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I didn’t go to Monday night’s Democratic Party of Orange County meeting. Partly I just had too much work to do; partly it’s because I have an excellent alternate; but partly it was because we were going to be asked to appoint a new Executive Director — and neither his or her identity, nor any information about him or her such were included in the agenda packet. (My question to an officer asking who the lucky applicant would be was ignored. I could not imagine why such information would be omitted from an agenda for a group with any actual power.)
Asking people to vote on an appointment cold, based on a first impression from what presumably would be a tightly controlled presentation where probing questions would be unwelcome, strikes me as needlessly irresponsible and unserious. This is a big deal — why not treat it as such? It suggested to me that the governing body of the organization was simply being asked to be rubber stamp. I suppose that it’s a good thing that I didn’t go, because the new Executive Director was approved unanimously and the abstention I would likely have offered in protest not of the nominee but of the process would have ruined that.
Today the DPOC has this to say:
After an extensive hiring process, the Democratic Party of Orange County (DPOC) unanimously approved the appointment of Erik Taylor as its new Executive Director at Monday’s monthly County Central Committee meeting.
“Thank you, but the real praise should go to my predecessor, Nick Anas,” said newly appointed DPOC Executive Director Erik Taylor. “The work he has done over the last several years has set the bar high. I am truly humbled to be part of such an amazing team – I’m ready to get to work!”
“It was tough to see Nick leave. We had a great working relationship and we’ll miss him. However, I believe Erik is the right choice to help us move on to the next level and I look forward to working with him,” said Chair Henry Vandermeir. “We are on the cusp of turning our county around. With Erik on our team, I believe we will accomplish that goal. I look forward to seeing Erik take us to new heights in 2016 and beyond.”
I’m not really seeking comments from the Republicans among us here (even though I realize that that’s a lot of what I’m likely to get.) My question is to the Democrats and left-leaning non-Dems. How do you find this statement? Inspirational? Something less than that? Can you figure out why?
Anyway, good luck to Erik Taylor. I hope that, despite the conspicuous straight-arm to the face of the Central Committee, he understands that he is answerable to the entity that he has actually been hired to support.
Looks fairly young, which is a smart move.
Young. Democrat. OC. I hope he doesn’t come from the current crop of Young Dems of OC, or at least has nothing to do with their love affair with Poseidon. Have I mentioned that?
At the previous Garden Grove council meeting it was their chairman something BARBA who showed up chanting “DO ALL APPROACH” and sat with the Poseidon crowd.
Last night it was a girl who called herself their “environmental” liaison or specialist or something. She assured the council and the crowd, with all the authority of her 19-or-so years, that the environmental impacts of Poseidon had been greatly exaggerated. She assured us that she had been studying the issue for TWO WHOLE MONTHS. She assured us, believe it or not, that the notorious water intakes which slaughter millions of fish larvae regularly (and which are due to be phased out, but Poseidon would have continue for another fifty years) kill no more fish per day than the fishermen on the Pier. Really.
AND she revealed that the Young Dems have been partnering with OC WISE, the Poseidon-founded astroturf/greenwashing group led by enviro-for-hire Robert Sulnick and with a website registered by Arianna Barrios, wife and boss of Poseidon’s cheif consultant Brian Lochrie. This little gal didn’t know any of that, but was happily chirping away with Dina Nguyen and a union leader when she finished her talk.
Not feeling real boosterish about the OC Young Dims right now.
“This little gal didn’t know any of that, but was happily chirping away with Dina Nguyen and a union leader when she finished her talk.”
“Everything is connected to everything else” – Barry Commoner
My understanding is that he’s been very active in Young Dems, though I’m not sure it’s OCYD.
OCYD has had some very good leadership in Tim and Katherine Steed. Barba is … well, you called it. The Building Trades are now leading the party around by the nose.
Whoa whoa whoa, he’s a Mater Dei grad?
That changes everything!
“How do you find this statement? Inspirational? Something less than that? Can you figure out why?”
Because the bar has not been set high, because the team he joins is amazing in only the most unflattering ways, and because they are not on the cusp of turning their own organization, nevermind the county, around?
They ain’t on the cusp of turning anything around.
The demographics are changing (no credit to the party for that), but with them the Kleptocracy changes its front men (and women) – to boobs and bagmen like the endlessly comical Jordan Brandman, who happily bend over, way, way over, for big corporate interests.
When the ‘Pugs get really worried that the gravy train is coming to a halt they’ll just secede everything from the 55 south. They can call it Reagan County and try to hold on to that for another hundred years.
*It’s nice to “talk amongst yourselves” as Joan Rivers might say. But platitudes do not show leadership. As the new Director he needs to show Leadership, Vision and at least a basic three point plan to get more people registered to vote and showing up at the polls when called to do so. Perhaps an elements of “inclusion”. Perhaps an invitation to disgruntled Republicans that believe in a Immigration pathway for our current long standing immigrants….. Heck, what about telling a joke about Donald Trump, Scott Walker or Jeb Bush?
I think that I’ll put this reply to something on Chumley’s site here rather than starting a new post. (I could be convinced otherwise.)
First: some asshole of Trumpian proportions over at GlibOC going by the name of “David Vasquez” — if anyone knows someone of that name in OC Democratic politics, please let me know — has been trash-talking me for months. He claims to be a DPOC insider, and if he isn’t he’s certainly being fed some garbled much by someone who is. Today’s installment was baroque. My reply there is included below, as is his full comment in blockquotes. As indicated, I left one part out of my reply, choosing instead to put it here (where I can vouch for its safety.) That appears at the end.
(1) My comment (with his interspersed):
I don’t mind saying again — in fact, by now I’ve grown sort of fond of saying it and failing to get a good response — that I do not believe that Mr. “Vasquez” is who he claims he is, nor that he is even entitled to present himself as Latino for the greater credibility on some issues he claims to possess. But, I could be wrong — and, whether he is a Democrat or not he certainly does seem to be in close touch with some of the more Nixonian elements of my party. So again: if anyone associated with DPOC has had ANY association with “David Vasquez” under that name, please let me know. I doubt that there is much that I could do to hurt him even if I wanted to take on that sort of headache; my interest here is in exposing a liar who has found out a way to claim greater credibility than “Pinky” (not that that sets a high bar.
Now to address the latest spittle-inflected tranche of invective:
I didn’t disparage Erik Taylor at all. Never met him, never talked to him; never seen his resume. As he was not yet working for DPOC, I presume that keeping his identity as the new candidate for Executive Director from the members of the Central Committee was not HIS doing, but that of the Chair and his advisors. That’s what I criticized. And they deserved that and worse.
Well, yes — just like the only reason that Henry Vandernier sits on the committee is because he is the alternate to Jerry Tetalman, who lost (a lot worse than I did) to Darrell Issa in CA-49. Those are the rules for ex officio membership on the committee. I had previously been elected to my position but that appointment ended at the same time that my ex officio role began.
As for my LOSS — the third closest loss of any State Senate race in 2012 — being for selfish reasons: nope. The party embraced my candidacy, paid my $900 or so filing fee, and offered me useful support even though they had not committed to any greater financial contribution. They were happy that my running against Huff, who would otherwise have been unopposed, helped to freeze his spending for a time out of uncertainty of how much I’d raise. And they were VERY happy with the result, which exposed SD-29 as a vulnerable district, now expected to be a battleground in 2016. Only an idiot could think that I did this for selfish reasons. “Vasquez,” in the unlikely event that he believes what he is saying here, is that idiot.
See, this is where “Vasquez’s” probable effective anonymity becomes a real problem. First, none of that would be a basis, according to the Bylaws, for removal from office. Second, my interpretation of the Bylaws in various areas is not only appropriate, but was widely accepted prior to the beginning of 2014 when the Chair was pushed into a Nixonian “purging of the opposition.” He does not like to be criticized, especially when he is incompetent or wrong. And he has shown how vindictive he can be with committee assignments and the like, which is why people are afraid to stand up to him. They just hope for the best. (They don’t get it.)
This may shock some people, but there is no requirement that Central Committee members not disparage party officeholders or other party officials. (There are some exceptions for when an endorsed candidate is engaged in a campaign — as Jordan Brandman did when he endorsed two Republicans against DPOC-endorsed Jose Moreno for the Anaheim City Council in a huge last-minute hit piece.) Remarkably, the party does — at least on paper — value free speech and the ability to cast dissenting views.
As for the others, let’s address them case-by-case:
NOTE: I’ve decided to do this over on Orange Juice instead of here. SEE THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST.
First, I can only presume that “Vasquez” does not know what “salacious” means. He’s either being misinformed or making stuff up himself.
Second, “progress”?
Finally: Mike was a good friend of mine, and we helped each other in our law practices as well. He asked me while I was visiting him in the hospital, and I agreed, to help ensure that the cases he had taken got properly placed after his death. They were all placed — most arranged by his wife, two by me.
I did say that Mike, who had planned to run against Henry Vanderbilt for Chair this year, had asked me to ensure that he didn’t run unopposed, (This was true and he didn’t mind people knowing it.) I told him that I would make sure that he had an opponent. When no one else stepped forward, I did so myself at literally the last minute. And I told them that I was doing so to honor my pledge to Mike. If someone has a problem with that, to hell with them.
So we’re to believe that they have the votes to remove me — without valid cause, not that that mattered to them last time — but that no one is willing to say it to “Vasquez” under their own name. Democrats who are reading this — this sort of political tactic should make you puke. See you at the meeting to remove me from the Committee, if anyone ever really has the gall — and lack of brains and heart and respect for the rules — to try.
I would like to invite my fellow DPOC members to look at this and other previous screeds of “David Vasquez” and compare them to my participation here. The point of all this is to make other Democrats afraid to openly criticize party activities and especially party corruption, for fear that they will end up being treated like me. Is that what you wanted or expected when you became a politically active Democrat?
(2) The part I left out
Chairman Henry Vandimier is a liar and a cheat. I think that it’s useful for people to know this. Anyone in the party who wants details can ask.
Jose Solorio is a backstabbing and self-serving SOB who pretends to be liberal when it suits him but denies any position of solidarity with Latinos when he thinks that no one is looking, His primary interest is his own glory and success, even at the expense of the party (as he showed with his Committee votes when in the Assembly.) His selfishness and stupidity Hoovering up Party money in the 2014 campaign almost cost Tony Mendoza his Senate Seat in the very Democratic SD-32. I tried to warn people about that WAAAAAY in advance, as soon as the shocking primary results came in, but that was ignored because OC people care about Jose Solorio more than they do a liberal like Mendoza. Should this be some huge secret that cannot be said, like in Stalin’s USSR?
Lou Correa has cast some terrible votes, particularly on issues where he would have to go against his big donating hospitals, medical professionals, cops, and prison guards. These votes materially hurt — and I’d say even cost lives — in his largely poor State Senate district. A good Democrat isn’t supposed to care?
Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido, I am given to understand, has engaged in practices as Mayor that are either illegal or so unethical that they should call for censure. (That’s part of why the party endorsed against him in 2012 and why he barely avoided it happening again in 2014.) He is protected by his friendship with corrupt DA Tony Rackauckas.
Anaheim Councilman Jordan Brandman has not only tried to rip off the public with a $25,000 payment for a simple report for Tom Daly (one he should have done when he was on Daly’s staff, hobnobbing at public expense with other public officials) that he first didn’t turn in, then cribbed from Wikipedia, and then (I’ve been told, though I can’t vouch for it) had ghostwritten for him. I’ve covered his actions in Anaheim extensively elsewhere.
Anahiem mayoral candidate Lorri Galloway has done some good things, like her opposition to the GardenWalk Giveaway (joining with the “Take Back Anaheim” movement and her opposition to police violence back when Manual Diaz and Joey Acevedo were killed. After deciding to run for Mayor, though, she has backed away from both positions — and was in fact silent on pretty much all of the main issues facing Anaheim in last November’s election. (She apparently thinks that people don’t know why. Let her go on thinking that.) I argued against the DPOC endorsing her for Mayor because, as anyone who (like me) was paying attention, she clearly WAS NOT TRULY RUNNING COMPETITIVELY for the office. As the two candidates contending were one of the best Republicans around, incumbent Mayor Tom Tait, and a corrupt racist and de facto fascist, Lucille Kring, I thought that DPOC should not prevent the many Democrats who admire Tait — and he would have gotten the vast majority of Galloway’s votes — from electing Kring. I told the DPOC that Galloway wasn’t really running to win (as her expense reports later confirmed) and that she was going to finish third. (In that I was wrong: Tait so completely obliterated Kring in the pre-election surveys that her supporters gave up on her, She got only 19.4% to Galloway’s 20.4%, Tait getting 53.4%.) So technically she did finish second, solely because Kring was unexpectedly awful — in part because my home blog (but not this one) righteously and appropriately savaged her.
Santa Ana City Councilmember Vince Sarmiento: nope, Never savaged him. Someone leaked a story about him and I published it, seeking information from the public about the claims, because that was the only real way to get to the bottom of it. I have supported him before and will probably do so again. I am bothered by claims that he doesn’t live in his City, but I think I’m entitled to.
Former Garden Grove mayor Bruce Broadwater: corrupt SOB whom I opposed IN FAVOR OF THE ENDORSED DEMOCRAT, Bao Nguyen. Uh, that’s bad?
Orange Mayor Tita Smith: I can’t think of anything I’ve ever written “savaging” her. I may have criticized her relative conservatism, but she lives in Orange, for God’s sake, so I’d not likely hold it against her. (And I endorsed her.) I can only assume that someone trying to alienate her from me — we’ve never met — by lying. (Welcome to OC Dem politics!)
Former Chairman Frank Barbaro: well, first, what if I did? There’s a rule against that? I’m not going to go after Frank here now, though, because I’ve heard that he’s retreated from politics. People who want into who contributed to his “Victory Fund” while he was supposed to be in charge of fundraising for the DPOC can do so on their own time.
As for Eric Bauman, I don’t recall what I said about him regarding Janice Hahn, but if it was about her vicious, scurrilous, unfair and harmful attack on Debra Bowen for alleged anti-Semitism related to their race for Congress, it was justified to the extent that Bauman had anything to do with it. (If he did, I don’t remember.)
Any bad blood between me and Bauman would probably come first from my opposition to Prop 35 — the “CASE ACT” that blurred the line between sex between teenagers and consensual prostitution, on the one hand, and actual, horrible, forced human sexual trafficking — at the California Democratic Party meeting in 2012. Bauman puffed up like a peacock while proclaiming the party’s anti-prostitution stance — which, I expect, was largely for show.
The second cause of it would be from my strong opposition to Speaker John Perez’s rein of terror within the California Democratic Party, bullying his way to get whatever he wanted without any apparent thought of ethics or fairness. Bauman was Perez’s assistant, his employee in the Speaker’s Office, and his chief enforcer. He never took kindly to criticism of Perez. But that criticism was valid, whatever the consequences.
I know that he had come to hate me because — outside on the deck outside of the karaoke room at the same CDP convention in Los Angeles when Henry Vandermier tried to prevent Julio Perez from becoming Vice Chair of the Labor Caucus — he bellowed that sentiment to his friend, my brother-in-law. He was apparently a bit drunk at the time and hadn’t noticed that I had walked in and was lying on a deck chair in the same patio, angled away so that he couldn’t see me, waiting to drive my brother-in-law home. I was half-dozing off, but the content of that conversation was enough to make me instantly alert (and frozen stiff to ensure that I would not be seen.)
That wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but a few months later when the DPOC Chair — supposedly at the behest of the Building Trades, but I believe that the impetus went in the opposite direction — to remove me from the Vice-Chair position of the party. Henry Vandermier had had two mentors supporting him: Bauman, Chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party, and Jess Durfee, Chair or Executive Director (can’t recall) of the San Diego County Democratic Party. Vandermier stepped away from the meeting that had been called to remove me — but he had installed Bauman as the substitute Chair and Durfee as the Parliamentarian!
This was bullshit — and I said so, noting the comments of his that I had overheard in Los Angeles. Bauman thundered that he had held meeting all over the Southland and NO ONE had ever questioned his integrity or impartiality. (Note: if you ever hear him say that again, it isn’t true even if it was at the time: I did.) This passionate show of umbrage would have sealed the deal against me, except for one thing: I knew that a whole lot of the votes that Henry had been counting on had not paid their dues and were therefore ineligible to vote. The deadline to pay dues — the beginning of the meeting — had already passed.
I forget whether I raised this issue at the right moment or my brother-in-law did the honors, but Vandermier simply opened up the floor and allowed members to pay their dues right then and be counted. That was underhanded, but it wasn’t illegal. However, about a half-dozen of the people didn’t have their money of checkbooks on them — and other people paid their dues so that they could vote. This is what you are specifically told not to do when it comes to political contributions — anyone who has raised money knew about it — and Henry led the way to doing it. I decided not to file an FPPC Complaint about it at the time because I still hoped for some semblance of harmony — and, moreover, my desire not to be blamed for the party’s likely losses in 2014, due largely to incompetent leadership. (They went ahead and blamed me anyway.)
The Chair and/or Parliamentarian ALSO upheld a ruling that it was OK for me not to have been given the charges against me until literally five minutes before I was supposed to defend myself. (If my prime accuser Florice Hoffman comes here and says otherwise, she will have a big surprise, because I still have the voicemails that she said constituted notice, as well as a videotape of the meeting.)
There were other ridiculous violations of fairness as well: while eleven or so accusers came up and presented a well-orchestrated litany of charges against me — NONE of which, as had been settled when Reggie Mundekis had been removed from office during the previous cycle, satisfied the requirements of the Bylaws. They didn’t care. The Chair and Parliamentarian didn’t stop it. Unlike the orchestrated “prosecution,” I had no control over who would rebut the charges against me or what they would say. I got to speak I think twice, maybe three times. Many of the speakers on my behalf were diffident and intimidated. (I mean, OC doesn’t get the Vice-Chair of the California Democratic Party to ride in and preside over a kangaroo court every day!)
It has been 15 months since I was removed and replaced by Vandermier protege Monika Broome, who never makes waves against him in public and prominently buys into what passes for his program. I haven’t written about Bauman’s role in my removal — or much about the event itself — until now. I suppose that I could elaborate if the need arose, but that’s enough for one night.
So, while I don’t remember when I “badmouthed” LA County Chairman Eric Bauman with a disparaging insult to (relating to Janice Hahn), I sure as hell remember why Bauman earned badmouthing from me — even though I’ve held myself back from discussing it for a long time. It made me feel good when Betty Yee beat Bauman’s boss John Perez in the race to make the runoff for Controller. Vandermier, by the way, supported Yee as well — and Bauman loudly laid into him at his betrayal of Perez after all he’d done for him. But by that point, I was gone.
Vandermier’s top lieutenant from OC Young Democrats was the same Johnny Barba that you see mentioned in Vern’s story on support for Poseidon. There are a lot of really good, reform-minded Democrats in OC — now largely coalescing around the Sanders campaign — who have remained remarkably loyal to Vandermier because he comes to their meetings and talks about how how progressive he really is on the inside, ever as he allows the DPOC to become as retrogressive on all but lifestyle issues as any local supposed Democratic Party I’ve seen. Maybe that’s what is meant by “progress.” Anyway, I’m not supposed to say any of this out loud, because dissent is not to be tolerated.
(So, SHOULD this be its own story instead of a comment?)
Yes. Let me help edit it too.
*What we have here is that the infrastructure of the DPOC is frayed. You don’t seem to have people the “Automobile Dealers of Orange County” to step up for candidates when they run. You don’t have an equivalent to “The Lincoln Club”. The Hispanic 100 is awesome by perhaps too bi-partisan. You don’t have the usual suspects like the NRA or Chamber of Commerce to kick in “the chum” you need to get the momentum to seek office with a roll. Planned Parenthood and the LGBT Community don’t have the clout and may in fact offer complications to answer to some voter groups. If the DPOC actually had a “Strategy Team” in place – perhaps some of these answers might be forth coming. Many environmental groups from Surfrider to the Sierra Club should be on the short list and once you vet your candidates and they have gone through evaluation by the Press (LA Times and Register Editorial Boards)…the system could be in place to start challenging the obviously paid off opposition. Just saying….look to yourselves to organize the process..
its good to see the you guys are as fucked up as the republicans
umm… yup.
And the reformers in each party are treated as pariahs.