Santa Ana GOP candidates endorsed – but what about Carlos?

Congratulations to the Republican candidates running for local office in Santa Ana – they were all endorsed unanimously by the OC GOP Endorsement Committee. Thomas Gordon is running for Mayor, against the incumbent, Miguel Pulido, and Evangeline Gawronski is running for Ward 2 on the City Council, while George Collins is running for Ward 6 on the City Council.

Kudos to the entire Endorsement Committee, and its Chairman, Mike Schroeder, who did a great job of introducing the Santa Ana GOP candidates to the rest of the committee, and to Jon Flieschman for leading the charge to support them. Fleischman wrote a decent summary about the endorsements over at OC Blog. I am enclosing his post in its entirety below:

Carlos Bustamante AWOL on GOP efforts in Santa Ana

Tonight the Orange County Republican Party held a meeting of its Endorsements Committee to look at considering putting the OC GOP stamp of approval on worthy Republicans running for local office. There could be a dozen different posts on this site going into many of the issues and races that we considered tonight, and recommendations made to the full Central Committee.

But I felt motivated to write on one area in particular – which is Santa Ana. Arguably the city with the strongest presence by the party of Hillary Clinton, there is no place where Republican representation is needed more than Santa Ana. I’ve actually been keeping an eye on Santa Ana City Councilman Carlos Bustamante, who is a Republican. By some he has been considered a ‘rising star’ and he has been talked about as a potential candidate for Orange County Supervisor, should Lou Correa succeed in his effort to become a State Senator.

Tonight the Republican Party endorsed three GOPers running for municipal office in Santa Ana – Thomas Gordon for Mayor, Evangeline Gawronski for Council (Ward 2) and George Collins for Council (Ward 6). All three came to our meeting, and all three are proud members of the party of Reagan.

When Gordon came before us first, who is challenging incumbent liberal Democrat Mayor Miguel Pulido, I asked him if he had been endorsed by fellow Republican Bustamante. He said no. When Gawronski and Collins came before us, I asked them as well if either of them had been endorsed by Bustamante. Their answers were also, “No.”

I cannot tell you how disappointed I was to hear that Carlos Bustamante is not supporting the GOP ticket in his own city, and I hope to hear from him either as a comment on this post, or with an email or a call, to explain the seemingly unexplainable.

There are a lot of reasons why the GOP branching out into local elections is a positive thing, but one of them is that it shines a bright light on what happens with these key endorsements. In this case, it would appear that Carlos Bustamante has decided to ally with Democrats. That is his choice, and perhaps may help his career on the short term. But I think he will find strong resistance when he wants to move on to higher office (like Supervisor) when he doesn’t support the GOP candidates running in his local city!

In closing, I like Carlos – he’s a nice guy. I was genuinely surprised and disappointed to find out that he is AWOL in local GOP efforts in Santa Ana.

About Admin

"Admin" is just editors Vern Nelson, Greg Diamond, or Ryan Cantor sharing something that they mostly didn't write themselves, but think you should see. Before December 2010, "Admin" may have been former blog owner Art Pedroza.