Well! So much for any idea that Santa Ana’s “Business-Democrat” minority of Mayor Valerie Amezcua and Councilmen Phil Bacerra and David Penaloza are thoughtful, responsible public servants! It was a forlorn hope I suppose.
It’s been clear for many months that this minority wants to destroy the progressive-populist majority of Phan, Hernandez, Vazquez and Lopez, for the benefit of their police-union, developer and landlord backers, and to do that by removing Councilwoman Jessie Lopez. Mayor Amezcua has even been sending out text blasts encouraging Ward 3 residents to recall her colleague, something I don’t remember ever seeing before.
BUT when new, troubling information comes out, information showing that recall election to be fatally flawed and legally doomed (through nobody’s fault but our new Registrar of Voters), a responsible public servant would HIT THE BRAKES, no matter what their personal or political preferences may be, and say “This cannot go forward.” At least, you’d think, maybe one or two of them might.
PERO NO. All in lockstep, and on the flimsiest of pretexts, all three voted the way CYNICS predicted – Damn the law, keep the recall going, full steam ahead! It was a grossly familiar sight, to those of us who lived through the Sidhu and Kris Murray years in Anaheim.
Penaloza, who I’d hoped might be better, feigned bafflement because “there are so many different complicated legal opinions,” before concluding “Let a judge figure it out.” THAT’S being responsible? Welcoming an inevitable lawsuit on top of the nearly a million already wasted on this sham recall?
And “so many legal opinions?” Well, you can find a lawyer somewhere to say ANYTHING for the right price, but we know that Santa Ana’s own City Attorney agreed with the Registrar, and advised the Council to rescind the election. We know this from the impetuous Johnathan Hernandez, who earned a scolding for speaking out of closed session.
Phil Bacerra’s position was “The City of Santa Ana should not take responsibility for the ROV’s errors,” as though it were a hot-potato blame game – in his head, I guess, that justified him voting to NOT rescind the fatally flawed recall election. And Mayor Valerie didn’t bother giving ANY reason for her vote.
Pretty craven and disingenuous of these three. This is going to continue careening toward a cliff, Jessie will not be removed, and this will just end up costing the city even more money and chaos. For now, let’s help Jessie beat the recall with votes, as we already were!
Video cued up to where the Council finally speaks, after long closed session.
Public comments started right at 1:00:00.
What are these people really like, these cliquish “business Democrats,” so indistinguishable from Anaheim kleptocrats of either Party? How do they see themselves, how do they justify themselves, how do they see their opponents? The Voice‘s Brandon reported recently on an explosive and revealing Santa Ana Council meeting that shed some light on those questions:
…It was the nexus of a larger debate between both factions over what’s casting a bigger shadow over Santa Ana: Council members backed by property owner interests and the police union, or the opposing colleagues they called political grandstanders?
“There’s four people up here that are just jumping in the water cause it feels good, looks good – ra, ra, ra – pat yourself up on the back because ‘I’m saving my community,’” Amezcua said. “That is not what we should be doing up here. Creating jobs, bringing in businesses, generating revenue, looking at what the city is looking like in 2-5-10 years – That’s what we should be doing…. That’s mature, responsible leadership. That’s not what we’re doing up here.”
That’s for sure. It’s sure not what the “business Democrats” were doing up there last night. As they incompetently, recklessly, tried to please their masters.
MORE TO COME…
Council member Hernandez should be censured for revealing Closed Session information in Open Session – this in violation of the Brown Act.
It was worth it. But I think the City Attorney didn’t like it. SHE doesn’t wanna become a public lightning rod and go the way of Kristine Ridge and Chief Valentin!
this is social there and I can’t see it but Valerie shouldn’t be mayor because she doesn’t care about people with disabilities and she doesn’t keep her oath to office when it comes to giving a person a reasonable accommodation for the Americans with Disability Act I know because she denied me of my civil rights and I’m going to sue her soon for giving me a reasonable accommodation or even having a discussion of a reasonable accommodation this is what is a big deal her in fighting that’s normal but for her to deny a person with a disability a reasonable accommodation is more important than that.
Three to three? You can’t take positive action without a majority.
Never mind. The positive action was to stop the recall. But the motion certainly could have been phrased the other way, no? Who says it was inherent that the flawed recall would have priority? The City Attorney?
The recall election process was approved by the Council – they had to do that as a matter of law. I am not sure that had the Council voted to halt the election if that action would be legal.
And if it’s not legal the City should get sued. A judge is going to decide this in any case. Clearly the council is unable to police itself.
It was revealed, in violation of the Brown Act during Open Session, by Councilman Hernandez that the City Attorney’s opinion, given during Closed Session, was to cancel the election. Hernandez should be censured, or given a spanking, for being a naughty young man.
And he will take his spanking like a man. I’m glad we know that was the city attorney’s advice, which the three “Business Democrats” chose to ignore.
Hopefully the lawyer’s advice was based on law rather than politics. In any case this is going to add weight to the inevitable lawsuit.
BTW, someone who has recused themselves from a vote is supposed to leave the room.
And Jessie is suing for an injunction on this recall election. I’ll post more when I learn more.
The OC Registrar of Voters rescinded his Certification of Sufficient Signatures.
So: the Council voted to go ahead with the election and the Registrar of Voters said “you can’t go ahead with the election because you don’t have a sufficient number of signatures.”
I didn’t know that one could rescind such a certification — and I suppose that strictly speaking I still don’t know for sure — but presuming that Page is within his rights to do so then it would be very hard to get this overturned by a court. The Registrar’s opinion carries with it a heavy presumption. I ran into that (or it ran over me) in one of my cases against the ROV.
So: unless overturned by a court, this seems to be checkmate. Jessie may get to save on legal fees.
Maybe Vern recalls this better than I do, but as I recall that there’s a point at which a failed recall inures the public official at hand from facing the possibility of a subsequent recall.
I don’t think that this situation has that effect — but if it did then that would be an especially sweet and hilarious result of the Council’s obstinance.
The ROV did not say “you can’t go ahead with the election ..”
If the election did not qualify, then I suppose that he doesn’t actually have to say “you can’t go ahead with the election.” It’s implicit, as there is no election to go ahead with.
If the recall were to be halted it would not be a “failed” recall. It would be as if there never was this particular recall election.
All just a bad dream. Serrano is history, Halloween is in our rear view mirror.
I don’t recall the exact provision that governs when a recall passes the point of no return, so I can’t evaluate your assertion. You are not constrained by having to understand what the law says, so making assertions like this is easy for you.
As I said, I don’t think that it has this effect, so I do think that you’re correct. You can post whatever it was you read before making this definite assertion — as if I believe you read anything — and I’ll take a look.
That is news from today, and the thing that Bacerra was hanging his hat on?
^^Expected that ^^
On the bright side those 230+ voters outside the district won’t be able to vote to recall her and there are at least that many voters unaware of the recall in the new district and will probably just sit it out.
Statement by Santa Ana Councilman Phil Bacerra:
“On Monday, October 30, 2023, upon receiving the Superseding Certificate with FALSE statements by the OC ROV, the Santa Ana City Attorney sent an email to the OC ROV stating that the Santa Ana City Attorney’s office NEVER requested that the OC ROV rescind the Original Certificate as to Verification Of Signatures On Petition.
As of Nov. 1, 2023 the City of Santa Ana has NOT received a response from the OC ROV regarding their FALSE claim.
Phil Bacerra doesn’t understand this issue any more than you do. (Which appears to be: “not much.”) And he has NO basis for calling what Page said “FALSE.” Go back to Page’s statement. The path of least resistance would for him to cover up the error and let the election go forward. To his credit, he didn’t do that: he fessed up, took the blame, and accepted the possibility of consequences. That’s admirable. Bacerra is just upset because he may not get to fuck over the person someone he had expected to take down.
The notion that the City Attorney HAD to request a rescission of the Certification is idiotic. Page’s job is to enforce the provisions of the Election Code. Once he discovered that he had been mistaken about the Code’s requirements, he was LEGALLY BOUND to enforce them. Santa Ana doesn’t get to say “but you told us we could break the law, so let us do it like we planned!”
That notion is pure thuggery. No wonder you like it.
Bacerra’s basis for calling the ROV’s statement “FALSE” that the City asked him to rescind his verification of signatures is the City attorney’s Oct. 27th letter to the ROV in which she asks him twice if he is going to rescind. The City in fact did NOT ask him to rescind. The OC ROV is obviously incompetent.
Let me give a couple of examples about how there might have been a rescission without a document proving it.
(1) Orally conveying the request.
(2) Implicitly making the request.
The first isn’t very interesting. The second is both more interesting and more likely.
An implicit request could be asking for something that required Page to make this recission. For example: “put the policy approved by the City Council and the policy approved by your office in synch” would — if Page believes that the law requires him to abort the election — be interpretable as a request to decertify the election, because that would be the only legal way to do it!” If the thing creating the problem was that he had certified the signatures, the only (or at least most straightforward) way to reconcile them would have been to decertify the signatures. Then they were nunc pro tunc (“now for then,” or essentially “retroactively” put the status of the signature certification in accord with the requirements of the law.
Unless Carvalho wrote her letter very carefully with this possibility in mind, it likely could have been fairly interpreted as a request to solve the conflict by this sort of retroactive action.
I can give other examples about how an implicit request might have taken place, but I’ll wait until you (I presume) fail to understand this one.
It would be hilarious if the understood “implicit request” was Bacerra’s own interrogation of Clerk Jennifer Hall (who looks a lot tireder and older than she did when she was Anaheim’s Assistant Clerk a few months ago, poor girl…) As memorialized admiringly by the Kleptoscribe:
Bacerra: “Madam Clerk, was the certificate of sufficiency of recall petition that you presented to the city council on August 1, based on the certificate as to verification of signatures on petition provided to the city by the ROV in July?”
Hall: “Yes, it was.”
Bacerra: “And has the ROV formally rescinded their certificate as to verification of signatures on a petition with an accurate superseding certificate as to verifications of signatures on petition?”
Hall: “No.”
Bacerra: “And did the letter from the ROV that the city received on October 26, rescind the RVs certificate as to verification of signatures on petition?”
Hall: “No.”
Bacerra concluded by stating, “My position is the city of Santa Ana should not take responsibility for the ROV errors.”
https://ocindependent.com/2023/10/jessie-lopez-recall-will-go-forward/
You stretch credulity to the max Diamond – hilarious …
You do not know what you’re talking about. If I asked you to explain to me your understanding of my argument, as I might do with someone less trollish, I expect that you’d do something like holding one hand of to your mouth and making a rude fart noise. And you’d consider that a rebuttal — because you really don’t know any better, or at least can’t produce one.
And I don’t consider what you say hilarious. I consider it sad.
Here is the ROV’s rescission of his verification of signatures to which Tardif and Bacerra are referring: http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/page-rescission-of-Jessie-recall-sig-verification.pdf
As far as I know, the monstrous Bacerra is correct: Page says the City requested him to do this, and I don’t know exactly when (and who in) the City requested that. But it doesn’t mean it’s not done. Seems Page is still very wobbly on his feet. But doesn’t mean it’s not fucking rescinded.
Poor Phil, poor Valerie, poor Gerry.
Brandon’s new piece is, fittingly, https://voiceofoc.org/2023/11/how-many-legal-wrenches-can-santa-anas-recall-election-take/
I’ve been promised details on Jessie’s lawsuit tomorrow afternoon.
I don’t know this Page guy (a relative of Leon?) but it seems implausible that he would make up that. Somebody DID ask him to rescind. The City Attorney?
Anyway, you are right: from the ROV’s POV it is rescinded. But what does that really mean?
A judge is going to decide this. But which one?
Meanwhile, yesterday, I watched all the public comments from Tuesday night’s meeting, starting at 1:00:00 in the video above. There were maybe 10 supporting the recall of Jessie, and maybe 40 opposing it. Somehow all the recall supporters managed to go first, they musta been there early and waiting longer. But I have to say, VERY FEW from either side addressed the real issue which was the new legal problems with the election. (A few did, and a few were really good.)
I’m thinking of writing a piece on the SHEEPLE who want to recall Jessie. Every other sentence had the word “safety” or “seguridad” if they were speaking Spanish. I think these are the sorts of people who have never felt safe in this world, in their lives. And they are easily manipulated by special interests to blame their constant state of fear on someone that has nothing to do with it. They blame homelessness and crime on Jessie, and they would never grasp the truth that both of those have gone down since her majority has been in power. It would just not compute.
And some of them began their presence by showing obeisance to Valerie, Phil and David. The FEAR faction.
Yeah, this should be its own piece. The SHEEPLE Versus Jessie.
“I think these are the sorts of people who have never felt safe in this world…”
No, these were stooges and political plants.
To a degree… I was mostly reacting to the Spanish-speaking mothers crying about “seguridad” for their “niños” and how it was all Jessie’s fault. I think they believed that shit.
Oh Jesus, those madres with their ninos are easy mobilize when politicians want something. Maybe they’re ignorant enough to believe what they’re told. In Fullerton, their counterparts seem happy to regurgitate the talking points of their patronizing liberal manipulator, Ahmad Zahra.
Yeah, and I emphasize that there were plenty of very smart madres on the other side.
How many of the 40 opposing do you think were Santa Ana residents? And how many were paid NGO social justice warriors?
I think nearly everybody there was from Santa Ana. I know at least half of em. “Paid NGO social justice warriors” my ass. Us paid people were out canvassing. I woulda liked to speak. I woulda mainly said “Everybody forget whether you want to keep Jessie or get rid of her, you have to take into account these new, hard, legal facts.”
But I couldn’t speak, I had to go canvass.
You never know about that these days.
When Jesus Quirk-Silva’s political ass was on the line in Fullerton all sorts of people came out of the woodwork to pitch a lame-ass district just to keep him in office. A lot of them came from outside of town.
The Registrar of Voters WILL NOT, CAN NOT, CERTIFY this election if it goes through. I heard this from a reliable, high-placed source in the County this morning (not a Supervisor, and nobody working for Sarmiento, if that’s what you were thinking.)
This deserves its own post.
5-7 YES activists at Stater Bros. Santa Clara and Tustin RIGHT NOW! Brilliant. They are vote bagging all of the old people who shop and ride the “morningstar” bus.
These are low info, mostly WHITE OLD VOTERS.
“Activists” – that’s a nice name for them. If they’re like any of the ones I’VE run into, they’re probably more “low-info” than these old white voters you describe.
Actually I hope your story is true, but IP research shows you to be a troll full of shit. But we can only hope the YES side is paying 5-7 folks $25 an hour to waste their time outside a grocery store “vote-bagging” old folks who most certainly don’t even have their ballots on them.
PS old white voters, whether they’re for or against the recall, are NOT low-info.
Biggest pro-Trump demographic, Fox News besotted, so I bet to differ. Lots of them are high-info, but lots of them are actually high-misinfo.