An article in today’s L.A. Times does a fairly good job of chronicling how the Democratic Party of Orange County failed to field a good candidate in the recent Supervisorial race in the First District. The article outlines what happened when the DPOC’s chosen one, Joe Dunn, backed out – and why he did so.
There is nothing new in the article. I have written about all of this many times in the past year. But it is nice to see a major newspaper come to the same conclusions. But the article did fail to address a couple of issues.
For one thing, it did not pose the obvious question – why does the DPOC keep recruiting white lawyers to run in Central Orange County? Never mind Dunn – I suppose he might have had a shot in this race, but his campaign was over when State Senator Lou Correa and Assemblyman Jose Solorio both said they would not back him. Check out this excerpt from the L.A. Times article:
“Even though the party and unions supported Dunn and polls showed he had a strong chance of beating Nguyen, U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), Correa and state Assemblyman Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana) let it be known that they would not support Dunn’s candidacy.”
The real question, which the article did hint at, is why doesn’t the DPOC have a slew of candidates ready to go in central Orange County? Are white lawyers the only candidates the DPOC and its union allies find palatable? If so, why?
The major omission in the article is an issue I have raised again and again. Santa Ana, the heart of the DPOC, has a City Council and a School Board that is dominated by Democrats. Why aren’t any of them viable? Santa Ana is $28 million in the red and the SAUSD is $31 million in the hole. This bunch of Democrats is inept!
And it gets worse, while Solorio managed to escape from the Council, the current crop of Council Members is utterly laughable. They can’t get out of their own way. They just raised our water rates for the SECOND time in nine months and even the O.C. Register had to concede that something is wrong in Santa Ana, at least in regard to management of our water utility.
Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido has stayed in power by being anti-immigrant, thus appeasing the white voters in north and south Santa Ana. But at the same time he has pandered to Latino voters in central Santa Ana who don’t know much about him. They don’t know he supported Prop. 187. They don’t know about the Minuteman he appointed to the Library Board. They don’t know of his past support for anti-immigrant SAUSD Trustee Rosie Avila.
I wonder how many of those past wrongs will come to light with Council Member Michele Martinez running against Pulido this November? My guess is she will run a lame campaign that will focus on the positive. Her only hope is to let the voters know what an ass Pulido is, but I doubt she will.
Martinez could have been a contender, but when she sold out and joined the Pulido cabal, she was finished. The same fate has befallen others on the Council. Carlos Bustamante sold out. Sal Tinajero sold out. Even Claudia Alvarez, who has in fact lost several legislative races, sold out. And David Bustamante and Vince Sarmiento were Pulido puppets even before they each ran for the Council.
None of them is worth a damn. And I suspect the DPOC leaders know this. And if you look at the Democrats on the school board in Santa Ana, only one of them, John Palacio, is worth backing. And all of the Democrats running for the school board are exceedingly lame, except for Irene Ibarra. And she has told me that she has no desire to run for any legislative seats. She just wants to get on the school board to help fix the mess that the school district is in.
So what can the DPOC do? For one thing they need to stop propping up Pulido. And someone needs to advise Martinez to stop voting lockstep with Pulido. Probably too late to save her political career. The current crop of elected officials in central Orange County (Solorio, Correa and Sanchez) need to sweep out the dysfunctional crazies on the DPOC Central Committee.
Check out this quote from the L.A. Times article, “What Democrats need to do in the next four years is identify candidates, build a structure, build a base,” said Chris Prevatt.” The DPOC has been riding high in central Orange County for years – and Prevatt says they don’t have a structure and they need to build a base? Are you kidding me? What a joke!
Clearly the problem here is that the DPOC is run by crazies and white lawyers and they have taken Latinos and the Vietnamese for granted. There’s your problem. Good luck fixing that. This should be a banner year for Democrats, and it will be, but not in Orange County. How sad is that?
Just look at what happened on Tuesday in addition to Supervisor Janet Nguyen’s victory. Long Pham, a Republican, took out Felix Rocha, the incumbent Republican. And there was NO Democrat in the race. What a wake up call! How did the Democrats, who are FULL of teachers, not run someone for that seat? Rocha didn’t even buy a candidate’s statement!
My advise to the voters in Central Orange County – wake up! Neither the local Republican party nor the DPOC have your best interests in mind. Register Decline to State and force the local parties to earn your votes the hard way.
Who is on the slate of candidates for school board in November? Is there a list of them out there someplace?
So when are you running Art?
Dan,
I have a 5 year old – and an 11 year old, a 15 year old and a 17 year old. What little spare time I have is devoted to them.
When the lot of them are grown up I will consider running for office again. Until then my public service is this blog.
But there are never any good ideas posted here abotu what to do. Only bitching and whining. If your blog is your public service, how about some posts that propose solutions to problems instad of bitching about your circumstances. And there’s the rub — governing is hard.
Dan,
I am not a Democrat. As you know I am registered as a decline to state voter. It is YOUR job to fix your dysfunctional party.
That said, I think a good place to start would be to put Correa, Sanchez and Solorio in charge of your party’s operations. Let them pick who does what. They are the ONLY Dems who have succeeded in this county, at the legislative level.
And, as I have stated before, you really need to clean house on your Central Committee. The crazies need to go. Do whatever you have to but make sure you rid the Central Committee of their foul presence. You had a chance this year, and to be fair some of them did get the boot. Finish the job in two years.
And stop propping up bad Dems like Miguel Pulido. Don’t endorse him. This year at least you can endorse Michele Martinez instead. Her best qualification is that she is NOT Pulido. And she does not hate immigrants like Pulido appears to.
Your party CAN turn things around. But not if you continue to do what you have been doing for the past few years. It is time for change at the DPOC. Business as usual ain’t cutting it.
They blocked Joe Dunn? Really? Why would they do that? Joe Dunn is a really good officeholder, he rolls up his sleeves and does the work as opposed to just looking good and relying on staff. I’d be glad to see him hold any office. He’s good.
Dan,
There is no one single answer. There are multiple factors as to why we are having the problems we are having. They can be summed up into three categories. 1) A failure to listen to the party activists and leaders from the various regions of the county. Primarily it is Central OC who is victimized by this the most. There are some people on other regions in the county who take an attitude that they know whats best for us in the Central OC and fail to listen to us about the underlying issues and politics of our area.
2) A lack of respect for differing opinions. There are certain people representing certain interst groups who, if you agree with them 99.9% of the time but then disagree with them .1%, they will hold that .1% against you for the rest of their natural lives and refuse to ever work with you ever again. People creat grudge matches and refuse to work together, despite the fact that we cannot afford to have such grudge matches.
3) Allowing the inmates to run the asylum. The current leadership has done nothing to truly reign in the irrational crazies like Teddi Alves or the Hull-Richter’s or the Hoffmanns. They allow them to spread libelous lies about others on the Central Committee, even allowing these crazies to libel the leadership. Luckily the voters took care of Teddi Alves.
4) Lack of involvement from the leaders, although that is now fixing itself, with Solorio first taking an interest in the delegation from the 69th AD. Sanchez and Correa now are joining SOlorio in that involvement, which is great. But the three above problems are precisely what has kept Correa and Sanchez away for all these years. I don’t blame them at all, but now that they are getting involved, we truly have a chance to change this Central Committee and turn it around.
Wait…but I thought that Sanchez and Correa are already running the party…or at least that’s what it seems with Marc Sussman, Alicia Berhow and Tammy Tran calling all the shots in the last First Supervisorial Race. Way to go Dems!
If this is the new leadership of the Democratic Party then I’m switch to being DTS!
I notice not a word about this mentioned on “Blue County”. This story reaffirms what I have been saying and folks like PREVATT have been attacking me for.
The problem is that the folks running the DPOC on a daily basis have surrounded themselves with folks like PREVATT, Sussman and alike. These folks are the problem, not the solution.
Sean, you’re welcome to give your opinions on the DPOC, some of which I agree with, here at your old stomping grounds.
But as long as I have comment-approving privileges here, I’m going to correct the way you purposely misspell Prevatt’s name. Calling him Pervatt is not just juvenile (who would I be to complain about that?) it’s too much like attacking Chris’ sexuality. I think Art would agree?
Gee Vern I think you are reading too much into a misspelling. It was not intentional, but hey if you say so it must be true.
Vern –
Go easy on Sean. I believe I started the Prevatt mis-spelling craze when I joined this blog. *head hang of shame* Sorry, it was when I first got banned on LibOC and I was really, REALLY pissed. Sorry, sorry, sorry to everyone, especially Chris, who really is a sweet guy, even if he does stray from the path occasionally. *dopeslap self*
Oh, and Claudio. Your comments deserve a standing ovation! You really nailed it!
SMS
Sarah,
Thank you for the kind words. Glad you agree with my principle, although reading your posts I think we will disagree on who we think are valued people in the party. Some people you do not like I happen to believe are valued members of the party who are essential.
That being said, I am working on a more detailed post to add onto what I wrote. There are more underlying problems, such as our activists’ obsession with congressional and Senate races in other states rather than local council and school board races here in the OC. We even have a competitive Congressional race in the 46th AD and I still hear activists clamoring to raise money for candidates in other states.
I will have Art post my full thoughts and ask Chris to post it at Liberal OC. The Dems need to gain an understanding of what needs to be done to make us a force in this county.
As far as the story not being on Blue County, we’ve addressed this several times. How many more times do you want us to revisit the same material and beat that dead horse?
Claudio –
Please remember one thing: the volunteers are not the only people getting gung ho about higher office. According to not-so-secret sources, many candidates are encouraged by the DPOC to start with local races, but insist on going after the seats in Washington.
Many are stubborn fools. Some just want to up their name recognition so they have a better chance in a greater range of local and county elections. I can sum up the DPOC issue in one word and save you a whole lot of trouble: selfishness.
Sorry, but there it is. There’s no teamwork and little planning going on because everyone has their own agenda.
SMS