in defending against his repeated frivolous motions and appeals and ordering him to liquidate his assets. And this decision doesn’t even touch on the criminal conviction for harassment arising from an outburst that terrorized his teen daughter when she tried to leave as he forced her to read a financial statement detailing the $206,851.45 he had grudgingly spent the prior year on her, her sisters and her mother. The Appellate Division later reversed the conviction, finding the event to be a heated family dispute that did not amount to harassment in the context of domestic violence. Even so, as Walsh points out, the stated facts will live on forever in the judicial record. (State v. Walsh, 360 N.J. Super. 208 (App. Div. 2003), 822 A.2d. 611).
All have sinned and made mistakes – some more than others. Beware the accuser with a history of lies, abuse and deceit who exploits the judicial system to advance a self-serving claim that the other person is “the bad guy.”
Lying on the official government forms cannot be good.