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[Bumping this up to where we can still see it — and think about it]
(1) The Form of Reform … and the Content of Discontent
I’ve been waiting to see if anyone would comment on what an outsider would immediately spot as the starkest aspect of today’s Anaheim City Council election. So far, I haven’t seen it discussed. But it needs to be discussed.
First, recognize that Anaheim’s City Council District elections have been a huge success. Interest and participation in the City Council races is through the roof; continued civic engagement will follow. Dr. Jose Moreno, Amin David, Tom Tait, James Vanderbilt, and countless other proponents of this reform were right; Kris Murray, Jordan Brandman, Gail Eastman, and Lucille Kring, and their establishment allies were wrong. (And no, belatedly conceding on a final vote after spending years trying to delay or destroy this reform does not make you a reformer!)
Second, let’s recognize that a main point of the reforms was to give Latinos a fair shot at representation. It wasn’t “neighbors representing neighbors” just for the heck of it; it was a lawsuit against a racially discriminatory system that brought it down. Latinos and other minorities got all that they could legally ask for; a system that gives them a shot at success by bringing down the size of districts to something that at least dilutes the power of money versus grassroots campaigning, even if it obviously can’t eliminate it. (Obviously. Very obviously.)
A form of elections that gives Latinos a fair shot in theory does not guarantee that they will actually have a fair shot in practice. For example, it could be that whiter candidates will have so much more money behind them than (let’s use a general term) browner candidates in an election that whiter candidates win despite a more equitable form of elections. No political reform alone will change that. Only a social taboo can prevent it.
Here is that social taboo: the idea that for special interests to spend massively and disproportionately on whiter candidates, so that they will still beat browner candidates in a largely brown city that is every year becoming more so, too blatantly blocks the legitimate aspirations of the minorities that will dominate Anaheim’s future.
In short: the solution to Disney — or the Angels, or the Building Trades, or Curt Pringle and his minions, or the old entrenched Democratic leadership of the county — trying to block minority voters from any chance at determining city policies, because the wealthy and powerful can just turn on the firehose of sewer water as high as they want to and blast them away. is to render that action socially unacceptable.
It’s legal. There’s no question that it’s “legal.” But we don’t have to like it, we don’t have to respect it, we don’t have to tolerate it, we don’t have to keep quiet about it, we don’t have to protect the bottom lines of interests that do it. For Curt Pringle to deploy “poll guards” — accompanied by a weak cover story about how their purpose wasn’t to intimidate voters but simply to protect the integrity of the process — in his election may has been legal, but it has also led to his everlasting shame among those who can’t make gobs of money by ignoring it.
The law won’t fix it. Disdain, contempt, and moral revulsion at such practices might.
Mayor Tom Tait went out of his way to create a bipartisan “Tait Slate” composed of three Latinos and a Filipino who is also a leader in the Latino community. This wasn’t because he thought that white people aren’t appropriate to serve on Anaheim’s City Council, but because symbolically the break with Anaheim’s at-large system ought to be a break from the Anaheim City Council’s white-dominated past. Future Anaheim Councils will be a mix of white, Latino, and Asian to various degrees, but at some point we won’t have the “plantation” appearance where whites are in charge and everyone else has to nibble on the scraps of power dropped from the Council dais. So we might as well get started!
We always knew that Disney would massively outspend Tait’s candidates — which does not guarantee them a victory either, especially in this new system! — but before that it posed a test for them: would they try to give the city an governing Council that “looked more like Anaheim”?
No, they wouldn’t. Disney failed the test.
Heck, Disney didn’t even show up to take the test!
The Disney/SOAR slate is all white — with the exception of half of Bad Cop “Subsidy Steve” Lodge’s heritage that we went for decades not acknowledging, passing for white until it suddenly became politically advantageous for him to be adopt a Spanish middle name.
Does Disney care about what seems, from an outsider’s perspective, to be an astounding slap in the face of Anaheim’s huge Latino community? Not really. Nothing matters more to Disney than ensuring that Anaheim will have no gate tax, and will build its city with the needs of Disney in mind, to the exclusion of the needs of its residents. (And apparently, it was hard to sign up Latinos for that sort of duty.)
That, apparently, is how it seemed to Disney. And boy, was that a huge miscalculation!
I have no idea who’s going to win in today’s Anaheim City Council elections, and with how many of the four seats in play. Will it be the Latino reformers on the “Tait Slate”? The white Subsidy Lovers on the Disney/SOAR slate? The various candidates not formally in either camp? We’ll know later today who won.
But I do know who has lost: Disney.
THIS IS A REALLY EASY STORY FOR THE NEWS NETWORKS (at least the ones not owned by Disney) TO TELL.
- Anaheim is moving towards a majority Latino voting population
- Latinos are more interested in improving their neighborhoods than subsidies
- Disney put up an all-white — I don’t think Latinos are going to claim Steve Lodge at this point — slate.
- The main opposing slate (apologies to Robert Nelson, Donna Acevedo-Nelson, and Leonard Lahtinen) was all Latino and Filipino.
- Disney will have spent, oh, I’m guessing about $1.2 million on its slate.
- The other 20 or so candidates combined? Maybe $200,000?
- If Disney bought this election to keep whites in power and browns out of power, it loses the PR game. Bigly.
The predominantly Latino advocates of districting didn’t set this up as a test for Disney to fail. Disney created that reality itself by thumbing its nose at Latinos.
My guess is that Latinos — probably from the Tait Slate, but Acevedo-Nelson and Fitzgerald-Carvajal might have a chance — pick up two seats. If so, Disney will have lost control of the Council — but also will have dodged a bullet in terms of PR. And Disney’s strategists are just too dumb and greedy to notice.
How will young people react if their dreams of Council representation are dashed this year? Disillusionment and withdrawal?
I don’t think so! I think that they will understand the simple story — and they’re going to be PISSED — at Disney! The company that wanted to Keep Anaheim’s Government White.
I’d rather to see a victory for Latinos this year. But if opponents to the corporate giveaways in Anaheim, and supporters of representing future generations of residents of the City (who are largely the same people), need to play a long game, then they will. Disney, due to its greed, will be extremely vulnerable to social criticism if it wins — and those howls of pain and anger will not be long in coming.
You blew it, Disney, by becoming the moneybags for the “White Party.” Your best hope now is that voters bail you out today — by opposing you!
Greg, I agree with this assessment…except for one assumption. You believe Disney is subject to the public opinions of those Anaheim residents who play host city to their giant ATM. But let’s face it, The Mouse doesn’t give a rat’s ass for what we think, Anaheim’s impoverished-by-design constituency is no longer their consumer base that we once were.
Today Disney is concerned only with that “4-star” hotel guest, generally a foreign traveler, willing to spend massive bucks to use the same space in a line switchback as the annual pass holder who brings their own snacks. When the product being offered is as limited as the square footage used by a human body in an amusement park space, Disney is maxing the return on investment by ensuring that the body using up their real estate for the day enters with pockets full of credit cards.
Fewer guests at a higher price point is the same game played by Arte Moreno at the stadium. And Anaheim residents are NOT seen in that pursuit of money, having succumbed to the Disney-controlled Council’s decades-long policies of ONLY developing poverty wage employment, and shirking any obligation to develop higher wage industries, because when one is trapped in poverty without the option of moving into better jobs, that workforce is unable to demand a whole lot, even if unionized.
Disney is indeed playing the game of keeping Anaheim on “the plantation plan” and jettisoning us off as the target market for their wares, so the only Anaheim residents Disney has to win over are those seated at the dais, who helpfully have price tags printed in plain view to make that purchase so much easier.
Disney does not care about public image when it comes to Anaheim residents, and the consumer base they do pander to cares even less about the long range harm to Anaheim than Disney does, since they are merely passing through on their way to a conference in Dubai or Hong Kong.
I agree with the assessment that Disney doesn’t give a plug nickle for us. And what they do care about – really care about – is the enormous tsunami of Mid-western tourists who save up all year to come to Anaheim. And those corn-fed folks don’t know about and couldn’t possibly care less about the municipal problems of Anaheim.
Disney’s corporate image isn’t at risk. Their corporate wallet is at risk.
Not to mention, they aren’t looking for a “four-diamond” hotel.
It is not that Disney did not have potential prominent Latinos to run in their main slate. Dr Baeza (the Stand and Deliver type of character) is one of them. It is not that Ariana Barrios was not aware.
It shows that whoever is running Disney’s political outreach is ignoring demographic trends, and they would not even less consider the race and class aspects of the districting process. They spend too much time reading the outdated views of the Chamber of Commerce mouthpieces, and following their patronizing analysis.
And here all this time I suffered under the illusion that Disney sought and nurtured Corrupt and Corruptible candidates, only to learn it was really all about skin color ! On behalf of my white self and the other similarly complexioned frequenters of OJB, please allow me to apologize for letting my desire for political reform make me a “traitor to my (apparently irredeemably corrupt) race”. Who’d have thunk it ? .
Did you read anything suggesting that I think that “it was all about skin color,” BB? It was MOSTLY about maintaining the corruption of the current system — but it should not be overlooked that the people from whose future Disney’s candidates are stealing is going to be increasingly brown as the decades pass, while the people Disney asks to do its bidding are stunningly and uniformly white — and Tait’s slate had tried to embrace Anaheim’s future.
As the city’s reserves dwindle and its property gets sold off at fire sale rates to clients of Curt Pringle, history will probably better remember the latter.
Perhaps my browser settings are off ? Let’s bypass that on a hardcopy. Pick your favorite color marker and highlight every mention of “white” “Latino” and “brown” you see. Now pick another color and highlight all the “corrupt”s. I’ll go check my settings again. Perhaps Lisa Simpson was right about jazz?
Is your problem that the word “all” in “it was all about skin color” is being entered from your keyboard without your awareness? Because I’ve never claimed that Disney’s decision was “all” about skin color. I implore you to re-read the comment to which you just replied as many times as necessary to understand what I DID say, because in trying to explain myself again I find myself simply repeating it. I’m not saying that their choice of candidates was “all” about race. I’m saying that Disney’s not giving too much of a damn about what their raiding the General Fund account account has to do with the future quality of life of Anaheim’s residents has in part to do with those future residents being disproportionately poorer and browner — and they don’t really give a damn HOW it looks to anyone, now or in that benighted future.
I’m not sure how long I’m going to continue occasionally pushing this piece to the top of the list of posts. It will be somewhere between “when this year’s Anaheim City Council results are finalized” and “forever.” We will hold Disney to account.
Well, not enough people understand the simple story of being pissed at Disney, like when you have the so-called most anti-subsidy defeated campaign manager in my district calling the Disney elected candidate to congratulate him.
We will never match the massive spending of the “job creators/Disney” coalition. Simpler actions could’ve outsmarted them : not running so many candidates that ended up diluting our vote. Not putting ourselves into a corner, like not accepting Lou Correa’s offer to exchange endorsements. Or making so many predictions, how many times have Lucille Kring, and even Brandman, been declared fatally wounded?
What happened to all those claims that the 3rd district was Doctor Moreno since he was the highest vote getter in the precincts within the 3rd? I guess I was right when I correctly noted that the high percentage of high name id white city candidates actually split the white vote/conservative vote whereas the high name is Moreno received a majority of Latino votes. This gave the obvious but politically opportune appearance that he was most favored candidate. Duh!
Then vonsetvative candidate Robert Nelson voters slide over to Jordan and the not a medical doctor Moreno gets the fKe singer and Linda’s voters and Jordan Brandman still wins this seat. Progressives will never win a seat on this council.
What doomed the 5th district latino candidate in the Tait Slate was another latino candidate. Had Vern not wanted a controlling interests on the council, the mayor would have his majority rule. Friendly fire!
Given how very not-smart (and somewhat vile) you seem to be, I guess I can understand your not writing under your real name. Fine, I get it — your main intent here is to make Vern feel bad (even though Donna herself chose to run.) Well, your analysis does not hold water.
First, while there’s no guarantee, it looks like Jose has a good chance of winning in District 3 within the week. Your “Progressives will never win a seat on this council” may go be up there with “Hillary has this locked up” at 5 p.m. PST on Tuesday, but won’t be as famous in part because because no one will own up to having made it.
The question of who would have won Donna A-N’s voters is a fair one. You say, again, that people vote entirely on ethnic lines, so virtually all of her 11.1% of the vote would have gone to Lopez. However, with three Republicans running, it’s as likely that Democrats would be looking for someone to endorse — and would have followed the advice of their local leaders and supported Faessel. And it’s pretty likely that, based on those endorsements, that’s exactly what they did — in which event the problem with Donna’s campaign, from Lopez’s point of view, was not that it had too much power, but that it didn’t have enough money and power behind it to take another net 11.2% of the vote away from Faessel.
I know that you’re pretty impressed with your anonymous self because you think that you have discovered something that we might call “ethnic voting” — but you’ll be more impressive when you discover that ethnicity and race are not the ONLY factors that drive voting decisions.
Luis echoes Pedroza’s feeling about progressives. That kind of ideological dogmatism prevents us from making real changes. I don’t understand how a young latino person chooses to be a republican ( with all due respect to my good rep friends), but I’d voted for Lopez if Donna had not run. The same can be said about the other Nelson in D3, the issues were not partisan but clearly about ending the subsidies.
The issues may not have been partisan, but Democrats who don’t know whom to vote for are likely to look towards the party leaders they know for guidance. (You are not the sort of voter who needed that sort of help. Ricardo.)
This is, remember, just how the “Brandman and Correa” endorsement mailer helped Murray do well enough in the Democratic areas of what are now District 3 to win her seat over Moreno: people were looking for a second person to vote for and so they bought into these “Democratic” leaders endorsements of Murray. Partisanship goes beyond “should a Democratic or Republican win?” to “whom should I trust to advise me?”
yes. Disneyland did not end the Mayors rainbow slate from winning two seats,it was Donna’s siphoning the latino for Mark.
Ethnocentric voting happens as it was cleArly recognized in the lawsuit.
I don’t understand what your Hillary.result on Tuesday means?
Yes, there are many factors that sway voters decision besides the ethnicity or race and the corporate subsidies seemed not to be overwhelmingly factors.
The Tait Slate will probably win two seats anyway: Districts 1 and 3.
Your repeating that Donna took away Mark Lopez’s win because she got a few tenths of a percent more than Faessel’s double digit lead does not become more true by virtue of your continuing to repeat it.
Yes, ethnocentric voting happens. And so does partisan voting. And so does, and then an election where people don’t know whom to support, voting based on the recommendations of familiar figures. You’re the one arguing that there is only one cause, and one explanation, not me.
I don’t understand what you don’t understand about “my Hillary results on Tuesday” I also don’t understand your last sentence at all. It seems like it got garbled.
I voted for Donna but was considering Mark too. I saw the candidates forum and was impressed with his city positions. So, i tend to believe that donna’s voters would, like myself, slide over to Mark’s side than any other candidate. the 1,000 vote deficit of Mark and the 1000 plus vote received would have done it. This would have changed everything.
Oh, well i guess next time we need more coordination of candidates so no one siphons votes. Sad though, a generation of future tax money lost because the Mayor’s 4th vote was in our hands.
So, you say that your anonymous self voted for Donna but that Mark would have been your second choice – and therefore we can conclude that all 1000 votes, or whatever it is, that Donna received would have gone to MarkK as well?
Please tell me that you are not a product of Anaheim’s public schools. My understanding is that they are a lot better than that.
Then again, “Miguel,” you are probably simply here to stir up trouble and twist the knife. For some people, that’s the highlight of their life.
Getting the same ass backward argument in District 3, that Nelson pulled votes from Moreno, and we would not be holding our breath watching the provisionals if not for Robert throwing in. BUT…with the exception of a few who understood the anti-subsidy position of both Robert and Jose, it is far more likely that Jordan would have picked up the votes that went to Robert Nelson. He got the Republicans who would never in a million years vote for Moreno, whether he “loves white people” or not. The 2014 campaign spent too much time and money indoctrinating a percentage of voters that Moreno is evil personified, here to repatriate So Cal back into Mexico (only because Cuba is not geographically feasible, right?)
Had Robert and Jose both been funded enough to get their message out about their nearly identical anti-subsidy positions then they would have stepped on each others’ voters. But lacking that funding all we had in many cases were the ballot statements and the “walk piece” from Nelson showing him with the (former) Chief and being the law and order guy. Absent Nelson’s presence on the ballot those Republican votes would go to the candidate with the Police and Fire union endorsement, because sadly we seem unable to separate the public safety union endorsement from the “public employee unions” being demonized by our GOP leadership.
Ultimately, there is NO GUESSING where votes will go to, and why people vote the way they do, and if you think you can predict those hypothetical outcomes, Hillary Clinton has some free time on her hands, and may be willing to debate with you.
There is nothing illegal about a business contributing/controlling an election for gain? Isn’t there a fair political commission?
All I’ll say here is that it is a lot more complicated than that — and Disney tends to push the law at least to the limits (and in my opinion past them.)
As expected one of the two pro-corporations PR would take issue with your analysis of Disney’s role in the Anaheim elections. What I didn’t expect was the contradictory analysis of Jeff, your brother in law…”To try to simplify this election into solely a battle of white vs brown is to completely miss the point of the last ten years of struggle…” but then he points out to the fact of the ACLU settlement…
There is no doubt of the importance of Disney in the local economy, and that it has been in the forefront of some issues such as gender diversity. But at the end of the day, in Anaheim Disney has maintained a racially discriminated political orientation. Its pursuit of onerous subsidies takes resources away from our communities, especially from the disadvantaged sections which happens to be the classical minorities.
Well, he’s right that race wasn’t the SOLE factor. He’s wrong if he thinks that it wasn’t a factor. Anaheim is stealing from the future, and the future of Anaheim is much more Latino (i.e., brown.)
I think that he was responding to Chumley’s piece, though, which did not directly mention mine. I don’t think that Jeff had read my post at the time that he made that comment. He may have by now, I’m not sure.
Disney does employ a lot of Latinos, sure — but they’re nuts if they think that this insulates them from stealing the birthright of other Anaheim Latinos largely yet unborn.