Stapley: Remembering former Modesto Mayor Carmen Sabatino – A defiant victim
Carmen Sabatino was a defiant victim — “defiant” being an adjective even he would agree on, while “victim” is how he often portrayed himself.
In the time we knew each other, which stretched more than two decades, the one-term mayor and I had a number of decent conversations — about Chicago, where both he and my father were raised, about baseball, and believe it or not, religion. Once he took me and my wife on a spur-of-the-moment, late-night tour of Modesto Joe’s just before the restaurant opened (it failed before he left office in 2003), and he was gracious.
But he definitely would not say we were friends. Mostly, because I represent The Modesto Bee, which he despised and sued and could not help but calling on a semi-regular basis up to the end, only a couple of weeks ago, to report yet another conspiracy.
Shortly after Carmen was elected in late 1999, I was assigned to cover City Hall. Most of my time was spent on him alone, because he generated controversy like no mayor before. My reporting — on his golf rounds, limo rides and excessive cell phone use, all charged to taxpayers —infuriated and embarrassed him. If he were really angry, weeks might go by before his next call. But it always came.
When other stories took attention away from City Hall, Carmen found ways to insert himself into them.
Exhibit A: After murderer Cary Stayner was arrested, Carmen recalled sitting in a hot tub at the Cedar Lodge just outside Yosemite National Park when Stayner and another man burst into a room he was sharing with a woman. That’s the motel where Stayner encountered three of his victims not long after. Carmen told the FBI, and in 2000, confirmed the memory to media.
Exhibit B: When authorities recovered the remains of former federal intern and Modesto native Chandra Levy — who had been linked romantically to then-U.S. Rep. Gary Condit — Carmen in 2002 ordered the American flag at Tenth Street Place lowered, enraging veterans who said that action should be reserved for persons of heroic stature.
Exhibit C: Before a judge in 2003 decided to move Scott Peterson’s trial to the Bay Area, Carmen went on national TV to tell everyone that Peterson, charged with murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, could not get a fair trial here. Two months later, Carmen was back in the headlines, having told me he did not detect much grief when he had coffee with Scott days after Laci went missing.
On Jan. 1, 2002, The Bee printed New Year’s wishes of several prominent people, many of whom talked about brotherly love and kindness and world peace. Here’s what Carmen chose for his grand wish: “Most of all, I guess, to be understood.”
Shortly before Carmen was to stand for re-election, then-District Attorney Jim Brazelton (who died in 2007) announced that the mayor would face criminal corruption charges. Carmen insisted it was a political prosecution. He lost the election, but won the case when jurors could not agree on a verdict in 2006, and then-new DA Birgit Fladager decided not to retry him. His defense attorney: Frank Carson, who successfully fended off a murder charge against himself last year in yet another high-profile humiliation for the DA’s office. Carmen rejoiced then in what he saw as further vindication for himself.
Three years ago, Carmen, always bitter and always seeking another political office, penned a melodramatic autobiographical introduction fancying himself as a legendary foe of “cronyism, backroom wink-nods and misuse of the public’s money and trust.” He said, “I love this area, I love the people, I have paid a heavy price for trying to protect them — but understand this, the price I have paid to make the modern Boss Tweeds and Huey Longs scurry back into the gutters was worth it. I have no intention of closing my critical eye. It’s who I am.”
I’m sure that’s how Carmen would want us to think of his mission and his life, which regrettably came to an end Wednesday at age 82.
This story was originally published January 3, 2020 at 5:23 PM.
