As you may know, we at the Orange Juice like to follow elections, especially among the hardcore right.
One interesting twist can be to look at the rightwingers’ candidate statements. Lo and behold, Allan Mansoor has become the bipartisan candidate of moderation after having been a rigid doctrinaire Republican for his entire career, Costa Mesa’s biggest-ever basher of immigrants and unions.
Then there’s Don Wagner, who boasted that he was the most conservative candidate, and received the support of the extremists from Joe Arpaio to Michelle Malkin. Would he now tack to the center for the general election?
So we looked for his candidate statement after the filing deadline. Nothing there. One of our intrepid reporters called the Registrar and they said that all of the candidate statements had been posted online.
So we were a little surprised over the weekend when we were doing our final fact check to see that the Registrar’s website showed that Don Wagner had a Candidate statement. But when we clicked on the link, it looked just like this:
What’s all that about?
So one of our operatives actually paid a visit to the Orange County Registrar of Voters this morning and asked to see Don Wagner’s candidate statement. After a round of frustration (“Well sir, you can look that up on our website”) it turned out that Don Wagner had never filed a candidate statement for the general election.
Which leads us to some questions for Mr. Neal Kelly. Why does it look like Don Wagner filed a candidate statement when he didn’t? Who put that broken link up there, and who instructed them to do that? Why is it still up there?
And then there are some questions for Don Wagner. Does he really have such contempt for the voters in the district that he only needs to communicate with Republican primary voters? Does he think that getting 32% of the Republican primary vote, only 5.4% of all the registered voters in the district, is all he has to do? Is he that arrogant? Is he too broke to spend another $4,000 filing a candidate statement to communicate with all voters after lending himself $100,000 for the primary? Just incompetent ? Or did his contract with his consultant only go through the primary?
It’s just a lot of questions. Maybe we should let his opponent Melissa Fox have the last word, from the opening of HER candidate statement:
Are you tired of sending representatives to Sacramento who just play political games and never fight to bring our tax dollars back to Orange County?
Another brilliant piece of work, admin.
Where’s those folks from the Voice of OC and the Register’s Watchdog on stuff like this? Marty Wisckol ? Cigar Boy? Want to bet they will never ask a single question of Kelly or Wagner?
I suppose Mr. Wagner would be justified in forgoing a candidate’s statement if he were intent on participating fully in debates and forums with his opposition in the other parties.
Evidently, however, he has no intention of doing that.
Doesn’t look good, Don.
Hubris, plain and simple.
Mayor Quimby,
He essentially told the voters that they don’t need to know who he is or what he stands for.
Didn’t this happen a few years ago when Harman beat Harkey because she didn’t buy a statement? Harman got the Viet vote and squeaked by her…
Yeah, I guess his website which lists all of his positions on the issues pales in comparison to the sacrosanct candidate statement. I mean, Don’s practically running a stealth campaign here. I have no idea what he believes on any issue.
He’s probably counting on voters seeing the word “Republican” and thinking that he’s one of those fabulous “conservatives,” you know, folks who believe in less government (unless if comes to regulation of your personal life) and Constitutional principles (except for that establishment of religion thing.) He’ll be whoring himself out to the special interests as fast as his Bible hits the bottom of his desk drawer.
Unfortunately, those “Republicans” (“those fabulous “conservatives,” you know, folks who believe in less government (unless if comes to regulation of your personal life) and Constitutional principles (except for that establishment of religion thing.)”) make up a good percentage of population of the 70th AD. So when is the Wagner campaign going to have a Koran burning rally? That seems to be the rage among those compassionate “Christians” these days.
Martin Wicksol is in the same league as the writers for Jerbal’s Red County and Chimielewski’s TheFibOC. Second rate pundit/jounralist for a second rate rag. All of these “media” organizations are shills for the establishment and it seems like they are in collusion with one another. The only difference is that the OC Register has deeper pockets than the other two rags combined. Which is why I read this blog if I was writing and analysis with some substance and thought behind it.
GF,
I forgot how “tolerant” you liberals are towards Christianity. There are at least one or two small cities left in Orange County that haven’t had some attack on their motto. And that lefty who keeps suing to keep God off our currency and out of the pledge, just an outlier. I guess it’s not ok for people (read conservatives) to express opposition to a mosque (I mean, community center) at Ground Zero, even though it is constitutional. You’re right, liberals have never protested anything that was constitutional.
Don Wagner is listed as a “Friend” of Neal Kelley on Facebook. What are friends for?
Apparently, he thinks he has this election in the bag and doesn’t need to campaign. He doesn’t have candidate statement, he hasn’t done much campaigning, and last time I checked, he still hasn’t agreed to the debate with Debbie Tharp and Melissa Fox at UCI campus in October.
Good News.
The Registrar’s office has removed the bogus broken link to Wagner’s non-existent statement. Now let’s have them answer how that faux link got up there to begin with.