Police Union Candidates Fail in Santa Ana & Anaheim.

Andrew Sarega, Jeffrey Katz, Mario Alvarado

Merry Christmas! I’d been meaning to write this since last month’s election, but [excuse excuse excuse] here we go.

Police Unions (which mostly, due to largely Republican membership that likes to think it’s hostile to unions and doesn’t need ’em, call themselves “Associations” but come on, they’re unions) have always been thought of as undefeatable juggernauts in politics, always getting their tough-on-crime, less-accountability candidates elected and defeating candidates who call for accountability and fiscal discipline.

Except, looking at this last election, in OC’s two biggest cities (with the most experience of police misconduct) maybe NOT SO MUCH anymore. Sure, when the police unions add their loot to a big bundle of other special interests to elect a candidate they ALL like (see Valerie Amezcua, Norma Kurtz, Ryan Balius) they CRUSH. But in the three cases when they struck out on their own, with a candidate anointed ONLY by the police, they STRUCK OUT. And at quite a cost!

Sarega in Anaheim

What was the APA (Anaheim Police “Association”) THINKING when they went all in – I mean ALL in – for this unstable and laughable La Mirada carpetbagger? Just because a long time ago Andrew was a cop, in Newport, until he hurt his hand? All the APA’s usual allies – Disney, developers, etc. – looked askance, and quickly went out and recruited Kristen Maahs instead. (Who I think will be a decent councilwoman despite the Disney backing.)

Andrew’s whole campaign was about being a (“retired”) cop, and bringing law and order to unruly Anaheim. Only by electing a former cop, his mailers would have you believe, could we improve police response time. I’m not sure what Andrew could have done on Council in that regard that the rest of the Council, all of them highly solicitous of police desires, couldn’t. But I would suggest that if Anaheim cops weren’t spending all their time arresting homeless people, ticketing them, putting them in jail for a day after which they’re immediately back on the streets, maybe their response time to more serious matters would improve accordingly.

Andrew’s propagandists (bacisally the inept GOP outifits The Lincoln Club and ATLAS PAC) spent a lot of time hammering Kristen over two long-ago DUI’s, but still folks preferred her to Andrew by 11 points, nearly 2000 votes. (It was actually a good year for candidates with DUI’s, wasn’t it, Dave Min?) Still, according to the Lincoln Club and ATLAS PAC, the only way to stop DUI’s from happening in Anaheim was to elect “retired” cop Andrew, and when one lady was tragically killed by a drunk driver in the middle of the campaign, they quickly rushed to make hay of that, offending the family.

The figure Anaheim police union sunk into this campaign is jaw-dropping: $311k. That’s nearly enough to WIN in Anaheim, but doesn’t ever come from JUST ONE UNION. The APA under President Jose Duran spent THAT much of their hardworking members’ dues, including $49k to ATLAS PAC, $21 to the Lincoln Club, and $19k on polling. Jose bet the bank on Andrew! WILL JOSE KEEP HIS JOB after this foolish spree?

And will Andrew have second thoughts now about his grand design to take on Ashleigh for Mayor in ’26? Perhaps not, hubris seems to be his middle name. (Another little chisme – it’s said that Jeff Flint was involved in Andrew’s failed campaign, from far-off Tennessee. Jeff Flint, who a few short years ago was the Boss of Anaheim, until so many embarrassing revelations in the 2022 FBI reports drove him far away. Was this Jeff’s way of sticking it to an ungrateful Anaheim establishment? Fail there too if so.)

Santa Ana: Katz & Alvarado

The backstory in the Golden City is the 4-3 Progressive Majority they’ve had since 2020 – a majority hated by both the Santa Ana Police Union (for their creation of a strong oversight commission and their refusal to pass unaffordable wage hikes) and the developers and landlords (for their championing of Santa Ana’s historic rent control.) I’ve always thought – not to dismiss the great people’s movement that installed this majority – that one thing that made it possible was that the developers and POA supported DIFFERENT candidates in 2020. Well, they sorta did that again.

To get rid of this hated Progressive Majority this past election, ONE of the following would have had to be defeated: Thai Viet Phan (left), Johnathan Hernandez, or Jessie Lopez. Apparently, the developers & landlords took on the task of defeating Thai, while the POA took on the other two. After all, Thai is somewhat a moderate swing vote on police issues, so the landholders put up a Viet-American beauty salon owner against Thai, a beauty salon owner who faceplanted, in the same election that SA voters triumphantly enshrined their cherished rent control permanently in the City Charter with Measure CC. So Thai stays, and so does rent control.

Meanwhile the police union ran Jeffrey Katz against Jessie, and Mario Alvarado against Johnathan. The SAPOA is no longer run by the mad Gerry “Burn the City Down” Serrano, who was driven off in the middle of his failed recall of Jessie Lopez last year, on which he blew over 600k of his members’ money, and which Jessie beat despite being outspent 8 to 1. Now there’s a new guy, John Kachirisky, who’s less destructive and obsessed with politics, but still he would have liked to beat Jessie and/or Johnathan and given the POA-beloved Mayor Valerie a majority. (And the POA’s political consultant is now former OJ Blogger Claudio Gallegos – how far the mighty have fallen!)

At least Katz came close to beating Jessie, with his side outspending hers 3-to-1. A hardcore law-and-order neighborhood activist (and Zionist whom we last covered arguing passionately against Santa Ana’s Gaza ceasefire resolution), Katz was briefly ahead of her the week of Election Day. But the Comeback Kid again came back. Once again hugely outspent, and yet victorious. That’s called being popular in your district!

The race between progressive police critic Johnathan Hernandez and his POA-backed challenger Mario Alvarado wasn’t even close, Hernandez ahead by 12 points. And Johnathan was outspent by even more than Jessie, with the police union sinking at least $146k on Mario.

Mario is the son of DPOC / Labor Fed chieftain Gloria Alvarado, and here is her son running against Johnathan, a DPOC-endorsed candidate. Hey, isn’t this the same Gloria who led the charge to take away the Anaheim Democrats Club’s charter, mainly because we have sometimes unofficially supported Democrats not endorsed by the DPOC? (Like Derek Tran?) Or opposed bad Democrats pushed on us by the DPOC? (Like Jordan Brandman?) I guess the rules are just for the LITTLE people to follow.

But Johnathan won, Jessie won, and Thai won, rent control won, the Progressive Majority remains. And all in spite of all the mud SAPOA-funded kleptoscribe Matt Cunningham could fling at them from his “OC Independent. Yes, Matt Cunningham, Claudio Gallegos, Gloria Alvarado, all clustered around Mayor Valerie Amezcua for the further profit of Santa Ana’s police union, landlords and developers. If you’d shown me that last sentence ten years ago I would have tried to have you drug-tested. This Addams Family even spawned, this year, a MAGA school board member (Brenda Lebsack) who’s been going around falsely complaining that there’s pornographic material in Santa Ana bookmobiles, and called a suicide hotline pretending to be suicidal just to see what would happen.

But we are far afield, so let’s just summarize: Big Police Unions failed last month, in Anaheim and Santa Ana, THRICE. Again, Merry Christmas!

About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.