L.A. Times article focuses on dysfunctional DPOC

The dysfunctional DPOC\'s Chairman, Frank Barbaro

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.


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.