Kris Murray is killing the GOP in Orange County.

(image from SaveAnaheim.com)

Since Anaheim’s Special Council Meeting to strip Mayor Tait of his authority to agendize items for public discussion between council sessions, Kris Murray has engaged in open war against him concerning hate speech issued by William Fitzgerald during public comment.  Her comments are killing the party and here’s why.

1)      Kris Murray is using hate speech to score political points.  Her comments are not substantively based in rebuking the person issuing the comments, nor are they substantively based in defending the object of the hate speech.  Instead, they’re substantively based in rebuking Mayor Tom Tait’s reaction to public comment.  That’s just flat out disgusting opportunism.

While it’s clear that the Mayor and Kris Murray do not get along, both are members of the same party.  Putting the Mayor on trial for the sake of political posturing has one definite effect: It hurts the party.  Rather than addressing this issue in private, agreeing on a path forward, Kris Murray chooses to lead an organized assault on the Mayor’s integrity.  This smacks of valuing personal gain over the party’s available political capital and is the first reason why she’s killing the party.

2)       Kris Murray is treading, heavily, on the Constitution to score political points.  She has a short list of things the Mayor could have done to silence or censor public comments, not because the commenter was causing a disruption, but because of the content of the speech.

We have over 200 years of case law supporting why each of Kris Murray’s suggestions violates the first amendment.  If Anaheim were to adopt any of them, the city would be exposed to costly litigation with certain, absolutely certain, monetary penalties.  While her decisions on the dais make it clear she has a bias towards rewarding private entities with public tax dollars, this situation goes a step further into a reckless disregard towards public stewardship of the public treasury.  Aside from recklessness, and infinitely more consequential, Kris Murray would put the Republican Party on the forefront in Orange County of squelching our freedom.  Putting the party in the space of abusing our rights rather than vehemently protecting them is the second reason she’s killing the party.

3)      Kris Murray is ignoring opportunities expand the reach of the party’s platform to moderate and independent voters by choosing to either focus on political infighting with her own party or to champion issues beneficial mainly to rich, powerful, and well connected (not to mention overwhelmingly white) members of the political oligarchy.

This is another example of train of decisions where Kris Murray has used her position on the dais to lecture moderates and independents on why their concerns are wrong, stupid, or unimportant.  Rather than focusing on issues affecting everyday life in Anaheim, Kris Murray consistently moves the party away from connecting to Joe America in favor of representing Joe “I Need a Bailout Because My Diamond Shoes Are Too Tight” Moneybags.  Rather than discuss the merits defending her decision to make it harder for the public to have an item of its concerned addressed in a timely fashion, she quickly dismisses it and deflects to an attempt to drive into the paint and dunk on Tait.  By exacerbating the public perception that Orange County Republicans only represent the rich and powerful, Kris Murray enables the long slow extinction of elephants in North Orange County.

Looking at her last six months, a moderate independent voter in Orange County would likely conclude that Republicans in North Orange County eat their own, hate America and free speech, and only exist to perpetuate making rich political donors even richer.

That’s killing the party.

Republicans in Orange County, particularly the northern part of the county, are in a tight spot.  Districts aren’t turning purple—they’re turning blue.  They’re turning blue because there’s no coordinated effort to engage voters on local issues that matter to them.  The ONLY effort visible to the public is obvious deal making with developers under the all-too-tired idea of “economic development.”  That doesn’t win votes, it just wins more campaign finance dollars for spoke-hole incumbents.

No one going to the polls is going to vote for a Republican because the Anaheim council voted to give away $150,000,000 to a hotel developer or because they gave away 150 acres of public land to an associated company of a major baseball club who wasn’t already going to vote for a Republican.  We need elected officials who are going to CHANGE PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS ABOUT THE PARTY and not ones who are going to reinforce negative stereotypes of stupid self-enriching abominable behavior.


About Ryan Cantor

Our conservative columnist, raised in North Orange County, works as an auditor.