Taken from a Register photo by Leonard Ortiz.
Anaheim District 3 voters should be getting their ballots in the mail this week, for the Recall Election of Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava. This recall was filed last July by a union, for their own set of reasons; they managed to get over 9000 signatures to qualify the recall, far more than the 5437 votes she was elected by in 2022.
After watching Ms. Rubalcava in action for the past year and a half, hoping she would be a better Councilwoman, and after April’s Disneyland Forward vote, the Anaheim Democrats Club last Thursday unanimously passed a resolution in support of the recall, with NEW reasons that District 3 citizens should vote yes. Here is that resolution:
WHEREAS Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava, after being elected with $380,000 of independent expenditures from Disney, and in the midst of receiving hundreds of thousands more from Disney and allied interests to fight her recall election, voted April 16 in favor of the Disneyland Forward proposal:
- Agreeing to the abandonment of public Anaheim streets that Anaheim residents want to keep public, including Magic Way and Disneyland Drive;
- Allowing Disney to only provide funding for affordable housing for less than half a percent of the 14,000 new employees Disney plans to hire;
- Giving up the first chance in thirty years to require a study on the environmental and health effects of Disney’s nightly fireworks;
- Ignoring, and literally laughing at, residents’ pleas to put this monumental decision off for further study and negotiation;
WHEREAS Ms. Rubalcava, having been elected with tens of thousands of independent expenditures from housing developers, and in the midst of receiving tens of thousands more from them to fight her recall election, led the Council in rejecting an “inclusionary housing ordinance” requiring new developments to provide a certain percentage of affordable housing, a policy that has worked in many other Orange County cities, and which she disdainfully labels a “buzzword” and a policy that would “unfairly burden developers”;
WHEREAS negotiations will soon be occurring, again, with the Angels baseball team, over our Anaheim Stadium, and residents need to be represented by Councilmembers whom we can trust and who believe in transparency, unlike Ms. Rubalcava who as COO of the Orange County Business Council lobbied strongly for Mayor Sidhu’s discredited and unfair Stadium deal;
WHEREAS District 3 residents, and other Anaheim residents, need and deserve a Council representative who will represent their constituents’ real needs over that of wealthy special interests, by:
- Supporting an entertainment tax in Anaheim to fund the needs of the City’s residents;
- Supporting real Campaign Finance Reform requiring Councilmembers to recuse on votes that affect entities who have funded their elections through Independent Expenditures;
- Supporting policies to meaningfully increase Anaheim’s stock of affordable housing, including an Inclusionary Housing Ordinance;
THEREFORE, the Anaheim Democrats Club resolves that we support, and endorse and urge a yes vote on, the Recall of District 3 Councilwoman Natalie Rubalcava, and her replacement with a candidate who will work for the needs of District 3 residents in the above ways.
UPDATE 5/27: This should not be construed as an “endorsement”, one way or the other, by the Democratic Party of OC or California!
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Yes, most of the above could be written about most if not all of the Anaheim Council. The Disneyland Forward vote shows that we need a new Council, that there hasn’t been any meaningful change since the Sidhu Days. But you eat an elephant “one bite at a time.” District 3 gets their ballots this week. Districts 1, 4 and 5 are up this November.
There is ZERO change since the Sidhu Era, in fact it’s likely worse since these miscreants can dump all the bad shit in Sidhu’s helicopter jumpsuit and go their merry way.
The uncertainty is if the recall is successful and (I believe it will be) is who they will put in place of Natalie Chupacabra?
If they haven’t learned anything, Mitch Caldwell, Michelle Lieberman, or some obedient person we’ve never heard of.
If they have, then Carolina Mendez would be great!
The Cabal hasn’t needed reeducation. They haven’t fucking lost.
We are postulating a possible successful NR Recall and its aftermath.
Easy choice for District 3 voters. Ballots arrive in mail this Tuesday, help stop civic corruption by voting yes, sign, seal and mail back.
False information. You should be ashamed for playing dirty politics.
Oh! Anonymous Coward offers a conclusory rebuttal of an entire story without specifying a specific misrepresentation!
Where’s that “ONOZ!” GIF from way back when, now that we need it!
I think that Vern’s other comment may have summoned the spirit of Danny Fierro, if not Melahat herself!
Yeah I’d really like to know what is allegedly false here, I’ve got backup for all of it.
Now THAT was internet culture at its finest!
The Register version of this, which went through scrupulous fact-checking:
https://www.ocregister.com/2024/05/16/why-anaheim-district-3-should-recall-natalie-rubalcava/
I get a headache always having to be a gadfly. I wish there were more things our elected leaders do that I could celebrate.
Hey Vern are you getting involved with the recall with the union ?
What union? Unite Here? Funny story there.
All the unions beside Unite Here oppose the recall. Everyone with money does. The AMEA (part of? or allied with? OCEA) opposes it. They had a “meet and greet” anti-recall event with Natalie, giving out free hot dogs, yesterday morning. Hardly anyone came, except for about ten of us pro-recall protesters.
And the president of the AMEA was out there on the street waving anti-recall signs and yelling. She kept calling us “Unite Here people” and we have nothing to do with that union. We favor the recall for much better reasons than Unite Here even grasps.
She kept yelling that the recall was a big waste of money – $700k to be precise. I told her I agreed which surprised her. “But the money’s spent now, now the least we can get out of our money is for the voters of district 3 to decide if they want to keep Natalie or try for somebody better.” Didn’t compute with her, she still thought we were from Unite Here.
She also kept saying “THE RECALL IS A LIE!” When she shut up for a second I asked her “What lie?” She said “You guys call Natalie CORRUPT, and she is NOT corrupt.” I allowed how the word “corrupt” is pretty subjective and I usually try not to call a person corrupt. “But she is a very important part of a corrupt system.” That went right past her. “And by the way, who’s trying to buy votes for hot dogs?”
I think there were more of us pro-recall protesters outside than folks who came to the union event, and half of those were Natalie’s family members.
Oh yeah, and this AMEA president kept yelling, “Unite Here just wants to raise their wages! Unite Here just wants to raise their wages!” And I was all, who are YOU and what do you do?
Everybody wants to raise their wages. And this recall if successful isn’t going to do it.
“And by the way, who’s trying to buy votes for hot dogs?”
LOL.
Ha Ha Ha! Dumb Dan. As soon as he noticed that the Register printed my pro-recall piece, he felt compelled to write an anti-recall piece, boringly trying to contradict each of my sentences, and as though he knows ANYTHING about Anaheim.
But the very funniest part is in his first paragraph, where he claims that the Register is “using” me to clobber Democrats they don’t like. I guess nobody told him, the Register came out AGAINST the Recall, my piece was written as a rebuttal to them (and I had a heck of a time getting them to print it), and now that Dan has to kneejerk-contradict me, Dan’s piece ends up sounding a LOT like the original Register column! Now that’s funny.
Original anti-recall Register column: https://www.ocregister.com/2024/04/23/editorial-board-vote-no-on-the-unjustified-recall-of-anaheim-councilmember-natalie-rubalcava/
I’m not gonna get sucked into debunking everything Dan wrote, it’s too boring. It’s the improvisations and first thoughts of someone who doesn’t know anything about the city and issues he’s pontificating on, but just knows he wants to disagree. And nobody from Anaheim is gonna read it anyway.
Finally, does the idiot know he’s opposing Ada Briceno’s recall?
(And PS the link he tried to post, at the bottom, to some rightwing website he agrees with, doesn’t work.)
I thought that cretin was dead. Meth overdose and no lower teeth. Did I get it wrong?
Nah. This is the one with no soul to lose.
BTW, did he mention the recall was created by an employee union?
No. It’s likely he doesn’t know that.
Two other lil things. Dan typically spells Natalie’s last name wrong in his headline (and elsewhere.) He’ll say it’s just a “typo” like he always does, but it’s really just another sign that he doesn’t know Anaheim and its politicians.
And I woulda said “Rubalcava is the kind of Democrat the Register likes,” except that’s not really true, they’re usually good on Anaheim corruption issues. (In 2022 they endorsed her reformist opponent Al Jabbar, as we did.) They just were very unimpressed with the Unite Here people and their arguments.
Gustavo Arellano has finally written a piece about Natalie and her recall. It’s pretty entertaining. He makes Natalie seem likable, and makes Ada sound like a monster and the Unite-Here spokesmen sound really lame. (They claim the recall has very little to do with Measure A, which of course they say since that Measure failed so badly – and that it’s more about the little infractions the JL Group dinged her for – OMG, she was “less than forthcoming!”) At least Gustavo mentions her Dinseyland Forward vote “not making things any better,” and mentions our pro-recall protest which had nothing to do with Unite-Here. The easily starstruck Gustavo has known Natalie since highschool when she was a year ahead of him.
THE BIGGEST GAP IN GUSTAVO’S STORY OF NATALIE is the 28 years of her life between when he knew her as a feisty highschool girl and when she was suddenly a 46-year old wife and mother who decided on her own to run when she saw an unresponsive and uncaring Jose Moreno anoint Al Jabbar to take his place, and she hardly noticed Disney spending $380k on her election and has no idea why they did.
During this time Natalie was on the OC Business Council for – we don’t know exactly but it looks like at least 15 years, and rose to the very top as Chief Operating Officer. OCBC has fought, since the 1980’s, for the interests and further profits of OC’s BIGGEST BUSINESSES, especially DEVELOPERS. Anything that involves the upward transfer of wealth to the already-wealthy. In the last 15 years, Natalie’s OCBC fought for all the controversial tax subsidies to Anaheim luxury hotels, fought AGAINST Measure L making Disney pay a living wage, FOUGHT FOR BOTH THE ANGEL STADIUM GIVEAWAYS – both the $1 a year lease of 2013 and Sidhu’s sweetheart deal of 2020. And that’s just in Anaheim, OCBC does this throughout the County.
And we’ve heard from a reliable source that OCBC had gotten Natalie to run for Council with one of her main goals being to STOP THE JL REPORT. Which we all saw her do her best at. Lou Correa in his defenses of her calls her “HOMEGROWN,” as though where she was born has anything to do with whether she should be running the city. I’d say, with the amount of time she spent on OCBC, she is more “OCBC-GROWN.” Anyway, enjoy….
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-29/natalie-rubalcava-anaheim-councilmember-recall