.
.
.
Reptilian Communist Tyler Diep will stoop to anything to beat Josh Lowenthal – whether decoy Laird candidate in the primary or anti-Semitism in the general!
California’s 72nd assembly district, stretching up from Fountain Valley to Seal Beach, Westminster and Los Al, including most of Garden Grove, the northern half of Huntington Beach, and all of “Little Saigon,” has always been Republican, and since 2012 has been represented by Trumpy demagogue Travis Allen until, Icarus-like, that politician soared toward the irresistible lure of the governorship, crashed and burned. This meant it was finally time for patient Communist reptile and OC GOP insider Tyler “It is not yet my time” Diep.
Pero whoops, now we’ve got a Trump-inspired BLUE WAVE on our hands, as well as an extremely intelligent, competent and likable Democratic candidate in the person of Josh Lowenthal (left with family, son of Congressman Alan), and this assembly district is unexpectedly in play! Could go either way.
Well, who’s this Josh? Tell us more, you say.
A successful and clever businessman of progressive politics, as the President of FreeConferenceCall.com, he managed to increase the business’ revenue tenfold, expanding it to 70 countries and 40 million callers monthly. As his website notes:
.
“Josh has achieved these results despite the repeated and egregious attempts of giant corporations to stamp out FreeConferenceCall.com’s disruptive business model and its embrace of consumers. In standing up to these corporations and their attacks he makes free application access for small businesses a priority – a policy he wants to carry over into the legislature, where he will be a champion for consumer rights, privacy, good and open government, and against the corrosive corporate interests in our capitol.”
All six candidates for Congress, state senate and assembly were invited to a forum a couple months ago in Fountain Valley, but Congressional incumbent Dana Rohrabacher was the only Republican with the cojones to show up (meaning no Tyler and no Janet.) And – just as he has for thirty years – Dana answered nearly every question with immigrant bashing. Josh took the opportunity to respond angrily (even though he’s not actually Dana’s opponent) “Congressman, my wife is a Dreamer – and she’s a more patriotic American than you.” That’s when I decided Josh Lowenthal was special.
But it’s more fun to write about VILLAINS, like for example, Josh’s opponent Tyler Diep. I’ve noticed him to represent the worst of both OC Republican worlds – somehow simultaneously a Righeimer-style outsourcing/job-slashing government privatizer at home in Westminster, and also a gung-ho supporter of the most taxpayer-swindling public-private partnerships around – from Poseidon‘s $1 billion desal boondoggle to the 405 toll lanes. Nearly alone among local officials on the affected portion of the 405, Diep fervently backed the OCTA/Caltrans scheme to take $1.5 billion of our Measure M taxpayer money to add two lanes to that freeway section, and then change the two inner lanes to expensive toll lanes so that taxpayers get nothing out of the whole ordeal. Tyler also has the distinction of being the only candidate or politician within twenty miles of the Orange Coast to support offshore drilling, as he pulls in millions of dollars of Big-Oil campaign cash.
Back in 2009-10, when there was an actual Liberal OC blog in town, Chris Prevatt used to keep close tabs on Diep’s habitual petty corruption, triple-dipping, and pay-to-play politics. As recently as this year, retiring Westminster Police Chief Kevin Baker leveled charges of corruption against Diep and his gang, including “pushing for relaxed enforcement on buses sent to Westminster to pick up casino patrons” after receiving thousands of dollars in casino campaign contributions.
In tight with DA Tony Rackauckas, as all corrupt OC politicians are, Tyler has never felt bound by laws or rules. You may remember the taxpayer-funded political mailers earlier this year (you should, you paid for them!) which Tyler created and distributed for his boss Supervisor Michelle Steel‘s “community coffees” with the DA – a handy campaign event for both crooked pols running for re-election, mailed out to 16,000 voters despite there being room for only 50. Of course nothing came of this beyond a little scolding from Michelle’s fellow supervisors.
Tyler handiwork, on your dime.
Nor did any consequences result from yet another shady (but more colorful!) episode in Tyler’s primary campaign for assembly this summer – something I’d been meaning to write about – Tyler’s “Laird-gate” if you will.
In Little Saigon, Tyler has his corrupt cabal, which he keeps in line as Van Tran used to. But running in a larger district you’ll need a wider base, and in Huntington Beach the Republican milieu he’s most comfortable with is NOT the conservatives (Peterson, Semeta, Sullivan) but the HB kleptocrats typified by ubiquitous felon ex-Mayor Dave Garofalo and his best friend / henchman Ed Laird. (pictured below indulging in some Surf-City septuagenarian fantasy of the “thug life.”)
Larid, Garofalo at left
Ed on very left, partying it up with the HB Klepto crowd.
With the top lawman!
Mayor Posey at left, legendary felon ex-mayor and Laird at right.
Laird braced by the lovely Steels – bigwig Shawn and his puppet wife.
Somehow Diep and Laird concluded, since Diep had a bland white HB Republican businessman primary opponent named Greg Haskin, that it was necessary (it really wasn’t) to run a fake or “decoy” white Republican HB “businessman” as well, to eat into Haskin’s votes. I wish I could have heard the conversation…
Richard!
Ed evidently said, “I’ll have my son run.” Somebody probably gasped “You mean Richard? Your son in the trailer park? Is he out of rehab? Can he even afford the filing fee? Has he ever voted?” But the filing fee was paid, the nominating petition was signed, and much laughter was doubtless heard in some Surf City wine bar. Richard did get a few thousand votes (without even bothering to vote himself) doubtless at the expense of Haskin – that is, from the pool of Republican voters who preferred to vote for a white HB “businessman” they’d never heard of rather than for a Viet… and hence Tyler was doubly assured of progressing to November against Josh.
So, did our County’s top lawman Tony Rackauckas find anything amiss about all this? You have to be fucking kidding me, right? Oh, maybe you weren’t aware that Ed Laird’s wife contributed the maximum to Rackauckas this cycle. Or that Rackauckas and Diep have both endorsed each other in time-honored tradition. Or maybe you’ve already forgotten that Diep sent out 16,000 taxpayer-funded invites for a Rackauckas-Steel “community coffee.” Or maybe nobody told you that Rackauckas was there at Diep’s campaign kickoff fundraiser, held at Ed Laird’s metal factory.
Short answer: Um, no.
LATEST SHARK JUMPED…
They must’ve all been sitting around again, drinking and talking and laughing. Bad things happen that way. Maybe one of them bitched about “that Jew Lowenthal” doing so well in the polls against their boy Tyler. And gradually, with the big splash Holocaust-denier Gracey Van Der Mark is making in HB politics, with the synagogue defacement in Irvine (left), and with the Pittsburgh massacre fresh in their minds, Tyler’s next Lowenthal attack mailer started to take shape: “Let’s photoshop him clutching a bunch of money on the front! And then let’s give him a big nose on the back side!”
Well, isn’t that just special. Jewish leaders responded:
Jewish leaders denounce
Tyler Diep’s anti-Semitic campaign attacks
Mailers include familiar anti-Semitic tropes with enlarged nose,
altered photos of Lowenthal clutching money
Seal Beach, Calif. — Jewish community leaders spoke out to condemn Assembly candidate Tyler Diep’s anti-Semitic campaign attacks and use of coded, racist language in his campaign.
Diep’s campaign has portrayed his Jewish opponent with an enlarged nose, altered photos to show his Jewish opponent greedily clutching piles of money, and used coded language usually associated with racist attacks on Jews.
Notably, the campaign encompasses one of the hotbeds of the neo-Nazi movement. Huntington Beach is the headquarters to the so-called “Rise Above Movement,” a violent anti-Semitic gang and hate group recently dismantled by the FBI.
The district also includes leading holocaust deniers, the Institute for Historical Review.
This is not a neutral district. Diep’s coded language is carefully calibrated to appeal to anti-Semites and racists in a last-ditch effort to save his campaign.
“I can’t believe in today’s day and age someone would do this,” said Rabbi Shmuley Marcus. “This is so outrageous and unamerican, truly a sad day for our community.”
The attacks come on the heels of other Republican-funded anti-Semitic attacks such as another mailer in a Connecticut State Senate seat, which also featured the Jewish candidate with an enlarged nose gripping cash.
“I have seen this material that is being distributed by the Tyler Diep for Assembly campaign, and I find it to be highly offensive,” said Rabbi Stephen J. Einstein. “In this week when decent people throughout our nation are mourning the murders of Jews in their synagogue, a piece of campaign literature that depicts a Jewish candidate as an individual with a long nose and implying he is a habitual liar is utilizing historically anti-Semitic tropes.”
Rabbi Einstein continued: “It is completely inappropriate and should have no place in a political campaign that ought to focus on candidates’ positions on the important issues facing our state. This attempt at character assassination tells us much more about Tyler Diep than it does about the individual he is denigrating.”
###
The Orange Juice Blog endorses Josh Lowenthal for Assembly!
I’ll bet Gates loves him
One interesting thing about this is that the text of the mailer is in Vietnamese.
That means that Diep is still, at this late date, trying to solidify the Vietnamese vote.
One would think that this should be unnecessary for Diep — but of course he does have one big serious problem with the Vietnamese community:
They already know him.
That flyer is so poisonous.
Say Gracey wins and that’s their big victory. They got an uneducated bigot backed by Ed Laird on a school board so that she can influence the sale of school sites and parks and discriminate against students for their race or religion. The city loses more open space and there is a completely unsuitable, unstable and unqualified person making decisions about children. Congratulations. You “win”.
Any forum posting of a news article about arrests of Huntington Beach white supremacists immediately attracts the usual suspects to deflect, what about and defend. The ex con turned family barber. The LARPing handy man. A handful of other around 50 year old and up geniuses. They are supposed to be the “law and order” party. Never once do they say, “Good job the FBI or PD got another criminal”. They also can never ever resist commenting. And they’ll tell you it’s not because they are anti-Semitic or racist themselves it’s just because they KNOW. They REALLY, REALLY know — that these other documented and often self proclaimed racists are NOT racist. They know a lot of things in fact. Better than anyone else. I don’t know if there is something Anti-Semitic in the air in HB but there IS something Anti-Semitic in some of the people and it’s painful and ignorant and disgraceful and shameful.