The political news has been coming fast and furious in Garden Grove.
- Bao Nguyen is certified as the winner of the Mayoral election by 15 votes
- Bruce Broadwater seeks a recount
- Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley rejects 64 out of 64 challenges to vote-by-mail ballots; Broadwater ends the recount after one day
- City Manager Matt Fertal resigns
We received a comment this morning from “Bob” on a long-ago item that deserves more prominence than it would otherwise receive:
You see, Matt Fertal was never a powerful City Manager. He was a puppet for the Council majority and as soon as he lost the majority (i.e., Broadwater getting defeated and kicked off the City Council by the public) he resigned, I mean retired. He submitted his resignation before the new Council gave him the heave ho. Fertal’s influence was only that he was able to push redevelopment projects which he negotiated to the advantage of the developer as opposed to the City. Those projects were approved by the Council majority who had accepted huge campaign contributions from those very developers.WIth Fertal’s resignation and the changes on the City Council, I would expect a huge turnover in the management (or many might say mismanagement) in City Hall
(My emphasis.) Those boldface sentences will strike home to residents of many OC cities. I’ve spent most of my time over the past year and a half watching this sort of scuzziness take place in Anaheim; now I’ve found that it may be taking place in my own backyard in Brea, which means that I will have to focus on a local beat. Huntington Beach just backslid in this recent election; Irvine is complicated (as both side have had ties to rival developers); Costa Mesa’s situation for the next two years in unclear (pending a recall effort against an “M”-guy or two); and apparently a whole lot along these lines in happening in South County. But I can’t think of a place where a more entrenched “Developerocracy” has been replaced by a Mayor and bipartisan Council majority more inclined to clean house than Garden Grove. (Anaheim activists, I can attest, are very interested at what will happens now south their western half.)
This foretold turnover among City Staff, beginning with Fertal, is one attention-getter. As always, when contemplating this sort of abrupt change, some people will fear that the discontinuity in city staff will throw the city into chaos. On the other hand, staffers who have had to act badly only because that has been what was demanded of them by higher-ups are now free to support reform — and they know best “where the bodies are buried.”
The removal of Broadwater and Dina Nguyen (who represented him during the recount) will lead to a substantial change on the City Council. Bao Nguyen and Councilmember Chris Phan — the latter soon facing conservative Democrat Lou Correa and former Janet Nguyen Chief of Staff Andrew Do for Janet Nguyen’s supervisorial seat — are both known to be reformers. I know less about Steve Jones, but he seems to be one as well. Kris Beard was (Vern tells me, emphatically) long associated with Broadwater, but in this election ran as a proponent of reform (and in any event likely realizes where he needs to be to be part of a majority.)
I know much less about Phat Bui, who bested Beard by 563 votes (1.1%) to be the top vote-getter in the City Council race — but his position as Chair of the Planning Commission and the fact that his top two endorsements were from Tony Rackauckas and Former California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson mean that I’d need some serious convincing to believe that he’s a likely agent of reform. (He seems more likely to be the focal point of developers to retake the Council, if he’s amenable to that. We’ll see. Anyone from GG have any insights on how he finished first? He had neither party’s endorsement.)
It’s going to be very interesting to see what changes will take place even before Bao takes office. (I have thought that that happens on Dec. 9, but some stories have suggested that it’s January 1.) And it will be even more interesting to see what happens when, in the context of Orange County municipal politics, reformers finally get the chance to govern.
Bao,
please audit the activities of Fertal to find illegal criminal activity and send that guy to prison and recoup the losses from his estate. Please.
Steve Jones if I remember right is a Republican and a developer. What I do know is he is the region’s rep on the OCTA Board and as such has been a useless toll troll, against the interests of his city. He was Pulido’s choice. We are now impatiently waiting for Diana Carey to get on instead.
Patience, our actual Garden Grove correspondent Josh McIntosh assures me that he has several pieces in the works for us. He’s lived there something like his whole life and knows all the players – that’s why I didn’t just rush to improvise something. But I WILL be covering Bao’s victory bash on Sunday.
How did Phat Bui become the top vote-getter?
Clearly superior campaigning:
That is … sort of extraordinary. Not just the guts and sense of humor (apparently not his own) to do a dance video to “Fat Boy,” but the fact that almost all of his volunteers are non-Latino Caucasians. I count 2-3 Latinos and 1-2 Asians. I wonder where they all showed up from to choose his campaign?
I’m adding a still from the video to the post.
the dance was choreographed/participated in by Pacifica H. S. students.
Believe it or not, GG is quite diverse……;)
How did these Pacifica kids come to be so interested in Phat Bui? Does he teach there or something?
I played piano for Garden Grove High School choir for several years, in the aughts. It’s funny, the kids there used to refer to Paficia as “ghetto” and get chewed out by the teacher for it. Whites were way in the minority at GGHS; there were mostly Koreans, Viets, Latinos and Samoans; a very few whites and blacks.
I’m not really sure on your first question. I think in part maybe because it just fun to say ‘FAAAAAT BOOOOOY!’ really loud whenever you drive by his campaign signs.
As far as the ghetto comment – pretty funny. I know the PHS kids are always commenting about the downtown miscreants that get shipped there after trouble at GGHS. School rivalry still happens.
Indeed. And how many Viet candidates there don’t have an appreciable proportion of Vietnamesese volunteers? I suspect that there’s an interesting and informative back story there.
One might ask:
Did he pay the dancers, or report their services as a dontion in kind?
Did he pay royalty to the musician?
…but who would want to spoil the creation of such high art with mundane legal questions?
The site says that they’re campaign volunteers. Not reportable.
Royalties to the musician? I doubt it, but he’s far from alone there.
It’s a lot better than the video racist Congressional candidate Tan Nguyen made a few years ago – also from Little Saigon:
OMG, I was also there for that! That’s definitely on my Top 10 list of strangest campaign events.
Stad by your Taaaaaaannnn
The rats are scurrying away from GG as fast as they can, so could well be a laboratory.
Steve Jones is far from a reformer. He is a wanna be developer. He has always sided with Broadwater and the developers. Mr, Jones’ record on development is an open book – Pro development and willing to give away the farm to developers and business persons without regard to the citizens of GG. As a Planning Commissioner he was stumbling all over himself to welcome another ABC liquor license along G.G. Blvd even when the Boulevard was over-concentrated double and triple the allowed number of licenses and in areas with excessive crime.
Phat Bui knows his way around City Hall and knows how to get things done…not necessarily the above-board way. He has always used campaign contributions and who he knows to get things done, usually for himself or his friends. Seems to me that he will end up siding with whomever has the deeper pockets.
I don’t know much about Chris Beard but, inasmuch as he was appointed to the Planning Commission and later twice to the Council by the Broadwater triumvirate, you can be assured that he’s not too different philosophically from the former mayor. He, like Steve Jones, was a part of approving an excessive number of ABC liquor licenses in the high crime areas along G.G. Blvd when he was a Planning Commissioner.
Well, Fertal resigned because he was afraid of at least one of the three joining (presumably) Bao and Phan in opposing him. Which one, two, or three do you think it was?
Jones and Beard were both against Broadwater on the Fire Department/nepotism issue — as I recall (perhaps unclearly), in a decisive, no holds barred way. And they both have to be attentive to these recent election results.
Bui seems like a lost cause then. Do you recognize his volunteers (from the video in Mudge’s comment just above), to know where they are both literally and figuratively coming from?
Thanks for the comment that sparked this post, obviously!
For F**Ks sake whats one got to do to get the same deference for a cannabis dispensary permit?
Write plenty of campaign contribution checks. Ever since Nevada green-lit medical marijuana dispensaries last year, Clark County has put together quite the 420 gravy train. Of course, the most “juiced up” have been getting the most gravy.
http://www.ralstonreports.com/blog/why-clark-county-acting-state-med-pot-licensing#.U340Ycnn_qA
Wait, you mean Garden Grove residents might actually have city council members (including a Mayor) who listen to them (and not just blow them off to cut another sweetheart deal with developers)? Perhaps some things do change in OC.
Dina was not removed from the council. Dina was elected to a water board seat. Bao didn’t run as a reform or a progressive , he ran touting his endorsement from firefighters. Developers have made Garden gRove stay afloat, the bed taxes are keeping that city afloat.
You really don’t you know that?
Dina Nguyen was termed out of her Council seat. That has nothing to do with her being on the OC Water District Board.
A major issue in Garden Grove has been nepotism. Firefighters were upset about the nepotism involving City Manager Fertal, Mayor Broadwater, Chief Barlag, and Jeremy Broadwater. That is an example of reform. Bao also campaigned on more than one issue.
I’m not going to bother arguing with a ghost over the role of developers in Garden Grove. You want a real discussion, use your real name — unless you consider pushing developers’ interests embarrassing (as well you might.)
Good to know that you think GG has been so mismanaged that it would have sunk without untrammeled development, though, “Joe.”
Joe, the developers hardly kept the City afloat. Their sweetheart deals (land for pennies on the dollar, plus all the other perks) have them laughing all the way to the bank. What the developers have created along some of Harbor looks much better than what was there; there is no denying that. But that is a pretty low standard by which to measure things, especially when you consider the things that were there to begin with.
The standards that the City allowed these developers to use are far below what their own laws require.. Had the City not caved in on so many of the requirements and standards for development, the hotels and restaurants would look so much better. Perhaps one could actually find a place to park when you go to visit friends or family staying in the hotels or to have dinner in one of the restaurants. Yes, the taxes that the hotels bring in are what helps keep city hall open, the sewers flowing in the proper direction, and police and fire services going. There’s no doubt that those taxes are a godsend to the City. But what if the City actually got 50 cents on the dollar for the land? Without all the giveaways there could have been more dysfunctional properties purchased and rehabilitated into other bed tax developments, then the City would have really have been rolling in money instead of the developers.
And then there are the sweetheart deals with a couple of residential developers that get cheap land from the City and/or the Redevelopment Agency and do sloppy work, use inferior material and deviate from most of the City’s requirements.
Reform? Really? From a guy already beholden to a public employee union?
Good luck with that one.
Hmmm… that’s the Firefighters? Getting support from someone like the Firefighters who had good reason to hate Broadwater dooms the recipient of the support to life as a non-reformer of any kind? Don’t see it… although certainly different folks could define “reform” different ways.
I guess it depends on what you mean by reform. Pension reform? Overtime abuse? Civilian oversight of the cops? Redevelopment is dead so the only thing the city can really do is give away property; I guess that could still be a problem if they haven’t already given it all away.
GG appears to have had a shady mayor and his lackey city manager. Both are now gone. My guess is “reform” is over but maybe someone can point out what else is on the agenda other than getting rid of the ex-mayor’s kid.
Let’s just say I did not support Broadwater but I also did not support Bao.
Broadwater’s loss has less to do with any thought of campaigning as a reformer of Nepotosm and more to do with the Vietnamese voters growing power.
Sweet heart deals is what it takes to get these hotels here so I am very concerned that while Bob acknowledges the money flowing in, he thinks there could have been a less costlier way to bring in development. It is easy to say after the fact.
I’ll make sure I review all the past city council meetings looking for Bob protesting a about the giveaways to developers.
The new water park will be sitting at the long vacant land that had the old Fire station motel and Humdinger bar, both places that were eyesores and high crime areas. Broadwater cleaned up this area cannot be questioned