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Category Archives: 2012 Elections

O.C. Redistricting Committee will meet on Thursday, March 10

Posted on by Posted in 2012 Elections, Elections, Entertainment, Orange County, Politics, Santa Ana Leave a comment

PUBLIC NOTICE OF COUNTY OF ORANGE REDISTRICTING COMMITTEE MEETINGS

THE NEXT MEETING OF THE REDISTRICTING COMMITTEE WILL BE THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2011 AT 2 P.M. IN BOARD OF SUPERVISORS HEARING ROOM

The County of Orange Board of Supervisors is required to adjust the boundaries of Supervisorial Districts following the decennial federal census, using that census as a basis, pursuant to California Elections Code Section 21500. The County has established a Redistricting Committee to consider public input on proposed changes to the boundaries of Supervisorial Districts and to make recommendations to the Board of Supervisors.

The Redistricting Committee has set meetings at 2 p.m. in the Board of Supervisors Hearing Room, 333 W. Santa Ana Blvd., 10 Civic Center Plaza, Santa Ana, on the second Thursday of each month through July 14, 2011, if necessary. Additional meetings through June or, if necessary, July, 2011, will be established by the Redistricting Committee. The next public meeting of the Redistricting Committee will be Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 2 p.m. in the Board of Supervisors Hearing Room.

If you would like further information on the Redistricting Committee, please contact the Clerk of the Board of Supervisors, attn: Jamie Ross, 333 W. Santa Ana Blvd., 10 Civic Center Plaza, Room 465, Santa Ana, CA 92701, 714-834-2206, or email jamie.ross@ocgov.com.

Meeting agendas are available at the website for the Redistricting Committee: http://egov.ocgov.com/ocgov/Government/Redistricting.

###

Howard Sutter
County of Orange
CEO Community/Media Relations
(714) 834-6203

Santa Ana’s progressive City Council majority may not be in charge for long

Posted on by Posted in 2012 Elections, Carlos Bustamante, Civic Affairs, Claudia Alvarez, David Benavides, Elections, Michele Martinez, Miguel Pulido, Politics, Sal Tinajero, Santa Ana, Vince Sarmiento 21 Comments

A few folks in Santa Ana have been mighty perplexed about the current City Council majority.  I would definitely include failed Santa Ana Mayoral candidate Alfredo Amezcua in that number, along with former Mayoral candidate Thomas Gordon, and many former Santa Ana City Commissioners – who were give the boot by the current City Council majority.

You need four votes on the City Council in order to get anything done.  Currently the majority on the City Council is made up of Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Alvarez, along with Council Members Michele Martinez, Vincent Sarmiento and Sal Tinajero.  Mayor Miguel Pulido primarily goes along with the majority, although at times they differ.  Council Members David Benavides and Carlos Bustamante are sitting at the little kids’ table – utterly bereft of power and influence at City Hall.

But that could change in 2012.  Alvarez will be terming out.  I am not sure what she intends to do at that point.  She could run for Mayor, or for the SAUSD School Board.  Or she could walk away and concentrate on her job as a O.C. Deputy District Attorney.

Current SAUSD Trustee Romany Reyna is an ally of Benavides.  Reyna previously ran for the Council seat held by Alvarez and now all he has to do is wait for her to term out and run again.

I have however heard that Reyna is having second thoughts, as well he should.  If he runs for the Council in 2012, he will vacate his School Board seat.  If he loses his Council race he will be done in local politics.  I don’t know that he is willing to take that chance.  It depends on who ends up running against him for Alvarez’ seat on the City Council.

If Reyna does run for the Council, and he wins, and Bustamante is re-elected, they will surely team up with Benavides and likely with Mayor Pulido – and the new City Council majority will be quite different from the current majority.

Both Reyna and Benavides are religious conservatives.  Bustamante is a Republican.  Pulido is more moderate than that bunch, but he has been pulled to the left by the current Council majority.  There is no telling what this new right-leaning majority might do, once empowered.

Pulido will also face a few challengers in 2012, including the aforementioned Amezcua.  Past Republican Assembly candidate Otto Bade also told me recently that he intends to run for Mayor in 2012.  Bade lost his concession this year at the Santa Ana Zoo, where his La Perla restaurant will be replaced by a Knowlwood’s restaurant.

I think Amezcua and Bade would ally with the new, conservative faction if either one of them were to prevail against Pulido.

I also think that failed Mayoral candidate Charles Hart intends to run again in 2012.  Hart was recently appointed to the Republican Party of Orange County’s Central Committee, representing the  69th Assembly Caucus.  If he were to somehow win in 2012, perhaps as a result of a Latino vote split, I think he too would end up allying with the new, conservative faction.

To make matters worse for Alvarez and company, Councilman Sarmiento is likely to be running for Assemblyman Jose Solorio’s seat in the 69th Assembly District.  Sarmiento will be tough to beat.  As such, he will be vacating his City Council seat – and the Council majority will have to find someone to fill that spot.  That will happen after the November election, so if the new faction takes over, guess who will be appointing Sarmiento’s replacement?

And that’s not all.  I fully expect at least one or more of the other Council Members to run against O.C. Supervisor Janet Nguyen.  Either Sal Tinajero or Michele Martinez would have good odds of beating Nguyen, unless she redistricts her seat and adds more Vietnamese voters to it, while weakening the Latino vote, which she just might do.

So where does all this leave the people of Santa Ana?  It leaves us two years for our Council majority to get the job done, before they dissolve and/or get replaced.  That is a small window and it is closing fast.

If the majority fails to replace itself, the fact is that many of the ousted and bitter former City Commissioners will be back and business as usual will return to City Hall.  Imagine that – in two short years our progress might well be stopped and reversed.  That is a chilling thought.

How will Supervisor Janet Nguyen get Democratic and Independent votes in 2012?

Posted on by Posted in 2012 Elections, Elections, Garden Grove, Janet Nguyen, Politics, Republican Party, Santa Ana, Vietnamese, Westminster 5 Comments

Orange County Supervisor Janet Nguyen represents the First District, which includes the Cities of Garden Grove, Santa Ana, Westminster, and Midway City.  She is coming up for re-election in 2012.

Nguyen worked for  a slew of Republican politicians before she became an elected official herself, including now retired Chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, William G. Steiner, and retired Chairwoman Cynthia P. Coad. She also worked for then Assemblyman Ken Maddox, who now calls himself Ken Maddox-Lopez.  He has since distanced himself from Nguyen.

Nguyen served as Chairman of the O.C. Board of Supervisors in 2010.  She recently passed the gavel to Supervisor Bill Campbell, who is going to term out in 2012.

Now that Nguyen is no longer the Chairman of the Board, I think she is going to have a harder time trying to change the boundaries of her district, ostensibly to remove Latino voters and add more Vietnamese voters – but even if she does succeed in doing so, the other Supervisors are not likely to allow her to gerrymander the district.

Nguyen most likely will face several competitors, including, I believe, at least one member of the Santa Ana City Council – and it won’t be Councilman Carlos Bustamante, who she defeated in Feb., 2007.  Bustamante will presumably be running for re-election to a third term on the Santa Ana City Council.  He works for the County of Orange and will most likely be an ardent supporter of Nguyen.

Janet Nguyen beat Trung Nguyen in the 2007 election by only seven votes.  She won a full term on the Board of Supervisors in 2008, beating Dina Nguyen, an ally of Trung.  Both Dina and Trung are of course allies of termed out Assemblyman Van Tran – who was once very close to Janet.  They in fact had a joint honeymoon, at a Mexican resort.  But they split when Tran tried to compel her to use his political team, back when she ran for the Garden Grove City Council.

Last year, Tran and Nguyen made up, as she endorsed his campaign against Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.  You could tell from their pictures together that she was less than enthused, but the damage done by that endorsement will be long-lasting, as most constituents in the First District are big fans of Sanchez – not Tran.

Nguyen posed with Tran and Mexican-bashing Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, along with OC GOP Chairman Scott Baugh, on the cover of Viet Weekly, which you can see atop this post.  That picture won’t help her as she tries to engender Latino votes in 2012.

Nguyen does have a First District Latino Advisory Committee, but its members include only Republicans, including consultant Theresa Ynzunza and past OC GOP Hispanic Outreach Director Manny Padilla.

Nguyen did not face a Latino challenger in 2008.  You can bet she will in 2012.  She got 55% of the vote in 2008, against Dina Nguyen and a weak Democrat, Hoa Van Tran.  She got 24.1% of the vote in 2007, in a very crowded field.  There were three Latinos in that race – the aforementioned Bustamante, whose political star crashed and burned in that race as he got only 16.5% of the vote; Minuteman Lupe Moreno got 383 votes and LULAC /O.C. Democratic Party activist Benny Diaz got the least votes on the ballot, with only 273 votes.

How will Nguyen convince Democratic and independent voters to support her in 2012?  She will be running the same year that President Barack Obama will be up for re-election.  You can bet that his campaign will work closely with Democrats in Santa Ana, including most of the Santa Ana City Council – and Obama’s campaign certainly won’t be helping Nguyen.

Nguyen does have some fans on the left, but few if any of them live in the First District.  She won’t win over blue votes just because a few random blue bloggers like her.

It should be noted that Nguyen flirted with failed Santa Ana Mayoral candidate Alfredo Amezcua last year – but in the end she supported Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido.  Will he return the favor – perhaps against one of his fellow Council Members?  I doubt it, but that will be another interesting wrinkle in 2012.

Nguyen is fairly conservative and she is very much a Republican.  She helped her former Chief of Staff, Andrew Do, to win a seat on the Garden Grove City Council, amidst carpetbagging allegations, and she got her husband, Thomas Bonikowski, appointed to the Garden Grove City Council.  She also supported Anaheim carpetbagger Harry Sidhu last year, in his failed campaign for Supervisor, against Shawn Nelson.  And Nguyen was a big supporter of failed Mexican-bashing GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman.  I would imagine that her eventual Democratic challenger will be bringing all of that to light in 2012.

Nguyen also won a seat on the OC GOP Central Committee last year, in the 68th Assembly District Caucus.  She came in fourth, in what might be a bit of foreshadowing for the 2012 race.  Termed out Westminster Councilman Kermit Marsh came in second, behind Ed Royce, Sr., who also serves on a local water board.  Nguyen got barely more than three hundred votes than Jeff Matthews, an obscure Costa Mesa City Commissioner.  And she got less votes than Mark McCurdy, who also won a seat on the Fountain Valley City Council last year.

How did the Chairman of the OC Board of Supervisors come in fourth place in a run for the OC GOP Central Committee?  How did Nguyen get less votes than a water board member, a city commissioner, a termed out Councilman, and a Council candidate?  And how is Nguyen going to rally the troops in 2012?

I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I do know that Nguyen has quite a task ahead of her.

Amezcua’s coalition tries to take credit for the changes at Santa Ana’s City Hall

Posted on by Posted in 2010 Elections, 2012 Elections, Alfredo Amezcua, Civic Affairs, Elections, Miguel Pulido, Politics, Santa Ana 1 Comment

Failed Santa Ana Mayoral candidate Alfredo Amezcua’s coalition of people who don’t live in Santa Ana, the so-called Santa Ana Coalition for Better Government, today tried to take credit for the changes that are happening at Santa Ana’s City Hall, in a bizarre newsletter you can read by clicking here.

As my readers will recall, I attended the ridiculous press conference that Amezcua’s allies at the Los Amigos of Anaheim held, a few weeks ago, where they demanded that the Orange County Grand Jury investigate the Santa Ana City Council.  It was a joke – the Los Amigos had no answers for my questions.  Their unfounded charges were complete innuendo and slander.  And both the L.A. Times and the OC Weekly ignored that event, as we disclosed in an earlier post.

More importantly, the Orange County Grand Jury blew off Amezcua too.

And now suddenly these people are taking credit for the fact that the Santa Ana City Council is cleaning house?  Unbelievable!  The credit for the changes in our local government goes to our City Council majority, period.  Amezcua and his cult-like following had nothing to do with it – and they didn’t even see the changes coming.

I am not sure I can take two more years of this silliness.  But apparently Amezcua intends to embarrass himself daily until the 2012 elections.

Here is a graphic rendition of the latest Amezcua cult newsletter, in case these guys come to their senses and delete it from the Internet:

Can Alfredo Amezcua beat Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido in 2012?

Posted on by Posted in 2010 Elections, 2012 Elections, Alfredo Amezcua, Democratic Party, Elections, Michele Martinez, Miguel Pulido, Politics, Sal Tinajero, Santa Ana, Vince Sarmiento 2 Comments

Failed Santa Ana Mayoral candidate Alfredo Amezcua convinced his then-friend, Santa Ana Councilwoman Michele Martinez, to run for Mayor of Santa Ana, in 2008, against the incumbent, Miguel Pulido.  In hindsight that was a ridiculous idea, but Martinez gave it her best.  She built a large coalition that included a lot of young people – and she worked very hard, walking many precincts and gaining a number of key endorsements.

However, when the dust settled, Martinez earned 29.3% of the vote, while Pulido came away with 55% of the vote and another challenger, George Collins, got 13.8% of the vote, according to Smart Voter.

Amezcua told a friend of mine, back in 2008, that Martinez was his trial balloon – and that he intended to run for Mayor himself, in 2010.  In fact, on election night, in 2008, he left Martinez’ election party, when it became clear she was going to lose – and he drove, in a limo, to Pulido’s election night party.

And, sure enough, Amezcua ran against Pulido in 2010.  But the results left much to be desired.  Amezcua only got 26.8% of the vote, while Pulido got 49.5% of the vote, in a very crowded field with a total of five candidates, including Collins and two newcomers – Roy Alvarado and Charles Hart, according to Smart Voter.

Amezcua is now coordinating a sustained attack against Pulido and the entire Santa Ana City Council.  To that end he has recruited two allies, Art Lomeli and John Acosta, who do not live in Santa Ana, to head up the so-called “Santa Ana Coalition for Better Government” PAC.

Amezcua told the publisher of Rumores, a local Spanish language newspaper, at the close of the 2010 campaign, that he would be a “rock in Pulido’s shoe,” until the next election, in 2012.  He is certainly living up to that.  He and his out-of-town cohorts staged a lightly-attended “Vigil of Discontent,” at the swearing-in ceremony of our newly re-elected City Council members, and he, and his allies from the Los Amigos of Anaheim, recently held a pathetic press conference where they engaged in innuendo and slanderous attacks against Pulido and the Santa Ana City Council.

What is Amezcua up to?  Clearly he is trying to poison the well against Pulido and company, by dredging up empty attacks from now through 2012.  But will this strategy work?

The OC Weekly and the L.A. Times both skipped the aforementioned press conference.  Amezcua’s publicist used to work for the L.A. Times and as such it was amazing that they overlooked the event, which she engineered for him.  The Voice of OC and their friends from KOCE covered the event, as did the O.C. Register, and all of them offered fawning coverage that omitted the fact that the charges were spurious and unfounded.  The point of the press conference was to call for an investigation of Pulido and the City Council by the O.C. Grand Jury.  The fact that this investigation has not come to pass, and will not, has been overlooked by the lame reporters who covered that contrived event.

But here is the question we must ponder.  Given that Amezcua did WORSE than Martinez, even though he had not one but two white candidates splitting the white vote that normally all goes to Pulido, how in the world is he going to win in 2012, if indeed he does run again?

Amezcua purportedly spent a quarter million dollars on his campaign – after losing a fortune on his failed Santa Ana Business Bank, which was acquired at a huge loss by a group from Los Angeles.  Can he really afford to do that again in 2012, and is that a good idea given his lack of success in 2010?

Clearly Amezcua’s only hope is to attack, attack and attack, non-stop, until 2012, but here is the problem with that strategy.  It is far too early to be doing this. The voters will have forgotten all of this by the time the next election rolls around.  It is a failed strategy, right out of the gate.

Amezcua would be better served to tell us what his plans are – how he would improve our city.  But so far all he has offered is empty platitudes and promises to build more parks and hire more police – without offering up how he intends to pay for all of this.

Even worse for Amezcua, he failed to earn support from organized labor, in 2010.  Pulido had the support of the trades, the firemen and the policemen.  There is no way Amezcua gets that support in 2012.

And Pulido earned an endorsement from the Democratic Party of Orange County.  Furthermore, the Chairman of the DPOC, Frank Barbaro, focused all of his efforts this past year on reelecting Pulido and Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.  That will happen again two years hence, I guarantee it.

Pulido leaned left in the past two years, forming an alliance with Martinez and fellow Council progressives Sal Tinajero and Vincent Sarmiento.  This too took the wind out of Amezcua’s sails.  In fact Amezcua ended up allying with angry white voters in Santa Ana, who early in the race supported Hart, and he still got blow out of the water.

So can Amezcua win in 2012?  I just don’t see how that is possible.  Unless he starts talking about his ideas for change, he is going to be toast again.

Could SAUSD Trustee Roman Reyna beat GOP Supervisor Janet Nguyen in 2012?

Posted on by Posted in 2012 Elections, Elections, Janet Nguyen, Politics, Roman Reyna, Santa Ana, SAUSD 10 Comments

Well, it looks like none of the Santa Ana City Council Members are going to challenge Republican Supervisor Janet Nguyen in 2012, so are there any viable Democrats out there who might consider taking her on?

There are a few Democratic School Board Members in Anaheim, but Santa Ana still dominates Nguyen’s First District.

The only guy I can think of who might contend is Santa Ana Unified School District Trustee Roman Reyna.  He is up for reelection too, in 2012, but the Supervisorial election is in the spring, while Reyna would have to run for the School Board in November.  That means he could conceivably run against Nguyen in June – and even if he lost he would have increased his name I.D. considerably.  He could even re-use his signs and get a multi-use website, such as www.reyna2012.com. Continue reading→

Santa Ana resident Tim Whitacre releases his plan to reform the OC GOP

Posted on by Posted in 2012 Elections, Republican Party, Santa Ana Leave a comment

Santa Ana resident Tim Whitacre, who is challenging Scott Baugh for the Chairmanship of the Republican Party of Orange County, today released his five page plan to reform the OC GOP.

Click here to read Whitacre’s entire plan.  Here is an excerpt from Whitacre’s plan:

The WHITACRE “ALL IN” Plan for the Republican Party of Orange County Central Committee

To Reform and Reorganize the way the Party conducts its mandated business in a manner that motivates all Members to excel in their Elected Positions; to Re-engage and Reconnect with its Volunteer Clubs and Base; to Reach out and support & educate Local Elected Republican Officials; to Retake and hold all elected offices in Orange County currently held by Democrats.

ETHICS AND INTEGRITY

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice (greed), ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams, Address to the Military, October 11, 1798

“Written and unwritten codes of principles and values that govern decisions and actions…knowing the difference between right and wrong and choosing to do what is right….Adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty…The state of being unimpaired; soundness…”

We must begin with ethics and integrity. We can accomplish any worthwhile and honorable task as long as we NEVER compromise our ethics and integrity; first as individuals and then united as a Party. As evidenced by the fervor in which ordinary Republicans and other disenfranchised Americans have been leaving their Parties in disgust and registering ‘Decline to State,’ we only need to look at our failed leadership across the nation to see why.

To use an old cliché: “They didn’t abandon the Republican Party; the Republican Party abandoned them!” Our problem isn’t the Democrats; our problem is entrenched leadership that has lost its compass heading and has become tone deaf to The People who they were elected to represent.

Locally, as a County Party Central Committee, we have all observed what many perceive to be a lack of ethics and integrity when it comes to adherence to our Bylaws by our current Leadership: We had the unprecedented Carona debacle that utterly decimated us in the eyes of the public (i.e. Carona was assured an endorsement for his monetary contribution months earlier); we had two voter registration scandals resulting in fraud (i.e. against advice, Leadership twice hired the same out-of-state firm for voter registration which falsely registered people as Republicans without their knowledge and consent.); and, we have observed preferential treatment of selected Republican candidates by Leadership while other fine Republicans were cast aside (i.e. most recently the Irvine City Council election this past November).

Poll: would you support Brandman or Sarmiento to replace Assemblyman Solorio?

Posted on by Posted in 2012 Elections, Anaheim, Democratic Party, Elections, Jose Solorio, Politics, Santa Ana, Vince Sarmiento 10 Comments

[poll id=”4″]

It looks like there is going to be quite a battle for Assemblyman Jose Solorio’s seat in the 69th Assembly District, in 2012.  Rumor has it that Jordan Brandman, a Trustee at the Anaheim Union High School District, is going to run for the seat.  If so, he will likely face off against attorney Vincent Sarmiento, who replaced Solorio on the Santa Ana City Council a few years ago.

Brandman has steadily drifted to the Republican Party since he first got involved in politics.  He says he got involved in politics after taking a political science class at UCI, taught by recently termed out Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle, who once was the Republican Leader in the State Assembly.

Here are a few of Brandman’s gaffes over the years:

  • I ran into him at the O.C. Labor Day event at the Santa Ana Zoo in 2009.  I walked up and asked if I could take his picture.  Sure, he said, but first he said he needed to take off his health care reform sticker.  As you can see in the picture above, that is precisely what he did.
  • Conservative Republican Chris Norby decided to run for O.C. Clerk-Recorder, in the Spring of 2009, and before he backed out of that race Brandman endorsed him, over moderate Republican Hugh Nguyen, who lives in Santa Ana.  Click here to read about that small fiasco.
  • This year, Brandman endorsed yet another Republican, John Leos, for the City Council, over two Democrats who were endorsed by their party – John Santoianni, who has been a leader in Orange County’s gay community; and businessman Bill Dalati.  Click here to read about the Leos endorsement.  It was all for naught as Leos lost.
  • In 2009, Brandman, voted to reject a $50,000 donation from Anaheim’s After School Fund, even though he served on their board of directors!  Click here to read about that.
  • Brandman appeared at a candidates forum on Sep. 29, that was run by the League of Women voters.  He was asked “Do you support State legislation that requires school textbooks to include history and contributions that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons have specifically made towards California’s development?”  Brandman turned bright red when he heard the question.  Then he said ”this is a non-issue, there is no place for gay rights in our textbooks and schools”.  Click here to hear the audio recording of Brandman’s comments.
  • And to cap all of these fiascos, this year Brandman was endorsed by a slew of Republicans who were big supporters of Prop. 8 – the measure that banned gay marriage.  Click here to see that list of GOP haters.

According to his Facebook page, Brandman is the Director of External Affairs for Orange County Clerk-Recorder Tom Daly, who also supported Leos.  Daly also opposed the Gigante Supermarket that opened in Anaheim a few years ago and he had a reputation for cracking down on the poor people that live in Anaheim’s seedier hotels.

Brandman appears to be single and there is no mention of any girlfriends on his Facebook page.  He has no children.

So what about Sarmiento?  Here are a few excerpts from his bio:

Sarmiento’s family has lived in and around Santa Ana since 1965.  He attended John Muir Elementary, Sierra Elementary, and Willard Intermediate Schools, back when the landscape was still dominated by orange groves.

Sarmiento is socially progressive but he is a moderate on business and fiscal matters.  He has worked hard to attract new business to Santa Ana and to help develop jobs.

Sarmiento serves on several boards and committees. He is a member of the Santa Ana YMCA Board, which is constructing a brand new center on the south part of the City.  He also serves on the Annual Cesar Chavez Event Committee that commemorates Cesar Chavez Day every March 31st.  In addition, Councilmember Sarmiento is the City’s representative to the Orange County Transportation Authority’s Central Corridor Advisory Committee to evaluate transportation options within the Central Orange County region, which includes Santa Ana.  As a business advocate he continues to work closely with the Santa Ana Merchants Association to promote the needs of small businesses along Main Street.

Sarmiento previously served on the Community Redevelopment and Housing Commission and has previous experience on both the Historic Resources and Human Relations Commissions.  Vincent is also a member of the Hispanic Bar Association and is a Board Member of the Grain Project.

Sarmiento earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from UC Berkeley and a law degree from UCLA. He is a strong advocate of education and sees a great opportunity to cultivate a desire in our youth to succeed.  Prior to owning his own law firm, Sarmiento was an associate attorney at an Irvine based law firm and clerked for the Los Angeles County Superior Court and the Office of the District Attorney in Riverside.  Vincent was also a Legislative Fellow for the California Assembly, serving the Assembly Human Resources Committee.  He also just completed the Senior Executives in State and Local Government Certificate Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Sarmiento and his wife, Eva, operate a home office together in the 1920’s home they purchased several years ago and rehabilitated.  The home is now considered a historical property with landmark status.

Poll: What are the top ten issues in Santa Ana going into 2012?

Posted on by Posted in 2012 Elections, Crime, Economy, Education, Elections, Energy, Fiscal Sustainability, homeless, Housing, Janet Nguyen, Jobs, Labor, Miguel Pulido, Orange County, Paul Walters, Politics, Public Safety, Real Estate, Redevelopment, Santa Ana, Water 1 Comment

As the year 2011 draws to a close it is time to ponder the top ten issues facing the people of the City of Santa Ana, going into the New Year.

You can vote on your top ten issues here (my top ten follow the poll) – and remember that you can vote for up to three issues: Continue reading→

Will Jose Solorio run for the Santa Ana City Council again in 2012?

Posted on by Posted in 2012 Elections, Civic Affairs, Claudia Alvarez, Elections, Janet Nguyen, Jose Solorio, Michele Martinez, Miguel Pulido, Politics, Sal Tinajero, Santa Ana 1 Comment

Assemblyman Jose Solorio won reelection easily in November, as he always has.  But he is going to term out of his seat in the 69th Assembly District in 2012.  It will finally be time for him to move on to something else.

I thought for some time that Solorio would run against Supervisor Janet Nguyen in 2012.  I am beginning to have my doubts about that.  The O.C. Board of Supervisors is going to redistrict before the 2012 elections.  Nguyen will find a way to move Latinos out of her district and replace them with more Vietnamese voters.

Solorio has never had to run against a determined, well-funded opponent.  His Republican challengers have all been cupcakes.  Nguyen won’t be a pushover.  And she will make sure that she changes her district to give her an innate advantage over Solorio.

That is why I have now come to believe that Solorio will punt.  He will instead either resort to lobbying or government relations work, go to a non-profit, or, most likely, find another way to spend his time as he waits for State Senator Lou Correa to term out, in 2014.  Solorio will then run for Correa’s seat.

Solorio does have another option.  He could run for his old seat on the Santa Ana City Council.  It is highly likely that his replacement on the City Council, Vince Sarmiento, will run for Solorio’s Assembly seat.  So what they will do is trade places.  Solorio has been gone from the City Council for years.  He will be able to run for three more consecutive terms, if he wants to.

I suspect that is exactly what Solorio will do.  He will then get a good-paying job at a public agency.  Remember that he used to work at the OCTA.  He will land on his feet.

This may actually work out well for the City Council majority.  Solorio will work well with Council Members Sal Tinajero, Michele Martinez and Mayor Miguel Pulido.  Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Alvarez will term out in 2012 and she could easily run for the SAUSD School Board – and win.

As for Nguyen, she will still face challengers, but most likely they will come from the right, not the left.