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Note: One of my duties as Vice-President of the Anaheim Democratic Club is writing the monthly newsletter, in which I have to be careful (unlike on this blog in general) to not say anything bad about an “endorsed Democrat” or anything nice about any Republican! (Note how in this letter I manage to celebrate the defeat of Rackauckas without even uttering Spitzer’s dirty name!)
Well anyway, our monthly meetings are the first Saturday of each month – including tomorrow! – from 12:15 to 1:45 at West Anaheim’s Haskett Branch Library, and tomorrow’s meeting will be a good one! Except not the one I was hoping for: I wanted both Jose Moreno and Jordan Brandman – our two Democrat Councilmen who just won in twin landslides – as different as their politics are, I thought it would be a really interesting conversation, to see if they could agree on anything. Unfortunately, Jordan is still furious at me for the “NO BRANDMAN – DISNEY CARPETBAGGER” signs I put up during the election, and since he hasn’t been able to take away my Club’s charter or get me removed as Vice-President, his next best move is refusing to grace us with his presence as long as I’m VP. Oh well. So we’ll have Loretta Sanchez instead. Hope Jordan changes his mind some day.
Hello Anaheim Democrats!
OK, let’s get this out of the way quick: WOO-HOO! WE DID IT!!! Did what? Just read any national news stories from these last few weeks – we OC Democrats are LEGENDS! We turned Reagan Country, the birthplace of Nixon, into a BLUE COUNTY – all seven of our Congressmembers are now Democrats, some of them good progressives even!
And counting down from there, we’ve added one Democrat Senator to the State Senate, with Tom Umberg beating Janet Nguyen! In the Assembly we not only defended the invincible Sharon Quirk-Silva (who’ll be visiting us soon), we also replaced Republican Matt Harper with the fine Cottie Petrie-Norris! We managed to get a Democrat onto the Board of Supervisors for the first time in years, with Doug Chaffee. And on the city councils, Superstar Costa Mesa Mayor Katrina Foley got her whole team onto council, while Council Democrats were added in Huntington Beach, Irvine, Aliso Viejo and elsewhere.
Here in Anaheim we have a lot to be proud of, doubling our number of endorsed Democrat council members by not only keeping the great Dr. Jose Moreno (against plenty of money and lies), but also adding Jordan Brandman, who we hope will come speak with us soon, and let us know what his plans are now.
We also managed to pass the living wage measure for subsidized resort businesses, Measure L – with a lot of help from our endorsed Mayoral candidate Ashleigh Aitken! Congratulations also to Club Member Juan Gabriel Alvarez for his hard-won victory in the Anaheim Elementary Board, as well as the Anaheim Education “Politbureau” incumbents (Jabbar, Ruelas, Magcalas, etc.) – well done!
Unfortunately as happens so often, the Big Money in town won out, and the Anaheim Council now has a majority that was paid for by Disney, other Resort interests, and the public safety unions. Most distressingly, our Mayoral candidate Ashleigh is close to beating kleptocrat Harry Sidhu but MAY NOT MAKE IT. IF ONLY A FEW HUNDRED MORE DEMOCRATS HAD VOTED FOR ASHLEIGH, instead of the value-less Lorri Galloway! Then we wouldn’t be looking at the high probability of four years under Mayor Sidhu – think of our town being run by someone as mean, dumb and corrupt as Lucille Kring, but with an accent you can’t understand.
Well, let’s do our best these next 2-4 years to keep our Council from giving away our town’s treasury. And we’re glad to have Ashleigh active amongst us still – we know we haven’t seen the last of her by a long shot!
To return to the EPIC nature of this moment in the County overall, not only did we Democrats put an end to THIRTY YEARS of Dana Rohrabacher‘s immigrant bashing, climate change denial and rogue Putin-loving foreign policy, but we also (that is, many Democrats and others who wanted change) put an end to TWENTY YEARS OF TONY RACKAUCKAS’ REIGN OF INJUSTICE.
This was a DA who came to power promising to never prosecute political corruption (and kept that promise); who never saw a police killing he couldn’t justify; who conversely overcharged poor and minority defendants to a draconian degree; and whose policies were so illegal, corrupt, and incompetent, that he regularly embarrassed this county in world-wide news. We trust the judgment of his endorsed Democrat opponent Brett Murdock, that the new DA will be a NIGHT AND DAY improvement over the old one.
But now let’s talk about this Saturday’s meeting – it will feature two of our local Anaheim Democrat SUPERSTARS, Jose Moreno (recently re-elected to Council) and the fabled Loretta Sanchez, who is running for the Supervisorial seat vacated by the new DA alluded to above. Loretta is NOT THE ONLY DEMOCRAT running for that seat at this time – there’s also Andy Thorburn, who will also come and speak to us, hopefully at our January meeting. By the time that special election happens (early next year, in Anaheim Hills, Yorba Linda, Orange, Tustin, Irvine, Mission Viejo) we Democrats should unite behind one candidate, so we don’t end up with Kris Murray or some other corrupt politician continuing BUSINESS AS USUAL on our Board of Supervisors.
Loretta will be rushing over to our meeting as soon as her plane from back east touches down at LAX around noon – so probably about 1 if nothing goes wrong. And then the next day, Sunday Dec. 2, from 2 to 5 pm, Club Vice-President Vern Nelson is playing a benefit concert at 825 E. Clemensen, Santa Ana, for the victims of the Camp Fire in Paradise California – hope to see you all there!
It seems like we should say and do something about the Border War 90 miles away that our President has created for his own political purposes, but it’s hard to know what to say or do at this point. No doubt this will be discussed Saturday as well. KEEP THE FAITH, and see you Saturday and Sunday!
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