[VERN: This is disturbing or depressing. This blog has a lot of problems with District 5 Fullerton Councilman Ahmad Zahra, which we should write about soon – to begin with he was always a quiet pro-Poseidon vote on the OCWD, and wouldn’t talk about it.
The thing is, well two things: He is endorsed by the DPOC (Democratic Party of OC) which almost always endorses Democrat incumbents (unless they’re Doug Chaffee); and District 5 is a low-income, majority-Latino district, created that way to give Fullerton Latinos more of a voice.
And a qualified, Latino Democrat candidate put his hat in the ring to run against Zahra – Oscar Valadez, a businessman, city commissioner, and lifelong Fullerton resident. So what did the DPOC do, increase their support for Zahra, explain why he’s better than Valadez? It looks like instead they encouraged a second Latino, Tony Castro, to run, apparently to split the Latino vote and help Zahra. That seems like a dirty trick. – V.]
Cross-posted from Friends For Fullerton’s Future:
IS THE DPOC DELIBERATELY TRYING TO SPLIT LATINO VOTES?
LOOKS LIKE IT.
by Mr. Peabody
Posted on
When council districts were finally created in Fullerton, in response to a lawsuit, one district was designed to support Fullerton’s large Latino community – District 5. In 2018 D5 elected a non-Latino which of course was surprising but perfectly legal. But what would Latinos think about a concerted effort by the OC Democratic party to make sure the Latino vote was divided to protect Ahmad Zahra, the non-Latino incumbent?
Enter Tony Castro, the dead-beat nobody who popped up out of nowhere and pulled election papers the day after Oscar Valadez, who has lived in D5 for over 20 years.
Recently FFFF has been bombarded with spam comments all of which came from Tony Castro himself. I took out the trash, but not before salvaging this little gobbet of that is quite revealing: a statement that Castro was approached by one Ajay Mohan:
[Can you read that? “Ajay Mohan, Executive Director of the Local Democratic Party,
is the person who contacted and asked Tony Castro to run for office.
It was not Zahra, Tony has absolutely no ties to Zahra…”]
This snippet has the ring of truth. There is an Ajay Mohan and he is the director of the OC Democrat Party. Here he is:
Now why would Mr. Mohan recruit an unknown, broke, Tony Castro to run against the incumbent who has the endorsement of Party Central? The answer is, unfortunately, crystal clear: to take votes away from Oscar Valadez. This dirty little trick is as old as elections themselves, of course, but to see the Dems do it to working class Latinos betrays a special sort of cynical mindset…
Unfortunately this sort of thing happens all the time. I recall that D5 was supposed to be the Latino majority district as a result of a lawsuit. Last time the only Latino was John Lewis Ybarra – a Republican who simply couldn’t win even with a good campaign.
I’ve been sitting on this information, not planning to mention it ever, but it looks like it’s pertinent. You may remember that I represented a candidate who lost a seat on the Brea-Olinda School Board after a dice roll in what, after a recount, became a tied race. (She had led by one vote leading into the recount.)
Mohan had been dispatched by the DPOC to monitor the recount, which was fine with me. I included him among the group of volunteers who were reviewing photos of all 3600+ ballots, on large computer-style monitors, while the name of the candidate receiving the vote was called out by the Registrar of Voters’ workers. There were actually two tables working simultaneously and each calling out names (generally avoiding stepping on each other’s announcements), which meant that we had to break up into two teams.bbI could therefore not watch each ballot be processed, because I could not effectively watch two screens at once.
This was tedious work, lasting (if memory serves) more than eight hours, and people had to be substituted in and out regularly. I wanted to have two people watching monitors for each table at all times, because we were looking for discrepancies that could have been very subtle and it required full attention. The candidate herself and her loyal swain were doing great work, as were her parents for a time, but after a while we dwindled down to just four people: candidate and swain watching one set of two monitors and Mohan and I watching the other pair. Three monitors were set in in a row (with ample space in between) and one was around the corner, which I generally covered so that I could talk to Neal Kelley as the need arose.
I was desperately looking for ballots of our opponent’s to disqualify, to counteract any ballots of ours they might disqualify, or any disqualified ballots for our opponent that might have been disqualified and then approved. At one point, I had to go over to Kelley with a strong challenge on one or another ruling that took a few minutes to hash out, leaving Mohan as the sole reviewer of one set of ballots. I figured that he would have to be pretty responsible, having been dispatched by the DPOC. I walked back around the corner and there I found Mohan, not looking at the screen, but instead at the smartphone that he was holding up to his face, which was grinning broadly.
I honestly don’t recall what I did then. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t reach down his throat and pull out his lungs, because that would have made the newspapers. I vaguely recall astrally projecting and submitting some form requesting a curse to be out on him exactly two years hence, but that could have been a hallucination. I think that I said “HEY!” In sort of a strangled scream and made a repeated gesture of pointing towards the monitor. I do remember his smile fading and his slowly putting away his phone.
Again, we were working on a task that required constant attention to detail. His dereliction could have made the difference in an election that, after a ballot for the opponent did get counted (over my objection, but it was a fair call by Kelley) ended up in a tie. The possibility that his having his nose in his phone could have led him to miss the critical evidence was slim — but the prospect of a race with thousands of ballots ending in a tie was even more so, and our job — including his job — was to take it seriously. I don’t know how much else of the time he was slacking — because it never occurred to me that I’d have to monitor him like a 12-year-old.
Anyway, that’s my Ajay Mohan story. (And a quintessential DPOC story as well.)
When I criticized him once in the past online, I recall him reminding me that, in my very last DPOC Executive Board meeting, I had successfully lobbied on his behalf. True — but that was because he had not put “slacks off at critical moments for his own gratification” on his resume.[Note: thanks to Luis Andres Peres for reminding me that that last bit was about him rather than Mohan, and I barely remember Luis’s resume.]So, yeah, OF COURSE he did this. [Edited to add: Vern, you may do your tl;dr version of this comment at your convenience.]
Vanessa, I’ll excuse the comment because you seem pretty stupid. You seem to be confusing what I do as a lawyer with what I do as a writer and blog editor. You think I’m committing blog-editor malpractice by not booting him by mentioning a blog that I’ve used here myself? I think that it’s nice that you want to have Mrs. Cameron’s back too, but be smarter about it.
Zahra has a REALLY bad look. This cat is the Jordan Brandman of Fullerton. As such it’s no surprise he is supported by the OC DEM establishment.
I am waiting for the day when people open their eyes and lump SQS, Jesus and Josh Newman in within this group. If they are not complicit, in Zahra’s shenanigans they are enablers for sure.
Oscar Valadez doesn’t even support the legalization of Marijuana, how you could endorse him is beyond me.
Because he’s by far the best candidate?