Our local Orange County College Board elections tend to stay under the radar. There’s usually little to no drama involved and little to no real interest, so little interest in fact that current Rancho Santiago Community College District Trustee Zeke Hernandez has now gone two cycles without even having an opponent. Daisy Tong, who was elected in 2022, got the seat simply by filing her nomination papers.
This year there are three Rancho Santiago CCD races on Santa Ana ballots, but only two seats up for grabs:
- Trustee Area 1: Zeke Hernandez – No opponent
- Trustee Area 3: Sal Tinajero
- Trustee Area 5: David Crockett.
In Trustee Area One, Zeke Hernandez did not draw a challenger, so he gets to serve another four years without breaking a sweat.
In Trustee Area 5, David Crockett has drawn Mayra Ruiz as a challenger. Mayra operates an automotive services business and is a past president of the local Santa Ana Chapter of the Kiwanis, a service organization. Not much is known about Crockett, but we know he’s from out of town as he graduated from a college in West Virginia.
Crockett was part of the board when they tried to pass a Special District Assessment in 2022, which would have increased our property taxes. Essentially the Rancho Santiago CCD Board drew a line around the areas of the district, mostly Santa Ana, and tried to pass a bond that only working class people would pay for while everyone else got the benefit of our tax dollars. His website mentions he’s an activist but based on his actions I’d say he’s more of a taxivist!
Ruiz is endorsed by RSCCD Trustees Zeke Hernandez (Santa Ana LULAC President), John Raya and Alfredo Amezcua (Ret); former SAUSD Board of Education President John Palacio; Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amezcua; Santa Ana Councilmember Phil Bacerra, college faculty and classified employees.
It makes sense to give Crocket the boot in favor of Mayra Ruiz for Area 5. Perhaps he will move back to West Virginia…
Trustee Area 3 is where things get really interesting. The seat is currently filled by Sal Tinajero. Tinajero termed out of the City Council and put Measure X on the ballot on his way out the door, which resulted in Santa Ana residents paying the highest sales tax in Orange County. Tinajero was part of the taxivist cohort on the Rancho board and voted with Crockett to try to tax Santa Ana while leaving affluent areas like Villa Park alone. Tinajero also had a poor track record of attendance and punctuality while on the board and looked like he was phoning it in like he did his failed 2022 Santa Ana Mayoral run.
Tinajero, for whatever reason, opted at the last minute not to run for his seat. Interestingly, he pulled papers but just never turned them in. It seems he is going through a divorce right now so perhaps that led him to walk away from his elected position. Local attorney Andrew Linares stepped up to challenge him and or a minute it looked like Linares might take the seat without an election. However, on the day of the campaign filing deadline he drew three challengers who have held office in past years: Cecilia Iglesias, Nelida Mendoza and Audrey Noji.
Cecilia Iglesias is running a grassroots campaign. She cannot raise more than $2k as she did not file a financial statement with the O.C. Voter Registrar. Like many other candidates she is reusing her old campaign signs, from other races she has run in.
Interestingly Tinajero endorsed Iglesias on his way out the door and even gave ten thousand dollars of his own campaign money to send a mail piece for Iglesias to teh voters. He later gave another $6K to the same PAC to further Ceci’s candidacy. Our theory is that Tinajero designed that mailer himself as it touts him more than Iglesias.
Iglesias and Tinajero served together years ago on the SAUSD School Board. It may be that Tinajero warmed up to her this year because she was recalled from the Santa Ana City Council by the Santa Ana Police Officers Association, which Tinajero is no fan of.
It is unusual for Tinajero to support a candidate in Iglesias who has been both an independent and a Republican. She is also a person of faith and she has touted that faith in her elections. Tinajero on the other hand has an LGBTQ son and he advocated to fly the rainbow flag, representing the LGBTQ community, at the Santa Ana City Hall. Tinajero has also supported union-only Project Labor Agreements while Iglesias has not been a huge advocate for labor unions.
Andrew Linares is the only male candidate running for Area 3 and he is the youngest candidate by a long shot. He actually ran against Iglesias’ sister in the last SAUSD election. He got over 2,000 votes but Katelyn Brazer Aceves won that election, by about three hundred votes.
Linares is an attorney and a Marine Veteran and he has been very active in the community. He has also served as Santa Ana City Councilmember Phil Bacerra’s Council Aide. Linares helped Councilmember Bacerra to devise and implement a strategy to ensure street vendors in Santa Ana are compliant with County Health requirements. Linares has also been part of efforts to create a public intoxication detention program to clear our streets of open drug use and alcohol consumption.
All of the Area 3 candidates are Democrats, except Iglesias, but Linares is the only Area 3 candidate who has been endorsed by the Democratic Party of Orange County. He has also been endorsed by the Orange County Young Democrats, the Santa Ana Police Officer’s Association, Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amezcua, Santa Ana Council Members Bacerra, David Penaloza and Thai Viet Phan, and Assemblymember Avelino Valencia.
As Linares is the only male candidate running for Area 3 one has to believe that he has a distinct advantage. The other candidates will split up the female vote three ways. He is also the most moderate candidate in the race which should help him garner more votes.
Nelida Mendoza is trying to make a comeback after narrowly losing to Ben Vasquez two years ago when she tried to get reelected to the Santa Ana City Council. There was no way she would have challenged Tinajero but she chose to file after he declined to file. She is known to be a lazy campaigner as she went on vacation to Alaska, then Hawaii, then to Washington during her failed City Council campaign. But she had close to forty thousand dollars left in her last City Council campaign which means we may see a few Mendoza campaign mailers in the current election.
Why is Mendoza even running for Area 3? It does not seem like there is a huge groundswell of support out there for her. otherwise she wouldn’t have gone all during the course of one election. Pretty much everyone who endorsed her last city Council run has now endorsed Linares and it sure seems like Mendoza didn’t do much to pave the way for her RSCCD Area 3 campaign.
Lastly we have Audrey Noji. If you have no idea who she is that is because she’s been retired from politics for quite a while. She was first elected way back in 1987, when Ronald Reagan was the U.S. President. While she was an SAUSD Trustee she joined the SAUSD administrators in creating “false class rosters and misused substitute teachers to qualify for state funding earmeked for small classes for elementary students” according to the L.A. Times.
Noji also oversaw the remodeling of the SAUSD district headquarters while laying off teachers. Noji, like current SAUSD Trustee Rigo Rodriguez, sent her kid to schools outside of the SAUSD. She clearly did not believe in the very schools she was in charge of. Can’t say we blame her though, under Noji’s failed leadership the SAUSD had a graduation rate that was barely over 50%, which at the time was 20% lower than other school districts in Orange County.
Noji wasn’t just terrible at SAUSD. At the college she worked at prior to retiring and looking for something to do she suspended a black student for tweeting about a teacher, and the student didn’t even use the teacher’s name.
Noji has also allied herself with the local elected officials, such as Santa Ana City Councilwoman Jessie Lopez, who want to defund the police.
With such little interest and turnout in these small-time but very important elections, I think one could easily make the case that we need less democracy and more representative appointment. If the electorate doesn’t even begin to understand or care about the offices for which they are tasked with voting, how can we expect good results? Get the people to study up on a few good candidates and party platforms, and have ONE election every 4 years instead of the endless staggered election cycles, and the rest of these jobs can be appointed by the people’s representatives. Democracy with no real challenger and near-zero civic engagement is a terrible system. Too bad, because local politics is actually THE most consequential to day-to-day life– and frequently rife with corruption and good ol’ boy style shenanigans.