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[Ed note: The following press release was received this morning by Orange Juice Blog and has been confirmed as real.]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
SANTA ANA RESIDENTS AGAINST CORRUPTION LAUNCHES A
RECALL EFFORT AGAINST MAYOR MIGUEL PULIDO
Santa Ana, California – March 14, 2017:
Miguel Pulido has been on the Santa Ana City Council for 31 years; the last 23 as the City’s Mayor. Unfortunately for our City, the Mayor has used that long tenure not for the public good, but rather to line his own pockets and those of his special interests. In that time, the Mayor:
- profited nearly $200,000 in an undisclosed land swap deal with an individual with business before the City;
- killed $500,000 in previously approved funding for sorely needed community programs for our children;
- voted to let a bad cop fired by our Police Chief for criminal misconduct, back on the police force; and
- has been fined over $15,000 by the Fair Political Practices Commission, and an Orange County Superior Court Judge for 11 separate violations for failing to disclose his financial interests, and, in one case, voting on a matter in which he had a financial interest. The FPPC determined, and the Mayor agreed, that his vote on the matter was “more than an inadvertent oversight.”
Santa Ana Residents Against Corruption has decided to do something about it. We are a grassroots movement comprised purely of volunteers united by our conviction that the corrupt Mayor must be removed from office, and that a recall is the best vehicle to accomplish that goal. To that end, today we are filing a Notice of Intention to Circulate a Recall Petition against Mayor Pulido with the City Clerk.
The Mayor has struggled to win a majority share of the vote in his last four elections: twice he failed to garner 50% of the vote, and the other two times he barely crossed the 50% threshold. All four of those Mayoral elections involved two or more candidates dividing the anti-Pulido vote.
Mayor Pulido will not have the benefit of a divide-and-conquer strategy in a recall. There are only two options in a recall election: Shall Miguel Pulido be recalled from the office of Mayor? Yes or No. There is not a third or fourth option. So the Mayor will have to run against himself and his own record, and we believe that he will lose on such a recall ballot.
But to get to a recall special election, we must qualify our petition by obtaining a sufficient amount of signatures of Santa Ana registered voters. There are 103,916 registered voters in the City. We need to collect a minimum of 10% of that total—10,392. Our goal is to collect 15,000 signatures, both to serve as a cushion against any signatures that are disqualified, and as a message to send to our Mayor that the community will no longer tolerate his corrupt actions that are having an adverse effect on our community.
We cannot do this alone.
We need the help of every person, both resident and non-resident alike, interested in helping Santa Ana finally rid itself once and for all of Mayor Pulido and the special interests he represents. To that end, we humbly ask you for your signature on the recall petition, your help in spreading the word to other voters, and your time volunteering to help us end the corruption by recalling the Mayor.
There is good reason as to why Mayor Pulido has been in power for so long. It is difficult to dislodge an entrenched power, even one that is so blatantly and unapologetically corrupt. Special interests who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on Santa Ana elections in favor of that entrenched power make the task of dislodging corrupt politicians such as Mayor Pulido even more difficult. But if you will partner with us by making a financial contribution of any amount, we promise you that your money will be put toward marshalling the resources necessary to combat what is inevitably going to be a large war chest funded by the special interests protecting Mayor Pulido.
We are many, and Mayor Pulido and his special interests are few. Together we can do great things. Together we can recall Mayor Pulido. Please visit us at our website, recallmayormiguelpulido.com, or visit our pages on Facebook (Recall Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido), Twitter (@Recallpulido) and Instagram (recallpulido) for more information and updates on the recall campaign.
Si se puede.
Wow — just checked out the Pulido Timeline at the recall group’s site:
https://www.recallmayormiguelpulido.com/timeline
This is … stark. See for yourself. I’m not copying it to here because they deserve every click they get.
Remember “SLEASING,” Governor Schwarzenegger’s lame idea to make some quick money by selling and THEN LEASING OUT several big state buildings? Pulido was all set to make a quick quiet half-million off brokering one of those sales, until me and Gabriel embarrassed him out of it, on THIS blog!
http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2010/12/poll-biggest-latino-sell-out-mayor-in-southern-califas/
Yeah, I’d been expecting this for about a month. A Santa Ana lawyer named Robert Oliver (who is married to Angie Amezcua, just recently on SA Council) has been laying the groundwork for this since then. He asked me some questions on FB and I was able to hook him up with NORML’s Candace Hawes, who helped him with some of the SA bureaucracy. Robert posted today:
“So I’m at the post office this morning to mail the recall notice to the Mayor. The nice lady at the counter takes my envelope, looks intently at the name to whom it is being sent, looks up at me, and then back down at the envelope and says: ‘He comes in here sometimes to pick up packages . . . [insert long pause] He’s always on the phone and is rude.’
“I tell her we’re starting a recall effort against him. Her eyes suddenly widen and she says ‘It’s about time! Good luck.’
#recallpulido #racpac #santaanarecall”
This would be a LOT more significant if somebody actually put their name to it
Uh, I see names. Do you mean that “admin” put this up on the blog? That’s what me and Greg do when we didn’t write the majority of something and are just sharing it. We sure support it though.
Look! Down at the bottom! Diego Gomez! If you go to the website you’ll see Robert Oliver too. Don’t worry, soon there’ll be thousands of names!
If you missed it, the REAL story is here: https://www.recallmayormiguelpulido.com/
Now that you know the names, how significant is it?
My answer is: we’ll see!
*Here is our Miguel story: We were driving through a neighborhood in Santa Ana, where the roads were in poor repair and there were tennis shoes hanging over the phone lines. We wrote to Miguel and he had roads repaired and removed several pairs of tennis shoes. And…he answered our e-mail.
Next, Miguel was on the Coastal Board reviewing the Fire Ring Scandal in HB and Newport Beach. We came to one meeting….and upon seeing us….immediately left
due to an emergency. He Abstained on the issue….even though we wanted him to
vote Against the Fire Rings and for restricting them to Gas Operation.
Miguel abstained on Fire Rings? He probably hadn’t had time to put his finger in the air, to feel the wind blowing from the millions of pissed off Californians who wanted to keep the pits.
I saw him leading a town hall in HB against the ban. One good, but EXTREMELY EASY, thing he did.
*Yep, Chariman Vern – “A Nation of Fire Rings!”….how could that go wrong? Especially, when they bring down those dirty diapers and burn those, and use
kerosene to light those fires…….brutal. So, Miguel works well with others…you have to admit. He can play it either way………..with great aplomb!