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From 1994–2000, Kaloogian was a member of the California Assembly, representing California District 74, which covers portions of northern San Diego County. He won his seat in the 1994 legislative elections, with 61% of the votes counted. He endorsed Senator Phil Gramm's presidential bid in 1995 .
Kaloogian was twice re-elected to the Assembly. He recorded an unchanged majority, 61%, in the 1996 legislative election and was re-elected again in the 1998 election, where his share of the vote fell to 57%.
Kaloogian is a founder and co-chairman of Move America Forward, a controversial conservative political action group. Kaloogian considers President Ronald Reagan to be one of his political heroes. Kaloogian serves on the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project and was the Chairman of the Defend Reagan Project, which campaigned in 2003 for CBS to drop a docudrama about Ronald Reagan, The Reagans. The campaign was successful, as CBS did not show the mini-series, but handed it off to Showtime.
In 2004 Kaloogian ran for the U.S. Senate from California and lost the Republican primary with 11% of the vote, placing him 3rd out of 11 candidates. Kaloogian is currently running in the special election to fill the opening created by the resignation of disgraced Congressman Duke Cunningham in California's 50th Congressional District.
On March 28, 2006, Howard Kaloogian's campaign website displayed a street level photograph which was claimed to have been recentlytaken in downtown Baghdad (see screenshot). The photograph was offered as evidence that the security situation in Baghdad was better than was being reported in the press.
Commenters at various blogs determined this photo was most likely taken in Bakırköy, a suburb of Istanbul, Turkey. Various indicators in the image suggested the location of the intersection was not Baghdad. Many signs are written in Turkish (which uses the Roman alphabet), but none are in Arabic. Women are seen wearing revealing (western) clothes, taxicabs are similar to those seen in Istanbul and European-style traffic signs are visible (as are signs of businesses based solely in Turkey). Once it was established that the photograph was actually of a streetcorner in suburban Istanbul, Kaloogian's campaign attributed the error to an unidentified "webmaster."
The photograph was replaced by another one taken from what appears to be an upper floor of some structure.
Kaloogian later said using the photo was "a stupid mistake".
In addition to the false Baghdad photo, the Kaloogian website also posted a photo of Kaloogian with president George W. Bush, which was altered to reduced the height discrepancy between the two men .
Notes and references
"Final California Election Results", Los Angeles Times, November 10, 1994
"20 State GOP Lawmakers Back Gramm", Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1995
"Final California Election Results", Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1996
"Final California Election Results", Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1998
Worldmag.com. How grassroots conservatives used the Internet and talk radio in the first successful drive to force a recall vote of a California governor, Lynn Vincent, August 2, 2003.
Others point out the Recall Gray Davis Committee organization collected no signatures and spent no money on the recall.
Kaloogian's official website. He states "My political hero, Ronald Reagan, made a profound statement in his farewell address to the nation."
"California Elections", Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2004
North County Times. Kaloogian's trip was in July, 2005, although in speeches and on his campaign webpage he refers to it as a "recent" trip
Howard Kaloogian website Erroneous photograph was removed, replaced with the caption: "We originally posted a photograph not of Baghdad, Iraq but from Istanbul, Turkey where our delegation traveled on the way home to the United States. We apologize for this mistake."
Caption reads as follows: "Downtown Baghdad. We took this photo of dowtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq. Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism."
DailyKos poster jem6x. Provides evidence the location as the Istanbul suburb of Bakırköy.
Joshua Micah Marshall quotes Kaloogian during a phone call on March 29, 2006: "n the way back from Baghdad some of the crew stopped in Istanbul as a layover. We turned all the photographs over to the webmaster, and it appears he took one from the stopover and not from Baghdad."
Analysis of the EXIF data on the replacement image suggesting that it was taken at the time of Mr. Kaloogian's July 2005 trip to Baghdad. See image. File:Kaloogian screenshot.jpg.
Washington Post online. Baghdad on the Bosporus, Dana Milbank, March 30, 2006. The entire Iraq trip page was temporarily pulled down without explanation, as Milbank confirms in this article.
SFgate.comCandidate admits 'stupid' Web error, Carla Marinucci, March 30, 2006, p. B3. According to the article, "Kaloogian said the photo was taken during a layover in Istanbul and was mixed up with those taken on the Iraq tour."
