Back in 2013, in a piece about elder-swindling Republican Assemblywoman Diane Harkey‘s successful race for a seat on the Board of Equalization, I wrote the following passage – a SEMINAL passage if I say so myself, which was celebrated by the OC Weekly:

“I have been assured that California’s Board of Equalization does SOMETHING or other, even though some of the smartest political observers of the state seem at a loss to understand, or explain, exactly what that something is.

“But, observing the line-up of termed-out, between-jobs politicians vying for our area’s seat on that Board next year – Diane Harkey, Mark Wyland, Lou Correa, Van Tran, Tom Harman – I think I’ve got it figured out:  It is a sort of cold-storage place where a career pol goes to rest and recharge – while remaining on the public teat – until the time comes for their next heroic exploits.  A lot like when Jabba the Hut froze Han Solo for a while:

“Behold, if you will, Michelle Steel – the lady who has spent the last eight years representing us on that Board – the maximum time allowed in the deep freeze. Now she sallies forth with renewed strength, unbridled confidence, and BULGING CAMPAIGN COFFERS, determined to become our Second District’s next Supervisor, while not even PRETENDING to live in that district, and utterly clueless and indifferent when briefed on the 405 Toll Lanes controversy…

“And behold 2013/14’s crop of career politicians vying to take Michelle’s place! Harman! Correa! Harkey! Wyland! Van Tran! Whom would Equalize the Best?”

So who won that year?

• OC’s Republican base (now shriveled) went with the elder-abusing Harkey,
• Steel went on to ten embarrassingly incompetent and corrupt years as a Supervisor and Congresswoman,
• and in 2018 newly ascendant Democrats united behind the cartoonishly sleazy Mike Schaefer for the Equalization seat, where he now sits until termed out at the end of this year.

Fast Forward to 2026!

In last June’s primary, for the first time in recent memory, there was someone running who actually deserved the 184k-a-year post – in the race against the usual crop of career politicians was a guy named Cody Petterson. Not only was Cody a progressive Democrat AND an old friend of the blog, he actually worked in the office and cared about making it work for the people, and we endorsed him happily. And after decades of public puzzlement and indifference to this office, Cody created this video to explain it to The People:

Naturally Cody lost in the primary, lost to the two best-funded career politicians in the race – Democrat Tom Umberg and Republican Denis Bilodeau. Rough choice, neither deserves the seat. But SPOILER ALERT I could not bring myself to vote once more for Umberg and I had to pull the lever (as they say) for Bilodeau. Let me explain why…

Thirty-Six Years of Umberg

That’s how long Tom has been in elected office in Orange County. Minus a few years when he lost a couple races (to Correa and Janet Nguyen.) But plus his time as an attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, a time that he used to love to remind OC voters of with this photo back in the Republican days, but not so much lately:

“Law and order,” half Dem half Republican – that was the ticket in 90’s OC. And his political origin story (if true) is a noble one – begun and inspired by prosecuting Curt Pringle‘s placing of phony cops at Santa Ana polling places to intimidate Latinos from voting. Although his wikipedia page, very gentlemanly, omits any mention of the culprit Pringle – don’t wanna offend anyone!

On most politicians’ wiki pages there’ll be a section of “controversies,” but SOME busy person keeps that off Tom’s page! Some of his controversies I don’t care about that much at this point, but the “carpetbagging” one really sticks in my craw.

“Representing” Santa Ana… from Villa Park!

Start with: “Carpetbagging” isn’t the right word; what we’re talking about is RESIDENCE FAKING. And it’s something that we’ve caught literally dozens of politicians of both Parties doing in Orange County for decades – staying in your own comfy upscale digs while renting out a cheap apartment in the area you want to “represent.” And it’s common knowledge that, for the 36 years Tom has been “representing” the people of Santa Ana & Anaheim, he’s been really living OUTSIDE THE DISTRICT in the upscale white enclave of Villa Park (while renting a small condo in SA.)

Does that sit well with you? With the power of money, Democrat institutional support, and name recognition, the Two Whitest Men in Orange County (Umberg and Tom Daly) have purported since the 1990s to “represent” the working-class Latinos of Central OC, who need the most progressive and in-touch representation. Daly finally handed things over to his trusted brown aide Avelino (thru whom the disease spreads, and worsens, with David Penaloza.) It is a Daly and Umberg Dynasty, self-perpetuating, and forever blocking progress. I’d vote no JUST TO VOTE NO ON THAT.

Senator Umberg’s years and years of seniority got him the chairmanship of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. And over the last eight years, Umberg’s Judiciary is where good, progressive bills, bills that will help people, go to die. As I wrote recently, it is

“like the biblical Valley of the Shadow of Death, littered with the bones of once-healthy bills that withered and perished in those inhospitable climes. Look over there! The carcass of a rent-control bill we’d been cheering on. Careful, don’t trip – that is the rib cage of a single-payer bill, and over there, the skull of a police accountability measure.”

**********************

Umberg probably doesn’t remember when he first met me – that woulda been over 20 years ago when some of us tried to get his support for a California single-payer health bill. THAT was a no-go, unsurprisingly.

But he does remember the second time. In early (pre-Covid) 2020 primary season I was knocking on doors for progressive school board candidate Andy Thorburn, and Tom along with a little gang of insider Dems was a block behind me knocking on folks’ doors trying to make sure they’d vote for Joe Biden instead of Bernie Sanders. He complimented me on the personalized notes I left on people’s doors. He was sporting a beard that winter, which made him look like Donald Sutherland’s dictator character in The Hunger Games.

Since then Tom has come to the Anaheim Democrats Club a couple of times and been friendly enough. Like any Democrat who’s been in power that long he’s done SOME good things. I know people who’ll vote for him just because of some of the AUDITS he’s launched, like the recent one of the OC Board of Education. He spearheaded this year’s Prop 4 (a baby step to public financing of elections, which would ironically wean us from politicians like Umberg and Daly sometime in the future.) And we support Prop 4, and hope it passes, and I went to the Prop 4 campaign launch at the Unitarian Church. And in part of his speech there he said, amazingly, “Candidates should have to debate each other.”

Amazingly, because less than an hour later, in the parking lot when I asked, he refused to debate his Republican opponent Bilodeau. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Equalization Shall be Umberg’s!

How do you like THIS tale of entitled arrogant political insiders getting their way?

SOME good Democrat had to run against sleazy Republican State Senator Tony Strickland in the coastal 36th district. And this fine gay Seal Beach progressive whom everyone loves, Rick Foster, got on that early, got all the endorsements, raised a LOT of funds (hundreds of thousands? I forget, I’ll fill this in) and was all raring to go. Meanwhile, former San Clemente Mayor Chris Duncan (an insider Dem who’s on the verge of being a “perennial candidate”) put his hat in the ring for Board of Equalization.

But then Senator Tom Umberg decided that HE wanted Board of Equalization! So, pulling all the strings an insider like him has access too, he got DUNCAN to switch to the Senate 36 race and forced out the worthy Rick Foster. Many of us are bitter about all that. Did I mention Duncan is pretty conservative, or “moderate?” And not too exciting, and racking up a string of defeats? Oh well, best of luck to him anyway, Strickland needs to go.

Well, who is PAYING for Tom’s BoE Race?

Oh you’ll love this. I mean, no, you won’t. It is troubling.

The major job of the Board of Equalization is to “assess” properties belonging to “state-regulated utilities, railroads and pipelines.” The BIGGEST of those utilities, over which Umberg hopes to have assessment powers, are Sempra Energy, PG&E, and Edison. .

And the biggest contributors to Umberg’s campaign are guess who? Sempra Energy, PG&E, and Edison. And Tom, who likes to pledge to “hold corporations responsible,” just accepted $6,500 from Sempra & $5,000 from PG&E.

But as every kindergartener knows, the REAL campaign money comes as “Independent Expenditures,” laundered through “PACs” (Political Action Committees.) The real dirty hard-to-trace money that all of us who care about transparency want to abolish but first we gotta get rid of Citizens United.

And the PAC that has spent the most on electing Umberg to BoE is named JobsPAC, and they spent $800 thousand so far on Tom’s race, and that was RIGHT AFTER receiving $1.1 MILLION EACH from Sempra Energy, PG&E, and Edison.

Wow, lucky Tom. That’s really more than he needs to run a campaign. No wonder he used his BoE campaign account to finance two recent trips to Europe – $708 on a hotel in Brussels in July, and $14,779 on airfare to Rome & a hotel there. Wait, that can’t be right – there’s no BoE business in Europe! No… no, it IS right.

And also, Bilodeau must be sued to change his ballot designation from “taxpayer advocate” to “councilman / civil engineer” – and former DPOC chief Fran Sdao could be counted on to do that suing, and Tom said he had nothing to do with it. But look, he paid $58,112 to foot the legal bill to Kaufman Legal Group, out of his campaign funds! Wait, that can’t be right… yes, yes it is!

Tom’s Argument Against Denis.

There must be a good argument, that Tom Umberg has, about why you should vote for him rather than Denis Bilodeau. And a British-sounding chap asked him that exact question at a North OC Chamber of Commerce event. And this was Tom’s answer: Vote for me because MY OPPONENT SUPPORTS TRUMP.

Nothing about policy, or what the two might do differently on the BoE. “He supports Trump.”

Tom doesn’t even know who Denis is, although Denis has been an Orange Councilman in the district Umberg represents, like forever. Bilodeau may be a Republican but he doesn’t support Trump on everything. Did I say Tom doesn’t know who Denis is? Literally. Denis introduced himself to Tom at the Street Fair this past September… and Tom didn’t know who he was.

How’s that for arrogant, entitled, and out of touch?

And Tom won’t debate, tho’ Denis will.

When Tom and Denis made it to the June primary I had this great idea for the Anaheim Democrats Club – I know both those guys, hardly anyone understands what the BoE does, so… I would have a debate/workshop/forum/whatever featuring the two candidates (something we couldn’t do if we still had a stoopid charter – invite a Republican) and I would also ask Cody Petterson to be the moderator. How would these two men, this Republican and this Democrat, approach the job differently, how would their priorities differ?

Well, Denis agreed right away, but Tom’s schedulers kept putting me off, and off… for months… till I finally tracked down Tom himself last month, at the Prop 4 launch. And like I said, it was there that he talked in his speech about how “candidates should have to debate each other.”

Then he marched off quickly like politicians do, with his “people” in tow, and I chased him to the parking lot. “Senator, can you do a debate or forum with your opponent at the Anaheim Democrats Club?” “Oh, I don’t think I have time for that, Vern, talk to my people.” “I have been talking to your people” – in fact that was the same folks rushing out with him. “Yeah, Vern talked to us, and I told him we don’t have time.”

This was the same week the two AUHSD incumbents refused to show up for the LULAC forum. I was pissed. I said to myself, “Fuck this shit, I’m voting for the other guy.”

A Denis Silver Lining for the City of Orange!

You have heard all this, vote for whoever you like. There’s a lot that’s not great about Denis, or Republicans in general either. Zenger will lay it all out. But I can’t vote for Umberg any more, for all the reasons listed above.

But here is a silver lining for the good people of the City of Orange: If Denis does make it to the Board of Equalization, he’ll have to leave his Council seat… and you guys can get a new, better Councilman! That is all.

Oh, except for this. I may as well get this out before anyone else: The rumor is that Tom wants to go into “cold storage” for only two years, and then run against Spitzer for DA. (Apparently that had been Ashleigh’s plan, but that ship has sailed for sure.) Hm, that is a whole other story. I MIGHT support Tom against Spitzer. He WOULD be a better DA that Spitzer.

But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Vern out.