This is a long diary, written mostly for the record. Approach it accordingly.
We are halfway between June 12, the day when California's Citizen's Redistricting Commission (CRC) was supposed to release its "Second Draft" maps and July 28, the day that the "Final Maps" are to be released. (They must be approved by August 15.) For those who follow the CRC closely, though, this last week has been anything but a slack period. We're down to the "short strokes." (That's a woodcutting term, by the way.)
I compare the last maps that I turned into the CRC with their work-in-progress as of Wednesday,July 20. I'll address Congress, Assembly and Senate Districts in that order, followed by a preliminary look at what may be an especially consequential map: that for the State Board of Equalization. One comment about my maps up front:
One is not to consider the partisan implications for maps nor the residences of incumbents or prospective candidates. Accordingly, I have not done so. Some things are obvious -- Santa Ana is more liberal and Democratic, Newport Beach is more conservative and Republican -- but I have not even looked at the partisan breakdown or electoral history of the districts that I've constructed. (I take as given that Latinos in Santa Ana have had different voting patterns than non-Latinos.) I have been guided only by the statutorily required criteria -- including trying to honor "communities of interests."
What do Orange County Republican legislators get when not a single Republican works constructively towards a responsible budget solution?
Well they don't get pension reform, a budget cap, or any help in their plan to gut the state's clean air laws.
And, in a nice little piece of political payback, in a trailer bill, the State took away 48 million a year that had been going to the county as part of a package to pay back loans issued after the 1994 bankruptcy.
There is much hand-wringing, with threats of lawsuits from blowhards like Assembly member "Spanky" Don Wagner (R,Newport Beach) and State Senator Lou Correa (D?, Santa Ana), who used a previous budget crisis to extort money for Orange County.
So the County will have to find 48 million in cuts, which will hit the Sheriff and the district attorney's office hard.
In other news, Governor Brown evoked chuckles, smiles, and outright guffaws by appointing OCEA Executive Director Nick Berardino to the Orange County Fair Board. Berardino and OCEA are locked in manichean legal and political battles with Costa Mesa Uber Alles Council Members Mensinger and Righeimer who issued lay-off notices to half of Costa Mesa's workers (mostly OCEA members). The Orange County Fair, located in Costa Mesa, is directly across the street from Costa Mesa City Hall.
Even in the worst budget, there's a little Schadenfreude.
I posted a diary not long ago about the vandalism at one costa mesa councilman's house, that possibly was done by an associate of the republican councilman to cast blame on unions.
Here's the latest in Costa Mesa, via the LA Times..
Costa Mesa's police chief resigned abruptly Monday, leaving behind a blistering four-page memo that calls the City Council majority "unethical and immoral" and accuses them of manufacturing a fiscal crisis in order to slash the city's workforce by nearly half.
By day's end, Costa Mesa City Manager Tom Hatch announced he had already hired a replacement for Chief Steve Staveley and angrily condemned the departing chief's memo as "unprofessional" and "potentially libelous."
A Costa Mesa councilman said on his Facebook page that he believes union supporters vandalized his home.
But a city spokesman later said Steve Mensinger does not plan to file a police report on the incident, which comes as the councilman and other city officials are making controversial cutbacks and layoffs at City Hall, according to the Daily Pilot.
"On a sad note of story that will not appear in the L.A. Times, our family was visited by a group of union supporters sometime last night," Mensinger wrote in a status update.
In Claremont, a college professor spray-painted anti-semitic slurs on her own car to attract attention. Might we have another example right here?
Jennifer Muir, a spokeswoman for the Orange County Employees Assn., responded to Mensinger's Facebook post by denying that the OCEA had anything to do with the vandalism of Mensinger's property "These accusations are ludicrous," Muir wrote in an e-mail to the Daily Pilot. "We would never do such a thing, and we would never condone it."
Only in California. That’s what I was thinking this week as I stood in front of Sen. Tom Harman’s office in Costa Mesa with fellow surfers, clergy leaders, parents, kids and others concerned that budget cuts are going to decimate everything we love about our state. To be sure, we’re not your typical coalition. We’re not usually political. But every one of us feels threatened by extreme budget cuts.
I’ve been surfing in Orange County most of my life. These beaches and parks are my second home. They’re public treasures that must be protected and managed to ensure they are open to all our children and grandchildren, not turned over to the highest bidder. We’ve got to stop the extreme cuts, which is why we came together to ask Sen. Harman to be the leader who will stand up for our kids.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen firsthand the impact of budget cuts on our daily lives. There’s been $18 billion in cuts already made to K-12 education over the last three years. This year, schools have an average $1000 less to educate each student than they did in 2008. 19,000 teachers have already received pink slips and may not return to classrooms this fall.
One-quarter of California’s state parks are already scheduled for shut down, with the remaining parks, including Orange County’s beaches, at risk in an all-cuts budget scenario.
At some point, elected officials have to say enough is enough. More cuts are going to deplete this great state of all that makes it great. The diverse group that gathered at Harman’s office yesterday called on the Senator to support maintaining existing revenues in order to stop the cuts. If he chooses instead to go along with the all-cuts budget advocated by extremists, Orange County schools would lose another $368 million next year. More state parks could face closure across the state. That’s not a California I want to see.
Debbie Schroeder is a local elementary school principal. She knows all too well what more cuts would mean to our kids’ futures.
Our children didn’t create California’s budget mess, and they shouldn’t have to pay for it with their future. Class sizes are growing and support for our kids outside the classroom is diminished. We’ve got to stop the extreme cuts, and we’re here to ask Sen. Tom Harman to be the leader who will stand up for our kids.
The budget isn’t a political issue. It’s a moral one. Now’s the time we all have to come together to stand up for California.
Christian Parra, pastor of Harbor Christian Fellowship in Costa Mesa:
We are here to pray for Sen. Tom Harman to be the moral leader California needs to protect our children’s future. A moral leader remembers that it is our calling to protect the earth we were given for our children, and to protect and educate our children – but these imperatives will be made impossible if Senator Harman stands by while another $10 billion in cuts are made to schools, children’s healthcare, and protection of our natural resources.
These members of the Orange County Congregation Community Organization and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice -- Orange County, are some of the many Californians, including educators, parents, law enforcement officials, farmers and surfers who have put aside their differences to support maintaining existing revenues in order to protect schools, seniors, environmental resources and public safety from more cuts. For more information, go to www.standupforca.org
A periodic update on the Republican war against public employees in the OC
Is Huntington Beach following the Costa Mesa train to Crazy Town, opting for confrontation instead of common sense with their employees?
On Monday, May 2nd, the Huntington Beach City Council, in closed session, voted against a proposal that would save the City almost $1.3 million in pension costs over the next two years and would also create a second pension tier for future public safety employees.
On May 3rd, Council Member Devin Dwyer was telling city employees that if they hadn't been there very long, they should start looking for another job. He also said that negotiations with the Fire Association had broken down, only to be quickly corrected by a representative of that group, who expressed an interest in continuing to talk.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Orange County right wing politics, where ambitious young pols like Don Hansen and Matt Harper seem poised to try to get some of the publicity that Jim Righeimer has been garnering in Costa Mesa. Term limits will open up an Assembly, State Senate and County Supervisor seat, and the players want to be seen as pension fighters and union busters to appeal to the hard core of Republican primary voters.
Pictured is the Women's Club Fire one of four major fires among a total of 36 fire calls in Huntington Beach in April. During the last two weeks, Huntington Beach also had a fatal fire, a fire where 2 victims were rescued with a ladder from a second story window, and a multi-million dollar home fire.
I can't really purport to be an expert on Orange County politics, but the scandal that is going on now is really quite funny. Well, funny as long as you don't dig too deep into the racism of a member of the OC GOP central committee sending out an email to a big group of friends and acquaintances with a picture of President Obama's on a chimpanzee body.
But the backlash, well, that's where you see the long-standing feuds and how much these people are really out for themselves alone. Sure they tolerate each other, but as soon as they get the chance, it's every man for themselves.
Deborah Pauly, the first vice chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County, said the controversial email sent by another elected member of the county GOP's governing Central Committee was a matter that should have not been handled in the public eye.
County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh publicly called on the sender, Marilyn Davenport, to resign and Monday ordered the committee to launch an ethics review. The accompanying negative publicity could have been avoided, Pauly said.
"It should have been handled internally," Pauly said. "What Scott should have done is pick up the phone and talked to Marilyn."
***
Pauly said the image was "indefensible," but said Davenport "wasn't doing anything she thought was hurtful." (OC Register)
Right, calling our first president of mixed race a chimp couldn't possibly be hurtful. It would take a master of human cognition for that, right? You know, to see into people's emotions and stuff.
But, seriously, the more interesting part in this is the reaction of county chairman Scott Baugh (seen with the patron saint to the right), who has apparently never really liked Ms. Davenport and decided that this would be a good chance to get rid of her. He has called the email "unquestionably racist" and called on her to resign. Not that Baugh is really the best judge of these sorts of things, but he did seem to get this one right, whatever his motivations might be.
But for the OC GOP, motivations matter. I can't really help at this point to see it as nothing but some sort of proxy fight between Baugh and his detractors (of which he has many.) Grab the popcorn, I suppose.
Since I am new to Calitics, I can't figure out how to post my commentary on the OC Fair. So I've included a link to a blog at wordpress.com
http://nomoremindgames.wordpre...
They stood out there and shouted. "Go Back Home!" They stood out there and they booed as parents walked into a building with their kids. They stood out there and shouted obscenities at children.
"They" are the terrorists who wrapped themselves in the flag in Yorba Linda and who embraced fascism, hatred, and inhumanity at a fundraising dinner for a local Islamic charity. "They" included two United States Congressmen, Ed Royce and Gary Miller, who should be thrown out of the House immediately for their attendance at this horrible, awful display of venomous hate. "They" included a Villa Park city councilwoman who suggested that the Marines send these peaceful Americans "to paradise."
Having been born and raised in Orange County, with a lot of family and friends still living there, I know the place's reputation as a right-wing bastion. I know the stories of the popularity of the John Birch Society, because people I know participated in it in the 1950s and 1960s. I know well the hatred of Latinos that still characterizes far too many white attitudes in Orange County. And I know well the bigoted attitudes towards Muslims.
But that's not my Orange County. That wasn't what I was raised to believe. That wasn't the community I lived in. That wasn't the values my friends and I shared as we went from childhood to adulthood.
My Orange County is a deeply diverse place - and is a place that welcomes and embraces that diversity. My Orange County would say to a Muslim family "welcome home" and never "go back home" - because my Orange County knows that they already are home. My Orange County takes pride in its Latino community and heritage. My Orange County knows the important role African Americans continue to play in our neighborhoods. My Orange County welcomed Asian Americans with open arms, as equals.
I know that's not everyone's Orange County. I have heard often the everyday racism and white privilege that can also characterize life there. It is not only real, it is pervasive. I know that many people of color do not feel safe, or equal, or welcome in Orange County.
My point isn't that Orange County isn't racist. Clearly, some of it still is, or else that video could never have been shot. My point is instead to rally a different Orange County to stand up and reject this. Because there really is a different and a better Orange County out there. And it's time it stood up and made itself seen and heard.
Sometimes people ask me how I became so left-wing given the fact that I spent the first 18 years of my life behind the orange curtain. They find it even more surprising when they learn I was in a Rush Limbaugh Fan Club at age 14, that I was in the Young Republicans at age 15. But at age 16 and 17 I woke up. I began to mature. I began to realize that true strength, true freedom, and true patriotism comes from embracing the reality of a diverse community, and not from cowardly shouting horrible things at people who are my neighbors. I learned that everything I believed in - equality, justice, freedom - was opposed by the right. And I learned that the right no longer represented my values, if they ever did at all.
Orange County is changing. Democrats have found a home there. Sooner or later - and hopefully sooner, as in 2012 - more Democrats will make breakthroughs and take state legislative and Congressional seats from the hatemongers, whose numbers are dwindling fast. Bill Hedrick and Debbie Cook came close in 2008. Melissa Fox and Phu Nguyen put up a strong fight in 2010. Local Democratic elected officials in cities across the county put in long hours and persevere in the face of dogged efforts by the right-wing establishment to cling to power.
I have always believed that Orange County would turn blue someday. That day is fast approaching. And no wonder some on the right are lashing out at the forces they cannot control, at the changes they cannot stop. They believed that Orange County was theirs - a place for the white right alone. They were always wrong. Their children never bought into the lie. But they deluded themselves into thinking it was true. Now that the truth is clear, they are fighting back with all the venom and hate they can muster.
My Orange County doesn't accept that. My Orange County won't stand for it. I hope and expect my Orange County to tell every single person who participated in that hateful rally to go back to that Islamic community, get on their knees and beg for forgiveness.
And if they don't, my Orange County will tell those right-wing bigots to "go back home" - because they don't have any place in my Orange County. Because they are not welcome in my Orange County. Because my Orange County moved on from that kind of hate a long, long time ago.
Being a delegate is important to the Democratic Party of California for many reasons. It's not just about picking who is going to be the Candidate for your party, in local and Statewide elections. It's not just about going to the State Convention.
It's about helping chart the direction of the party and representing the people in your district. And I have very strong opinions about where the party is going and what it needs to do.
At least it sure seems that way. Ken Calvert seems to think he's running against Nancy Pelosi on November 2nd. But he's not. He's running against Bill Hedrick. For Congress.
To help clear-up Calvert's confusion, we here at Team Hedrick have made this short 'educational' video to help clear up the Congressman's confusion.
A poll this week shows challenger Bill Hedrick within striking distance in the race for California's 44th Congressional District.
The new poll of 611 likely voters shows Hedrick has closed the gap between himself and corrupt incumbent Congressman Ken Calvert to a mere 5 points (48% for Calvert to 43% for Hedrick) while the 18-year Washington politician has lost ground as undecided voters have begun breaking to the challenger.
Calvert continues to poll below 50% - a true danger sign for an incumbent in what is becoming an increasingly anti-incumbent year - and even dropped 1 point from a public poll conducted just two weeks earlier that showed Calvert leading Hedrick 49% to 38%.
The race for California's 44th Congressional District is heating up as the Bill Hedrick for Congress campaign opens a regional campaign office in South Orange County.
Hedrick, who almost defeated incumbent Republican Congressman Ken Calvert in 2008, is expanding his campaign operation by opening a field office in San Clemente on Thursday. The first campaign for the 44th Congressional District to open an office in Orange County, the campaign's second office will hone voter outreach efforts in San Clemente as well as other Orange County communities such as Coto de Caza, San Juan Capistrano and Ladera Ranch.
The 44th Congressional District covers a portion of Riverside County, including the cities of Corona, Norco and Riverside, and stretches west to include a portion of South Orange County. The campaign's headquarters is located in Riverside.
Having been born and raised in Orange County, one of my lifetime goals is to see it become a bastion of progressive politics. So I'm glad to see that today the New York Times is finally noticing Orange County is indeed becoming less right-wing and more Democratic:
SANTA ANA, Calif. - Orange County has been a national symbol of conservatism for more than 50 years: birthplace of President Richard M. Nixon and home to John Wayne, a bastion for the John Birch Society, a land of orange groves and affluence, the region of California where Republican presidential candidates could always count on a friendly audience.
But this iconic county of 3.1 million people passed something of a milestone in June. The percentage of registered Republican voters dropped to 43 percent, the lowest level in 70 years.
Adam Nagourney attributes the political shift away from the right-wing and from Republicans to demographic changes, primarily immigration:
At the end of 2009, nearly 45 percent of the county's residents spoke a language other than English at home, according to county officials. Whites now make up only 45 percent of the population; this county is teeming with Hispanics, as well as Vietnamese, Korean and Chinese families. Its percentage of foreign-born residents jumped to 30 percent in 2008 from 6 percent in 1970, and visits to some of its corners can feel like a trip to a foreign land.
There's no doubt that Orange County has become much less white over the last 30 years, though this phenomenon isn't exactly new. And those voters have helped retire right-wingers like Bob Dornan - and helped elect a new generation of Democrats like Irvine mayor Sukhee Kang, who is mentioned in the NYT article.
Although immigration plays a role in the OC's political shifts, it's not the whole story. Nagourney didn't mention that Kang isn't the first Democrat to lead Irvine - the city has had a series of Dems leading it for many years, including Larry Agran and Beth Krom (who is running a strong campaign for Congress against absentee incumbent John Campbell in CA-48), and their base isn't just non-white residents, but white OC residents as well.
As a result, Democrats have begun to thrive in local government in OC. Debbie Cook parlayed her popularity as a Huntington Beach city councilmember into a strong challenge to incumbent right-wing wacko Dana Rohrabacher in CA-46 in 2008. Deborah Gavello was elected to the usually right-wing Tustin city council in 2008, and teacher Bill Hedrick came very close to knocking off Ken Calvert in CA-44 the same year, like Cook winning lots of votes from whites as well as nonwhites.
That speaks to an even more fundamental shift that has been taking place in OC. Many of us whites who were born and raised there have become very progressive, and have joined older voters and nonwhites to begin turning OC blue. People like myself, Ezra Klein, and many others who grew up there came to reject the right-wing values that surrounded us, and are showing up to vote for progressives and Democrats.
My own experience illustrates this. In the early '90s I spent a few months in a Rush Limbaugh Fan Club and even the OC Young Republicans, at a time when I was uncritically absorbing the county's right-wing ideological heritage. But it didn't take long for me to grow up and grow out of that youthful conservatism, as I came to realize that a politics of white privilege and unlimited corporate power wasn't my idea of an ideal society. In this, I was just catching up to most of my friends and peers, who had already started identifying as being left of center.
We were part of a broader trend. Our generation (often called Millennials) is the first generation since European settlement to have a majority born here in California. As a recent USC study showed, this new homegrown majority is more progressive, having a greater attachment to public services and engagement in their communities than previous generations who were educated elsewhere and who moved to California seeking their own prosperity without feeling an attachment to California's public services and and institutions.
In OC, this led to a lot of white middle-class folks of older generations moving to the area and buying into its Reaganite ideology of "the government does nothing for you," even as the region's economy owed much to defense spending and the federal mortgage housing deduction, and believing that their benefits were under threat from people of color.
Both the growing nonwhite population and younger whites have increasingly rejected this, seeing the right-wing ideology of racist anti-government privilege as being totally unrealistic and undesirable. They prefer good public schools to right-wing tax cuts and vouchers, and view the racial diversity they grew up with as being a positive, welcome thing. And that is fueling the rise of progressive, Democratic politics in places like Orange County.
That's not to say the region's right-wing nature is gone. Even among Millennials, right-wing politics is still there. One of my best friends from high school, David Waldram, is running for Tustin city council on a right-wing platform (though he thankfully rejects the appeals to racism of other right-wingers). Still, the overall trend is one of a county whose population - across the demographic categories - is moving away from it's Bircher, Nixonian, Reaganite past and toward a more progressive future.
Along with Congressional candidates Beth Krom and Bill Hedrick, Assembly candidates like Melissa Fox, running against an old-school right winger in the AD-70 race and Phu Nguyen, running in AD-68 are the leaders who will consolidate the trends and turn OC blue. They understand that OC residents want jobs, good schools, and environmental protections, not silly appeals to the latest right-wing ideological fantasy of the day.
At a time when it seems like the right-wing is poised to have a better November election than they've had in several cycles, it's good to see that here in California, even in their strongholds, the public is rejecting what the right-wing extremists have to offer.
By now, you've heard of that Texas Republican, Joe Barton, who apologized to British Petroleum for the inconvenience of having to answer tough questions about their oil spill.
But what you may not know is that Congressman Ken Calvert is one of Barton's top allies - receiving $4000 just this year from Barton's "leadership" fund. And no wonder: Calvert and Barton are best buddies when it comes to standing up for Big Oil.
Already in this election, Calvert has taken $16,725 from the oil and gas industry -- with a lifetime total of a huge $187,374 from the industry. That's more than any other current member of Congress from California.
Gary, my husband, got a sample copy of the OC Register this Sunday and we were quite happy to see two Democratic Candidates along side the four Republican primary candidates for the 70th Assembley district race. How often does that happen?
It doesn't really, unless there is a primary. This is the new reality for Democrats in Orange County and why primaries matter.
(Joe is a great guy and would make an excellent City Council member. - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
This is going to be a diary about my friend Joe Shaw, who is running for Huntington Beach City Council and the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. It's a diary I promised myself to write because Joe is one of my dearest friends who has been there for me over the last couple of years in ways that no one else has.
But let me start with the story of the Blosa Chica Wetlands via the Bolsa Chica Land Trust...
There is a path to follow in this series regarding the mess here in South Orange County and the Capistrano Unified School Districts Board of Trustees. The big picture needed to be outlined in one diary, to show how this board was working against the teachers and the bargaining process. It was merely a snapshot, the picture is bigger and it has been going on for years.
The second piece of the puzzle has to do with Education Alliance, a Political Action Committee in Tustin, CA and a number of other political entities hell bent on dismantling public education (And opposing other important political issues such as health care reform and climate change legislation) so that they can privatize and funnel money into charter schools.
Only in California. That’s what I was thinking this week as I stood in front of Sen. Tom Harman’s office in Costa Mesa with fellow surfers, clergy leaders, parents, kids and others concerned that budget cuts are going to decimate everything we love about our state. To be sure, we’re not your typical coalition. We’re not usually political. But every one of us feels threatened by extreme budget cuts. 
