Norby Concedes Assembly Seat, Democrats Presumptively to get 2/3rds Majority
Posted by Scott Carpenter on November 14, 2012
With the OC Registrar of Voters releasing the latest election results today Assemblyman Chris Norby again lost ground and now trails challenger Fullerton Mayor Sharon Quirk-Silva by about 3,000 votes. Upon news breaking Assemblyman Norby conceded the race in a statement to the Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Report.
This news is sad for me personally as I have several friends on Assemblyman Norby’s staff, including OC Political editor Chris Nguyen. I also think it is a loss for North Orange County and California as a whole because Assemblyman Norby served both well in the Legislature. Assemblyman Norby and his staff were always attentive to district needs and focused on real solutions for California. However, redistricting and a popular Mayor in the district created the perfect storm for Democrats to score an upset and seize control of the vital 2/3rds majority.
Though they won 2/3rds, they won’t be able to govern with that majority quite yet as John Hrabe details in the FlashReport, two Democratic legislators won congressional seats causing them to vacate their current seats. Of course it is very likely that those two newly vacant seats will be filled by Democrats upon a special election.
What is bizarre however is that the California legislature routinely receives extremely low approval ratings and cannot figure out a way to balance the state budget responsibly, yet the electorate refuses to change course of who they send to Sacramento. Now that the Democrats have the power to completely set the agenda and tax levels for California they have no one to blame but themselves for the state’s continued mismanagement. There is a saying in politics, and life in general at times, that things must get worse before it gets better. We may be facing that scenario with the Republican Party and governance in California after the results of last Tuesday.
OC Political 
One Who Knows said
Sayonara, pal. What these really proves is that character counts. There are plenty of folks in and out of this District that haven’t forgotten about your siesta in front of the Old Courthouse, or perhaps a personal encounter where you proved that you weren’t a very pleasant person to deal with. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Chris Emami said
That is a pretty nasty comment. No need to kick someone when they are down, you should show a bit more class.
Chris Emami said
It was directed at the top comment which continupusly appears to be getting deleted by someone who is overstepping their blog priveleges.
Bob Darley said
Who ran Norby’s campaign?
This is an incredible failure. This rivals the Boston Red Sox meltdown of 2011!
Did this guy abandon half the real estate, thinking he would coast? Whoever was advising this guy, should head back to High School elections 101.
The only saving grace is that Sharron will get eaten alive on J street, however, she’ll have plenty of cover.
Look for FREE BREAKFAST, LUNCH AND DINNER for Anaheim school kids next summer.
Nice job Norby
Fountain Valley Weirdo said
I agree that Norby was not the best candidate. He was the second worst Republican we ran in Orange County next to Jose Moreno who was a disaster.
The next question is who is coming to Miles Square Park to watch Roy Reynolds, Mokiki, and I dance the sloppy swish.
Chris Emami said
This is the most coherent comment I hae seen from Fountain Valley weirdo but I don;t get it. Can somebody please translate.
tom said
How could the incumbent not be the best candidate? How is that coherent? Did you mean incoherent? Candidate Jose Moreno despite getting zero money support and being attacked by a Norby staffer and a union thugs on the Hatch Act, actually received the most votes of a Republican candidate in a decade, despite it being gerrymandered to hell last year.
Chris Emami said
It was more coherent than previous posts from Fountain Valley Weirdo.
Fountain Valley Weirdo said
Much like Soup Can Sam, Jose Moreno was not the man. He violated Hatch Act and he had no campaign. Mokiki is a zombie and he’s Roy’s best friend. Roy is the top commenter and he is also a proud Fountain Valley Weirdo like me.
Moreno gets most votes in last 10 years but second worst percentage and Daly also got most votes.
Bob Darley said
I am not sure if that was directed toward me, Chris?
Who ran the campaign. It appeared to most, if not all (except for Greg Diamond) that it was Chris’ race to lose.
That’s what he did.
I am stunned! I find the arrogance of his campaign to be representitive of EVERYTHING that is wrong in politics. He had experience, the name recognition, the machine, yet he got beaten by a political neophyte, whose claim to fame was socks for the homeless????
It boils down to this: Either Chris Norby was clueless or his campaign advisors incompent. I don’t know, perhaps he had out of town advisors who didn’t understand the district, maybe they were inexperienced, perhaps it was fraud.
But he blew this. Plain and simple.
Greg Diamond said
Actually, Norby didn’t run such a bad campaign; Quirk-Silva just ran a substantially better one.
The party and (to a lesser extent) the unions overlooked the race after Norby stomped her in the primary (in which she didn’t actively compete.) She had to prove herself to them over and over — until the combination of Loretta Sanchez’s influence and Quirk-Silva’s own hard work led the Speaker’s office to take its own poll — and lo and behold Sharon they found really did have the good chance to win that she had claimed. Quirk-Silva’s campaign had set the stage, then came the IEs and the paid-walkers and they just worked their butts off to close the deal. (All those new registered voters helped.)
While I was in the middle of the online wars regarding the campaign, I’m still puzzled by them. The FFFF blog never seemed to make SQS a priority — perhaps in part because they were so focused on Jan Flory and because I was serving as even more of a lightning rod than I had intended. I don’t know if Tony Bushala just abandoned Norby or what, but he did not bring his online A-game. (I have my suspicion, but I’m not going to share it.)
I’ll say one thing for Norby: he would not have dismissed Quirk-Silva as “a political neophyte, whose claim to fame was socks for the homeless.” You have to be pretty tuned out to think that about Sharon.
If it makes people feel better to think that this was just a bad GOP candidate, though; that’s fine with me. Your hubris is my gain. This is naturally a Democratic district — and with Sharon organizing it now, working as hard as she did during the campaign, it’s going to stay that way. (You’ll always have Coto!)
Vernon Delights said
Here is a little history. Chris Norby was an obscure Fullerton politician recruited by desperate South Orange County Anti El Toro Airport NIMBYs to hijack the OCBOS and do their bidding. (Never mind that the public had already voted for the airport twice!)
Norby’s sole mission as a supervisor was to blindly vote to hand over El Toro to the City of Irvine with no questions asked and no strings attached. Never mind, that every single city in Norby’s district soundly defeated the phony “Great Park” measure. Since he got 80% of his donations from South County denizens, his loyalty was only to them, not his new constituents. He could care less about creating jobs for his constituents.(El Toro Airport would have created 100,000 direct and indirect jobs.) Perhaps that is why he now is out of a job. He can now feel what his angry constituents have felt for years.
Myopic South Orange County NIMBYs did not just kill a chance for economic stimulus and air transportation improvements for Orange County, they have also infected the entire state of California with the norby.exe virus they created. They picked a RINO who had a lot of questionable character flaws. Sure enough he was vulnerable to eventually being picked off by tax hungry Democrats, which just happened. Thanks to South County puppet RINO Chris Norby losing what was a very safe Republican assembly seat and being the last line of defense against tax hungry Democrats, they now have a super majority for non-stop tax increases. Even if Jerry Brown tries to show some rare fiscal prudence, his vetoes will be overridden by Democratic super majority with absolutely no checks on their power.
Tim Salmon said
Somebody has a very good memory about how Norby was elected to the BOS. How’d that Great Park work out?
Dandelion said
Well put. Even though it was the _right_ thing to do, Norby didn’t make a lot of friends with his opposition to Re-Development. That certainly could play into this scenario as well — there are plenty of elected greed bags that are pining for that money (but never criticizing Jerry Brown for actually stealing it), including enough Republicans who wouldn’t lift a finger (or donate) to help Norby’s campaign.