DPOC Proposed Endorsements Come Out Before Monday Vote – Mostly Decent, with Some Puzzling Disappointments

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(If you’re a Central Committee member and just want to get to my own views, for some reason, just skip down until after all the list of names in Courier/monospace type.)

Clockwise from left: Rickk Montoya of Garden Grove, Diana Carey of Westminster, Kevin Carr of Stanton, Farrah Khan of Irvine, Dr. Rigo Rodriguez for Santa Ana School Board.

These proposed Democratic Party of Orange County endorsements come from the DPOC Endorsements Committee, which like every other DPOC Committee is composed of a completely hand-picked membership by Chair Henry Vandermeir, under his interpretation of the party rules.  (It’s one of the things about which we’ve clashed; tight control of members contacting members en masse, so that the emails don’t go to spam, is another.)  All Central Committee members (or their alternates, if they are absent) will be allowed to vote on them on Monday night; they’ll be on a “consent calendar,” but any member can pull off of that calendar endorsement or lack of endorsement, either to insert another name or eliminate an endorsement without a new endorsee.

Because these recommended endorsements come out only 72 hours before the meeting — or, in this case, a little under 69 hours (10:09 p.m. Friday night), at least to my inbox — it makes it extremely difficult for members to discuss them before the meeting.  All we have is the recommendations themselves and various emails from people announcing challenges to them.  I’m posting this list — which was not marked as confidential in any way (and I’d hope that the party won’t fall THAT far behind the OCGOP and try to squelch public knowledge of them) — to allow DPOC Central Committee members to discuss them, using their own names.

A little bit of kibitzing from people outside the Central Committee, also writing under their own names, is not going to bother me too much — especially if it comes from what I’ll call legitimate public figures.  Anonymous/pseudonymous  comments will be deleted — transparency works both ways.  Public figures from outside of the party — well, try your luck: regardless of whether I agree with the view expressed, I’ll allow such comments if they seem like something seriously of interest to DPOC members.  Very regular commenters from outside the party here — Cynthia, Ryan, and maybe a few others, may also crash this cocktail party to some degree, but if it undermines the purpose of this post then I will reluctantly have to cull the comments of even my friends.  (And of course Vern can override any decisions I make, ‘cuz it’s his blog.)

I’ll give my own views below the list of proposed endorsements.  Names in bold italic are challenges I’d expect to bring if no one else does.  Underlined names are those that to which challenges have already been announced, where I think that the Endorsement Committee got it right.

City Council Races:

Aliso Viejo City Council: Ross Chun
Anaheim City Council District 1: Leonard Lahtinen 
Anaheim City Council District 3: No Endorsement (No Recommendation)
Anaheim City Council District 4: Arturo Ferreras
Anaheim City Council District 5: No Endorsement (No Recommendation)
Costa Mesa City Council - John Stephens, Jay Humphrey
Fullerton: Jesus Silva, Jonathan Mansoori
Garden Grove City Council 2: Diedre Thu-Ha Nguyen
Garden Grove City Council 5: Demian Monroy-Garcia
Garden Grove City Council 6: Rickk Montoya
Huntington Beach City Council: Jill Hardy
Irvine Mayor: Mary Ann Gaido
Irvine City Council: Melissa Fox (will be challenged, not by me), Farrah Khan
Laguna Beach City Council: Verna Rollinger, Judie Mancuso
La Habra City Council: Rose Espinosa
Mission Viejo City Council: Shelly Blair
San Juan Capistrano Council District 1: Nathan Banda
Santa Ana City Council Ward 1: Vince Sarmiento
Santa Ana City Council Ward 3 (not 5, as publicized): Jose Solorio
Stanton City Council: Kevin Carr
Tustin City Council: Letitia Clark
Westminster City Council: Sergio Contreras, Diana Carey

School Board Races: 

Anaheim City Elementary School District 1: Billie Joe Wright
Anaheim City Elementary School District 3: Jose Magcalas*
Coast Community College District 2: Jerry Patterson
Coast Community College District 3: Lorraine Prinsky
Fullerton Elementary School District 5: Jeanette Vazquez
Fullerton Joint Union High School Trustee Area 2: Joanne Fawley
Garden Grove Unified School District 1: Teri Rocco
Irvine Unified School District: Paul Bokota, Naz Hamid
Los Alamitos Unified School District: Karen Russell
North Orange County Community College District 2: Ed Lopez
Rancho Santiago Community College District 1: Zeke Hernandez
Santa Ana Unified School District: Mark McLoughlin, Rigo Rodriguez, Alfonso Alvarez
Westminster Elementary School District: Jamison Power
Westminster Elementary School District: Karl Truong 

Here are my views as someone who has been watching most of the controversial races pretty closely.  (See the “Notice of potential interest near the bottom of this post.)

First, bolding those where I’ve been following the race and am happy to see the endorsement, there hasn’t been any public challenge that I’ve seen to Chun, Ferreras, Stephens, Humphrey, Silva, Mansoori, Nguyen, Monroy-Garcia, Hardy, Rollinger, Mancuso, Espinosa, Blair, Banda, Sarmiento, Carr, Clark, Contreras, Carey!!, Wright, Patterson, Prinsky, Vasquez, Fawley, Rocco, Bokota, Hamid, Russell, McLoughlin, Rodriguez, Alvarez, Power, and Truong.  (No offense to those not singled out with boldface; it almost always just means that I don’t know enough about the candidate or their competition, or sometimes the race generally.)  Note that Jose Magcalas is excluded from this list because — no one ran against him and his name won’t be on the ballot!  (Congratulations also to Walter Muneton!)

Let’s deal first with the races where I think that the Endorsement Committee got it right.

Rickk Montoya, Garden Grove School Board 6:  Montoya, an incoming DPOC Central Committee member, has been a driving force for reform in Garden Grove for years now, including as lead Plaintiff in the lawsuit imposing districting.  He’s well-versed in the City’s issues, has good values, and is easily capable of the job.  He’ll also be the first Latino on the Garden Grove City Council since, if I recall correctly, the Jurassic Era or longer.

Montoya’s opponent, Kim Nguyen, is a recent Lou Correa intern or staffer or something of Vietnamese and Latino descent — good for her, or rather for her parents, but it’s not exactly a qualification — whose claim to fame is that with an undetermined presumed amount of help and advice from Correa counselor Claudio Gallegos submitted the districting map that was eventually accepted by the City.  Map, small good; Correa Youth, medium non-good.

Farrah Khan, Irvine City Council:  This is an agonizing race for Democrats because there are four good and potentially viable Democratic women running for two seats.  Incumbent Christine Shea has to be considered likely to win one of those seats — though by no means prohibitively, especially given the Choi/Lalloway Republican Party fracture in Irvine — while another non-Democrat could easily finish second given a split Democratic vote.

I would have bet money last year that the Democratic front-runners in fundraising would be Melissa Fox and Anila Ali, while I would end up endorsing Farrah Khan and Shiva Faravar — not because the former pair weren’t good but because the second pair is very good.  And my guess was that the big fundraisers would get endorsed.

Fox, a city Commissioner, ran for Assembly against Don Wagner in 2010 and narrowly lost to Jeff Lalloway for City Council in 2014.  She has been a strong ally of Beth Krom’s in Irvine, but has had a tendency to “play it safe” — which multiple sources tell me has meant distancing herself from the achievements (most of which I still think deserve that name) of Larry Agran.  (She has Krom’s endorsement despite that, which shows that she’s really good at intra-party politics.)  Fox was a good friend and protege of Gus Ayer — but since his death has been moving more into the “Business Democrat” circle that in its worst cases can turn someone into a Jordan Brandman or a Jose Solorio.  I would like to think that she’d resist that in City Council  — but it’s worrisome.

Ali was the candidate anointed by Chair Vandermeir as the Democratic choice in AD-74, but Karina Onofre entered the race and split the Democratic vote, allowing Matt Harper’s remarkable rise to the Assembly over then-favored Keith Curry.  (Onofre has still never been forgiven by some people.)  Ali’s prowess was as a big fundraiser for Democrats, so she seemed likely to do well financially.

Well: one big fundraiser did emerge from the quarter — and it was grassroots interfaith and social services activist, and City Commissioner, Farrah Khan, who as of the last report has raised more money than the other three combined.  People outside of the DPOC’s world seem to just love her for her sunny and modest personality and for her good works and are willing to come out for her.  Well, I’m shocked — but it makes for an endorsable candidate!

Faravar is a former Council candidate and a current Commissioner and she has the endorsement of high-tailing incumbent Beth Krom.  At last report, she had raised as much as Fox — about half as much as Khan.  Ali, despite her good resume, had raised … $600.  I don’t know whether she didn’t know that 2Q fundraising total would be important or she knew and couldn’t raise money for herself — but she had announced (and been considered a favorite in what she very well knew would be a competitive de facto primary race) a long time ago.  Neither explanation serves her well.  I’d support her against medium competition; not against strong competition.

I prefer Faravar to Fox — although probably not to the Fox of 2010 — but I prefer Khan to both of them by a wider margin.  The Democrats need to endorse at least one candidate in the race, and I hope it will be the non-divisive — in fact, anti-divisive — Khan.  For my second vote, my head says that Fox is probably (but only probably) more electable and my heart says to vote for Khan.  I may not cast a second vote at all and just watch the Fox and Faravar (and Ali, to the extent they’re there) forces fight it out for what I hope — but at this point don’t really expect — will be a second endorsement.

Ed Lopez, North OC Community College District 2:  Ed Lopez, like Doug Applegate in CA-49 and Ari Grayson in SD-37, is one of those people whom political parties wish would show up out of nowhere to be a candidate for office, but who seldom do.  My suspicion is that he probably didn’t have the endorsement in the bag when the Endorsement Committee formed, but won them over in interviews — while his opponent Art Montez is likely to have had a different effect.  He’s more moderate than I am, but he is sharp as a tack, cordial and polite, and always “one of the adults in the room.”  He teaches as Irvine Valley College — along with Wendy Gabriella, another one of the candidates in the above category — and like her can spit out graduate-school level facts and policy arguments about higher education at a moment’s notice.  Lopez is a former policy aide (including to former Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and now a non-practicing attorney.  While practicing, he worked on policy in a responsible position within the Social Security Administration during Bill Clinton’s Presidency.  He’s pro-labor, but anti-corruption and waste.  He has the support of the incumbent, Leonard Lahtinen, who is quite familiar with his opponent.

Art Montez is bidding for the DPOC endorsement himself.  The pitch written for him includes name dropping the late, great Amin David — his uncle, who he says told him to run before he died; Centralia School District Board President Connor Traut; LULAC and MALDEF; his status as a veteran; and a slew of endorsements procured on his behalf.  (I like some of his endorsers, who clearly were pressured by the local bosses; others like Solorio, Daly, and Correa need no prodding to pick the weaker but more compliant candidate.  Just in the past year, Montez has: (1) leveraged his Latino activist cred on behalf of the Poseidon Corporation’s proposed desalination ripoff of county ratepayers (with what sort of reward, one wonders); and (2) almost derailed Anaheim’s redistricting at the last moment by conjuring up a fantasy of a lawsuit by LULAC and MALDEF — both of whom backed away from the threat at full speed — if the map sponsored by his partner Zeke Hernandez’s was not approved.  That’s not a record of distinction.

The NOCCCD Board is one of the few Democratic-dominated Boards in the county, so when Montez says  “It is time for the NOCCCD Board to act on bringing a Project Labor Agreement to their District’s bond projects,” I have to wonder why he’s calling out Leonard Lahtinen, Donna Miller, Molly McClanahan, Mike Matsuda, and current and former Board members over supposed failure to support unions.  Could it be because Measure L passed by a millionth of a percent 0r so in a still-conservative area of the county? Promote PLAs is a good idea, but not  such a popular one up here); this would have put a target on a bond measure’s back, keeping it from even coming close to passing.  And why, just after a huge Bond measure passes by the skin of its teeth, prattle on NOW about how one will proceed with the next bond.  (That’s easy: it’s a way of trying to impress an audience of Democratic Party regulars who don’t know the details of what has been going on in NOCCCD.)

Now on to races where I think that the Endorsement Committee made the wrong call.

DPOC should NOT endorse in Anaheim City Council District 1:

The leading Democratic candidate here is NOCCCD’s Leonard Lahtinen.  Three other Democrats are running: folksy political activist Mark Daniels, who does have a ballot statement, and a pair of eloquent young men who don’t: Freddy Fitzgerald Carvajal and Angel Van Stark.  The leading Republican candidates are moderate Tait ally (and at least part Latina, as I understand it) Denise Barnes; SOAR candidate and former abuse Santa Ana cop Steve “Chavez” Lodge; a third candidate, Orlando Lopez, doesn’t have a ballot statement.  Of these, Lodge is the only candidate who would be a disaster on the City Council — a larger, meaner, and armed Kris Murray.

Daniels and Carvajal are friends of mine (and of each other), and were I voting in the race I might support either.  But the obvious choice here would seem to be Lahtinen — except for one thing:  he is, somewhat amazingly to me, apparently a supporter of the whole package of subsidies.  ARTIC (in effect largely a Disney subsidy), the Convention Center (ditto), the hotel subsidies, banning a gate tax, the Stadium deals, the Streetcar — he’s apparently fine with the whole thing.  He’s supposed to be a smart guy and I really don’t understand it.  But I don’t want the DPOC to be on the wrong side of these issues — and thus to be understood to have slapped the face of Anaheim’s poorer communities in years to come when the bills come due (and can’t be paid).  Seriously, two decades from now people will still remember that Republican Tom Tait stood against these subsidies and will have forgotten about Lucille Kring and Kris Murray; while people will still remember Jordan Brandman and, I’m afraid, Lahtinen if he wins.  I think that Democrats should have the right to endorse a candidate who takes these positions.

Perhaps Lahtinen will clarify his positions later.  It’s interesting to note that District 1 — where both Lodge and Lahtinen seem to be toeing the Disney/Pringle line — is the only one in which Disney catspaw SOAR’s PAC has not endorsed.  They know that Lodge is completely bought and paid for — but also that he’s very vulnerable.  (Well get to that in the weeks to come!)  They may be waiting to see if Lahtinen is endorsed, and becomes the better bet on whom to place their money.  Better Lahtinen than Lodge, but — if this is his agenda, I just can’t support it.

Dr. Jose Moreno should be endorsed in Anaheim City Council District 3:  I’m not saying this simply because

• Moreno has been one of the rising stars of the DPOC (who could easily have become Vice-Chair last meeting were he not so busy with campaigning) and a leading Latino Civil Rights activist in this, Anaheim’s most Latino district
• His opponent Jordan Brandman was recently censured by the DPOC for trying to prevent this very election from taking place this year, as well as by pushing to get a map approved that would have reached out and snatched Dr. Moreno’s home and put it into a very non-Latino district that he likely couldn’t win rather than being with his constituents

This is not a choice between two Democrats.  Moreno and Brandman are running against a serious and popular Republican, Robert Nelson, and with Democrats split the GOP can smell the chance to steal a Democratic seat here.  (Nelson received the Anaheim Republican Assembly endorsement yesterday.)  Jordan Brandman is not going to win; Latinos outside of Democratic establishment politics can’t stand him and Republicans don’t have to settle for him when they can vote for Nelson.  SOAR-sponsored canvassers are getting doors slammed in their faces.  If Brandman gets the endorsement, Democrats lose this seat: Latinos will still support Moreno and the party will just build more enmity with the Latino community.  More importantly, if Moreno doesn’t get the endorsement, meaning inclusion on DPOC mailers, it will be harder for him to withstand the onslaught of attack ads put out by SOAR and its fellow promoters of very unpopular subsidies.  Seriously, DPOC folks, you’re probably reading this here first: we can absolutely lose this district if Dr. Moreno isn’t endorsed.  Nelson (no relation to Vern or to Shawn) is affable, a good speaker, and on the right and more popular side of the subsidies issue.  If DPOC doesn’t stand with Anaheim’s Latinos, and we lose the seat as a result, the repercussions will be long-lasting.  (The other biggest loser would be the unions; I’m told that Nelson is far more anti-union than Tom Tait — who has endorsed Moreno.)

Donna Acevedo-Nelson should be endorsed in Anaheim City Council District 5:   I’m not saying this simply because

• She’s OJB’s Publisher’s Vern Nelson’s wife
• She’s been a strong (but lawful) advocate against police misconduct and the crazy giveaways

I’m saying it because District 5 is the flip side of District 3, and Democrats can “steal” what would otherwise likely be a Republican seat.  All three Republican candidates — SOAR-endorsed subsidy proponent Steve Faessel; Shawn Nelson’s aide and subsidy opponent Mark Lopez; and Trumpian budget hawk Sandra Angel — have the ability to attract a lot of votes.  (I hadn’t thought that that was true of Angel before the last week, but she has a passionate appeal that will contrast enough with Faessel and Lopez to allow her to carve out a niche.  So Republican votes will be diluted.  If Donna Acevedo-Nelson is the endorsed Democratic candidate, she could win this race with a reasonably achievable 35-40% of the vote, even without a substantial budget.  We’d then have a Latina Democratic representative on the City Council who — as the mother of a son killed by police under suspicious circumstances, including allegations of a planted “drop gun” — would be able to push for reform in the department.  She’s strong on these issues, but also moderate in her methods, calling for residents to “Film The Police” (rather than the other, more aggressive, “FTP”) when they see conflicts arise; she has been generally supportive of actual reform elements within the Anaheim Police Department.  She has been a continual presence at City Council meetings since the death of her son four years ago.  She’s an opponent of the crazy subsidies, and has both supported Tom Tait and been critical of him in some areas.  (She’s more within the OC Weekly’s orbit than OJB’s.)  I presume that the Endorsement Committee simply doesn’t see that this is a chance to recoup what might be a loss in District 3, rather than actively disdaining Latino voters in the eastern Anaheim flatlands.  Why throw away a good shot?

DPOC should not necessarily endorse Melissa Fox in the Irvine City Council race:  I’ve addressed this above in the section approving of the recommendation of Farrah Khan.  I think Khan should definitely be supported, with either Fox or Shiva Faravar getting the other endorsement, but while I’d lean towards Faravar I don’t feel that strongly between them.  (Note: from the comment below, Running Dog Vern disagrees!  That’s what makes us a mosh pit, I guess.)

DPOC should NOT endorse Jose Solorio in Santa Ana City Council Ward 3 but SHOULD choose someone else, perhaps David DeLeon or Patrick Yrarrazaval-Correa:

Candidate statements, some of which I presume were probably submitted, are not available on Santa Ana’s Elections website, so it’s hard to choose who should get endorsed — but the endorsement should not go to Jose Solorio.  DPOC does not tell us who else applied for the endorsement besides Solorio, so I don’t know who to suggest endorsing here — but I expect that I will by the time they speak at the meeting.  I know David DeLeon from Facebook and “Mr. Patrick” Yrarrazaval-Correa by reputation; both seem good.  I don’t think that I know anything about the other candidates, other than their names and what I just learned from looking up Shane Barrows online.   Barrows was a Council four years ago, and as a police officer (in Irvine) and budget hawk my guess is that he’d pull a bunch of Republican votes.  (He’s Latino, by the way, although anti-Latino voters might be attracted to his name.  That’s not his fault.)  The other three candidates in the race are Ana Urzua Alcaraz (the sole woman running), Juve Dan Pinedo, and Joshua Mauras.

Why not Solorio?  There’s a long list of grievances, but let’s leave most of them for another time.  The significant problem is that he sullies the Democratic brand.  He’s entirely self-serving — using his connections to grab so much money for his disastrous State Senate race against Janet Nguyen that he almost led to Tony Mendoza losing his campaign in an adjacent district — untrustworthy, and a dedicated enemy of political reform.  Let’s just look at what has led up to his run in this very campaign to see what he’s done and get a sense of his nature:

1. He abandoned his position as a Trustee for the Rancho Santiago Community College District after its Board has gone through repeated black eyes for, among other things, profligate and self-interested spending.
2. He claimed that he was leaving the district so that he could move and run for Santa Ana City Council — but he didn’t have to move to do so!  What he wanted to avoid was a fight against Vince Sarmiento — who would be a formidable opponent — in Ward 1, choosing instead to go after weaker opposition in Ward 3.  (Incumbent Angelica Amezcua ended up not running for reelection.)
3. In his ballot designation, he nevertheless listed himself as a Trustee of the RSCCD!  (Perhaps he forgot about having resigned.)
4. Santa Ana’s City Clerk bravely tossed out that obviously improper designation, but left the designation “Businessman.”
5. Wait, isn’t Solorio a lobbyist for the “public affairs” law firm Nossaman?  Does that make him a “Businessman”?  From Nick Gerda’s excellent Voice of OC story, from which I’m quoting liberally in the hope that people who may not see it on that site will see it here:

[City Clerk] Huizar’s determination came after a complaint from Patrick Yrarrazaval-Correa, an opposing candidate in the Ward 3 race.

“The more I thought about it…I just felt like I had to take a moral stand and say that you can’t say that you are something that you are not,” said Yrarrazaval-Correa.

His complaint centered not only on the trustee part of the designation but also the “Businessman” part.

In his candidacy paperwork, Solorio, who works full-time as a lobbyist and policy advisor, justified the “businessman” designation because he is a “business owner of Solorio Public Affairs and Marketing.”

But in his financial disclosure, he reported making between $0 and $499 over the past year from his public affairs firm, and between $10,000 and $100,000 from his policy advising and lobbying job at Nossaman LLP. The law requires that the “principal professions, vocations, or occupations of the candidate” be used.

“It is widely known that Mr. Solorio is employed as a lobbyist for a law firm. That is his occupation, and anything else appears to me to dishonest,” Yrarrazaval-Correa wrote in his complaint.

Solorio stands by his “businessman” designation, saying his financial disclosure “is clear that I am a businessman by virtue of me owning Solorio Public Affairs and Marketing and being a senior policy advisor at Nossaman.”

“But at this point what really matters about my ballot designation is that my name will appear first on the ballot, and the name Jose Solorio is very well known around town.”

Oh.  He’s “first on the ballot,” so the rest doesn’t matter.  Got it.

Look, if you’re on the DPOC Central Committee and the above does not make you absolutely cringe, you may want to rethink your role in politics.  The patent disregard for trustworthiness and honor is what turns off voters from participating in politics at all — good election turnout this year will become despite the likes of this, not because of it.  Business means something — it means that one runs an actual business — and one’s using words that aren’t designed to deceive means something too.  But Solorio can’t help himself.  He’s a lobbyist — one with so much contempt for the voters that he thinks he can get away without acknowledging it.  And in OC Democratic politics, he’s been able to — which is part of what must change for Democrats to compete at the local level.

Solorio is running for City Council because he wants to be put into a position where he can run for Santa Ana Mayor to replace termed-out Miguel Pulido — most likely against Vince Sarmiento — which would be terrible for Santa Ana and for the Democratic Party.  Mayor of Santa Ana is an important symbolic position for the Democratic Party here.  The DPOC should not make it easier for our symbol to become someone of breezy contempt for the public while figuring out how gorge himself at the public trough.  Hopefully at least 41% of the voters on Monday night agree.  Solorio’s opponents are Matthew Schauer and Frank Alaniz, Jr.; presuming that Scahuer, backed by the faculty union, did seek the DPOC endorsement, I’m currently inclined towards him.  (And I’d certainly listen to Alaniz as well.)

Do NOT endorse Zeke Hernandez in Rancho Santiago Community College District 1:

I like Zeke Hernandez, with whom I worked for a time while assisting the Orange County Veterans Memorial Park Committee.  The only thing that I’ve really disliked about Zeke for a long time is his close ties to Jose Solorio — whose seat he wants to take.  (Over the past year and a half I also came to dislike his role in the Anaheim Districting process, which he and his political partner Art Montez tried to hijack at the last minute when he made bogus threats that MALDEF would sue if his map was not chosen.  This was part of the process that led to the DPOC’s condemnation of Jordan Brandman’s actions.  But all that aside, I still do like him — but definitely not for this seat.  The Rancho Santiago Board has had a terrible year, from Board Members engaging in luxury travel on the taxpayer’s dime to massive and expensive failures in oversight to a controversial consulting deal with beheading-happy Saudi Arabia — and more.  It needs a top-to-bottom deep cleaning — getting rid of Pulido crony Claudia Alvarez (opposed by Housing Commissioner Ceci Aguinaga) and Kris Murray’s PR professional Arianna Barrios would be a good start.  Zeke Hernandez, with his ties to Solorio and much of the rest of the current Board,  is simply not the guy to clean house.

[Notice of potential interest: either or both my daughter and her business partner are Treasurers — a compliance position, not a political one — for a large number of Democrats in the county.  I don’t keep good track of who they represent.  Whether someone does or doesn’t use their services doesn’t affect my endorsements or treatment of them.  However, because Democrats who hate me with the burning intensity of a thousand suns may be less likely to use them than those who don’t, there may well be a correlation between their clients and people whom I like.  Except in those rare cases when I tell candidate whom I already respect “hey, if you need a Treasurer, my daughter is one” — and I don’t think that I see more than one such name on this list, and I just don’t care whether they use their firm’s services or not — there is no little correlation and no causation between their work and my support and no consideration of takes place.  My daughter will not discuss what is going on in individual campaigns with me unless a legal or ethical issue arises — where I am speaking with her under the cloak of attorney consultation — and that’s the way we both want it.

Some people, such as the owner and anonymous commenters at The Liberal OC, have tried to slam my daughter as a way of causing me grief; this pissed me off AS A DEMOCRAT, aside from my feelings as a father, because having competent professional Treasurers willing to work for below-market rates for local Democratic candidates is a godsend for especially inexperienced candidates, and my encouraging her to take up that line of work ought to be the single thing that all good Democrats — whether my political friends or foes — ought to appreciate, because her list of satisfied customers is substantial and growing.  Some would apparently see good candidates deprived of those good services if it would besmirch me or cause me grief.  Please send your thoughts about false claims that I dole out favors to my daughter’s firm’s clients directly to Mr. Chmielewski, perhaps along with an invitation for him to “go and love himself.”

The DPOC Endorsement meeting, where candidates traditionally receive a brief opportunity to speak but which — as I learned two years ago while trying to video Miguel Pulido’s speech — apparently are not to be recorded, is at 7:00 p.m. tomorrow in the Plumbers and Pipefitters Hall at Chapman and Marks in Orange.  I don’t know whether the public is welcome and I’m no longer in a good position to ask.