Whither Jordan, Pt. 4: Can New Census Bureau Data — or Disney’s Exasperation — Save the Day?

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7.  An Ever-Changing Pattern of Desperately Flung Bull-Droppings

There’s a notion in politics that you can get away with almost any kind of bullshit so long as you’re consistent about it.  Councilman Jordan Brandman has been hurt during this process not only for the substance of his positions — which, when you boil them down, mostly come down to the petty goal keeping his hate-object off the City Council until 2018 at least and forever if possible (see the link to Part 2, above) for any reason that is implanted into his head by the wordsmiths working for Curt Pringle — but also for their inconsistency.

I’ll cite just two examples, both (I think) from the November 17 meeting that set him on a collision course with the local Democratic Party (though not with the local Democratic power structure; see the link to Part 3 for that) and the second from when he decided to delay the almost completed process.

Brandman (and his best pal Kris Murray, who also feeds at the Pringle trough) love surprises from the podium.  So, when the districting process was gliding to its conclusion, with hardly anyone even bothering to object to the broad consensus to use the Recommended Map (aka “People’s Map”) for the new districts — scheduling initial elections to be held in Districts 1, 3, 4, and 5 for 2016 — the two of them served up a theory, cooked up in the back kitchen, that the plan for districts all along had been to make sure that both districts in the West Side of Anaheim had the chance to choose their own representation on the Council in 2016.

They claimed that this was what the drive to districting had been about.  It wasn’t.  You can read the back stories in this fine publication and others to see that it wasn’t.  In fact, virtually (if not absolutely) no one from the podium has requested that both Districts 1 and 2 get to vote in 2016.  There has been no popular movement to make it happen, not only when the districting process was approved, but even throughout all of 2015, when people were invited to participate in the process!  There is a petition to get two representatives from West Anaheim on the City Council, but it only started last week!  It hasn’t been an issue until it a “movement” got propped up just for this meeting!

At any rate, if the Council chooses the “1, 3, 4, 5” solution championed by the vast majority of the speakers from Anaheim (and those of us who support them), there will be two people from West Anaheim on the City Council, because Councilman James Vanderbilt has moved from the border of Districts 3 and 5 to District 2, where he works.  I don’t always agree with Vanderbilt, but no one can call him anything less than “conscientious” with a straight face — and when he says that he will represent the people of District 2 through 2018, I believe him.  (He’ll certainly do so better than Brandman and Gail Eastman — who left the third comment on the petition asking for her own district not to be chosen for immediate representation! — have done in representing their “home” of District 3.)

Judging from the last-minute PR offensive in the Pringle Ring’s Anaheim Blog, however, the response of the Councilpersons from Orange and Long Beach will just be to pretend that this didn’t happen: that THIS representative from District 2 isn’t good enough, while the anti-Latino representatives from District 3 are good enough.  They’re not consistently applying the principle that they had initially introduced — that every district should have a representative on the City Council starting in 2016.  In 2016, if they get their way, the sole Latino majority district on the Council — District 3 — will not have a representative on Council.  District 2 would have two of them.  Fair?  By their own standards?

But that’s not even the worst of it.

When people howled at the delay in implementing the map, Brandman and Murray argued that the city should wait until the new government’s new CVAP numbers came out at the end of January so that the Council could consider whether some of the maps that currently had one Latino-majority district now had two of them.  People didn’t howl because the idea was fundamentally flawed, but because such a delay would give incumbents an even further advantage in fundraising for November’s election.  But the decision not to fire the starter’s pistol on November 17 has by now already been made; they got their bloody tactical advantage.  Now we’re a little more than two weeks away from getting those figures, with Brandman STILL arguing (against the retired judges’ unanimous recommendation) for a map with two majority Latino seats, even though that disadvantages Latinos by giving them a very likely minority of competitive seats on the Council.

At this point, unless they want to go with the Recommended Map — which remains on the table after its indefinite postponement! — it does make sense to wait to see which maps satisfy this absurd new criterion of Brandman’s.  Most of the damage to potential challengers has already been done.  Rushing ahead to get the first two public hearings in before the meetings come out completely contradicts what Brandman said at that earlier meeting about the need to have two majority Latino districts.

WHY WOULD THEY NOT WAIT HALF A MONTH TO SEE IF THE PROBLEM GOES AWAY AS MORE MAPS COME TO SATISFY THE CRITERION THAT JORDAN SET FOR CONSIDERATION?  Jordan said from the dais that it was because they wanted to allow for people to make their plans — which he personally had screwed up — but given his expressed criteria for considering maps that speed becomes a secondary consideration.  Having the first public hearing on Feb. 9, then the second at a special meeting on Feb. 16, and then the final meeting on Feb. 23 would give people ample time to decide whether to file for an office in before the March 11 deadline — an act that might preclude their filing in August for an office being filled in November.

The Council looks like it is (because, I think I can safely say, IT REALLY IS) grasping for any possible justification to prevent the Latinos of Central Anaheim from being able to choose their own representative on Council for almost three more years — and to prevent their from being able to choose their neighbor Dr. Moreno to represent them on the Council until new districts are drawn.

And that creates a problem for their corporate benefactors.

8.  Brandman and Murray Don’t Care If Disney Looks Like It Wants to Harm Latinos

There’s no reason to sugar coat this: Brandman and Murray, along with Gail “it was convenient that a riot prevented us from voting” Eastman and Lucille “killing a criminal suspect saved us the cost of a trial” Kring do not want Latinos to be empowered in Anaheim.  This is because Latinos (mostly of future generations) are competing for money and resources with the local entertainment and tourism industry — led and symbolized by the Disney Corporation.  This will not be difficult to prove; their “victories” over reform interests (such as my client, CATER) have involved a now-document legacy of chicanery and deception.

But Disney ain’t stupid.  It knows that, having gotten the Gate Tax ban “in exchange for” — I’ll grant them that laughable assertion for the purposes of of this argument — building the Star Wars addition to Disneyland, it pushed its PR machine to the point of overheating.  It wants a friendly Council — ideally one with some nice and well-cared-for pro-Disney Latinos on it — but it doesn’t want to look like a monster running roughshod over its community.

And, basically, Disney is not going to be wracked by having a Dr. Moreno (or even two) on the City Council, so long as they are safely in the minority on issues closest to Disney’s heart (and wallet.)  They’ve survived Tait; they can survive Moreno — even as early as 2016.

Disney isn’t driven by pettiness, pride, and hatred.  It’s a business.  And that means that its interests are different from those of the politically ambitious Brandman and Murray (one of whom, just watch!, is likely to enter the 68th Assembly District race and backstab Harry Sidhu.  Which, I admit, will be sort of fun to see.)

If Brandman is exposed as someone determined to squash Latino interests in Anaheim, does Disney really want to hold him close to its bosom?  I think that the more erratic and obsessed Brandman in particular is seen as being, the likelier that its answer will be “no.”

“No” as in “no more huge independent expenditures for Brandman and Murray.

The rumbling I’m hearing is that Disney is fine with the Reyes 2/People’s/Recommended Map.  They can deal with it.  They have their people in place.  (Steve “Chavez” Lodge, perhaps?)  They don’t want to see all of that upended.  And that’s why — weirdly — the Cunningblog started producing stories yesterday based on the notion that it was still November 17: presuming that the Recommended Map would be approved, and simply arguing about sequencing.

Going along with the “Recommended Map and 1, 2, 4, 5 sequence” would mean a total contradiction for Brandman — but if either Murray or Kring join the others in relenting on the choice of the Recommended Map, then Brandman could preserve his pride and his screwy viewpoint and we’d still get to the vote that Disney wanted to see.  But what if the Council majority does want to preserve its (cough, cough) “integrity” and stick with the plan laid out on December 15?  What if the Council majority does end up lining up with what Pringle may want instead of what Disney wants?

All I can say is that then we will be in uncharted waters.  And, for some people in the Disney hierarchy, which recently moved (or booted, hard to tell) Murray’s best friend Carrie Nocella up from being the political quarterback in Anaheim) to the corporate office in Burbank, they might be happy to have tossed some of their ballast overboard.

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An Afterword:

I will note a couple of possibilities that haven’t much been part of the discussion so far of what may happen tonight:

(1) The Council could presumably “divide the question” and pass an ordinance ONLY approving a map — the “People’s Map” requires only one more vote to pass — and leave the decision about sequencing to a future public hearing.  (Doing this shouldn’t scare the majority; they’ll get the sequence that they want one way or the other.)

(2) In fact, I presume the Council could by motion approve the ENTIRE ordinance that first came up for its final reading on Nov. 17 — including the 1, 2, 4, 5 sequence — and then attempt to pass a later ordinance that would amend either “2” or “5” (no comment on which right now) to “3.”  The amendment probably wouldn’t pass, but it would be a very clear statement from the Council on the issue, which may be the best that can be done.

Will either of these happen?  I don’t know.  Let’s just remember that “postponed indefinitely” is not the same thing as “dead.”