O.C. Political "Chismes:" Baugh on the way out?


Astounding chismes coming out of the OC GOP… Looks like there is a good chance that State Senator Dick Ackerman will be running for the OC GOP Central Committee next year, with an eye towards taking over the Chairmanship from Scott Baugh.

The story makes a lot of sense. Ackerman already punked Assemblyman Van Tran once when he told him he was not going to receive party support if he ran for the 34th Senate District. Tran annoyed Ackerman by not coming clean about his wife’s legal problems.

Now Tran is snubbing the OC GOP by not stopping his henchman, Trung Nguyen, from taking on incumbent Republican Supervisor Janet Nguyen. Does anyone think that retired OC GOP Chairman Tom Fuentes would have allowed the Tran cabal to take on an incumbent Republican? No way! And Ackerman won’t either.

Too bad for Baugh. He is a nice guy but he is not running his party. Mike Schroeder does what he wants and gets away with it. I also hear that OC GOP Parliamentarian Kermit Marsh is the one making political decisions for the local party.

The Tran cabal better wake up and smell the coffee. Supervisor Nguyen is now part of a solid moderate majority on the Board, with fellow Supervisors Bill Campbell and Pat Bates. The sooner that Tran and his acolytes realize that she is a lot smarter than they are, the better.

Speaking of Van Tran, I received an email today from State Senator Tom Harman, a moderate Republican who has been ripped for years by county conservatives. Apparently, Harman is teaming up with conservative favorite Tran to present a 2007 Community Housing Conference, on August 17, at the Westminster Rose Center.

According to the email release, “With the cost of housing in Orange County being one of the highest in the nation, many young would-be first-time buyers are being left out of the market. The Community Housing Conference will bring together experts from the government and private sectors to discuss topics such as how to increase home ownership in the community and problems and solutions regarding sub-prime mortgages.”

Never mind housing costs! According to my sources, there are a great many local politicians in Orange County who work in the mortgage industry who are desperate to land jobs of any sort, now that the housing market is tanking. Good luck with that…

My advice to those trapped in the mortgage and real estate industries is to consider switching to the occupational safety field. The pay is great and the work is very interesting. And the work is recession proof as you always need safety personnel to manage risk and keep the lawyers at bay, not to mention keeping the workers safe. You can sign up for safety courses at UCI’s extension campus in Orange. Read more about this program at this link.

What ever happened to former Assemblywoman Lynn Daucher? Am I the only one wondering what happened to her? I know that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her to the position of Director of the California Department of Aging – I did not know the state had such a post. You can read more about Daucher’s post at this link.

I heard today that Assemblyman Bob Huff will be running for State Senator Bob Margett’s seat. I thought Daucher was going to run for that seat. I know she had an interest in it.

Could she maybe run against Gary Miller for his seat on the U.S. House of Representatives? I doubt it. She is too classy to take on an incumbent Republican, even the much-maligned Miller.

Maybe she will wait for O.C. Supervisor Chris Norby to term out and try running for his seat, against likely Democratic opponent O.C. Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly? I think she could give him a run for his money!

Or, she might just fade away. That would be too bad. Daucher has a lot to offer, if her party could find her a seat to run for.

New voters going DTS, not Democratic or Republican. I had an interesting conversation today with a Democratic Party insider. It turns out that the Democrats are picking up more new voter registrations at the Orange County “Newport” Fair, than the Republicans, but by far most of the new voters being signed up countywide are Decline to States (DTS) – by a huge margin!

The California Republican Party won’t let DTS voters vote in the presidential primary. But the Democratic Party will. This is obviously a huge opportunity for O.C. Democrats to reach out to DTS voters!

According to the California Secretary of State
, there are 716,285 registered Republicans in Orange County. There are 451,745 Democrats. And there are a whopping 274,504 Decline to State voters.

Another Secretary of State web page indicates that DTS voters have increased from 12.9% to 18.8% since 1999. In that same period, Democrats have dropped statewide from 46.7% to 42.5%. But the Republicans have dropped too, from 35.3% to 34.2% This tells me that a lot of the DTS voters used to be Democrats. As such, they will be inclined to pull Democratic ballots in the presidential primary.

You would think that the California Republicans would rally around their independent-minded Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, but instead their leaders are at odds with him, even though the Public Policy Institute of California recently pegged his approval ratings at 75 percent. What would President Bush and House Speaker Pelosi do for those kind of approval ratings?


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"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.