Posted by Chris Nguyen on March 17, 2015
The second results are in:
The first results were all ballots received in the mail through today. 12% of all registered voters in SD-37 cast absentee ballots that were received in the mail by the Registrar as of today (absentee ballots can continue to arrive through Friday and still be counted).
This second set are the first 82 precincts of 248 (33.1%).
Moorlach added 861 votes, Wagner added 667, Namazi added 42, and Stewardson added 6.
Posted in 37th Senate District | Tagged: Don Wagner, John Moorlach, Louise Stewardson, Naz Namazi | 1 Comment »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on March 17, 2015
The first results from early absentees are in:
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Unfortunately, they’re inconclusive. Early absentees show Moorlach ahead of Wagner by 2,820 votes (4.9%). Presumably, with the uptick in negative mail and robocalls, Moorlach should lose ground with poll voters. If voters are turned off by the negative mail and robocalls, it could benefit Namazi of all people because while Wagner went negative earlier, Moorlach went negative late as well.
I fear my prediction of a run-off may be true.
We should have more information from the Registrar’s 9:30 PM update.
Posted in 37th Senate District | Tagged: Don Wagner, John Moorlach, Louise Stewardson, Naz Namazi | 1 Comment »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on March 17, 2015
All the mail I got for the SD-37 special election.
I really hope that I’m wrong about the election going to a run-off on May 19. I hope whoever comes in first tonight, whether it is Don Wagner or John Moorlach, gets more than 50% of the vote. A run-off would be bad for both candidates, their campaigns, and the voters. The candidates and their campaign staffs would have their lives continue to be on hold for another two months, and the voters would be subject to another endless barrage of campaign mail and robocalls (not to mention the $1.974 million price tag to taxpayers for the run-off).
I imagine my aberrant voter behavior contributed to my voter contact level: I’m a poll voter who requested an absentee ballot on the first day you could request one, but then held on to it and surrendered it at the polling place to vote at the poll.
I personally received 11 robocalls, with 10 of them in the last week. The calls were from (in order of receipt):
Additionally, I was even had a voicemail from Don Wagner personally phone banking.
Mailwise, I received:
The reason this race went so negative so fast is fundamentally, there are no real differences between Wagner and Moorlach. They will compile virtually identical voting records in the Senate. When there are no real policy differences, all you can do is go negative. As Jon Fleischman of the Flash Report put it at the beginning of this election, “The conservatives have already won.” The only real difference is one of style and priorities, but they’d vote the same, and Martin Wisckol’s piece in the OC Register was spot on.
Usually, when we say there’s no difference between the candidates, it’s a complaint. In this election, it’s a compliment. We’ll know the results in a few minutes, and hopefully somebody breaks 50%.
Posted in 37th Senate District | Tagged: Don Wagner, John Moorlach, Jon Fleischman, Martin Wisckol, Naz Namazi | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on March 17, 2015
Business Owner/Assemblyman Donald P. Wagner, former Orange County Supervisor John M. W. Moorlach, and Naz Namazi
At long last, election day has arrived in the 37th Senate District. Voters in the 37th Senate District can find their polling place here; polls close at 8:00 PM. Absentee ballots can still be mailed to the Registrar of Voters today, thanks to SB 29 (Correa).
Voters will fill the seat to succeed Mimi Walters, who was elected to Congress, unless neither Don Wagner nor John Moorlach achieves 50% of the vote, in which case Naz Namazi will cost Orange County taxpayers $1.974 million by causing an unnecessary May 19 run-off election.
For those tracking, 54,700 ballots were received by the Registrar of Voters as of Friday. Of those, 19,655 ballots have come from portions of SD-37 that are in the 2nd Supervisorial District while 24,667 have come from portions of SD-37 that are in AD-68. 10,378 came from portions of SD-37 that are in neither district. Additionally, another 2,894 ballots arrived yesterday, but location breakdowns are not yet available for those.
Wagner has represented the 68th Assembly District since 2010 and was on the ballot there most recently in both June and November of 2014. Moorlach represented the 2nd District Supervisorial from December 2006 until January 2015 and was on the ballot there most recently in June 2010. Moorlach served in Countywide office from March 1995 to December 2006 and was most recently on a Countywide ballot in June 2006.
Posted in 37th Senate District | Tagged: Don Wagner, John Moorlach, Naz Namazi | 9 Comments »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on March 11, 2015
While going through voicemails yesterday, I was shocked to hear a robocall from Naz Namazi. Considering she had done no noticeable campaigning, I did not expect a robocall one week before Election Day.
Not surprisingly, it’s the worst robocall I’ve ever heard. Click below to listen to the call or read the transcript:
I’m Naz, N-A-Z, Naz, and I’m running against two men: a liar and a hypocrite.
I am a legal immigrant who’s lived in Orange County for 33 years and graduated from UC Irvine.
I’m Naz, and of course, I approved this message. VoteNaz.org. Vote honesty. Vote Naz.
First, she opens by name-calling against her opponents. She calls them “a liar and a hypocrite,” but doesn’t bother even saying why they’re “a liar and a hypocrite.”
Next, she rushes through the script so quickly that it’s difficult to tell if she said, “I am a legal immigrant…” or “I am illegal immigrant…” While readers of this blog are aware she is a legal immigrant, most people listening to the robocall are not.
Also, UC Irvine doesn’t exactly bring up warm fuzzy feelings right now, with their unsuccessful effort to ban the American flag. If someone misheard “illegal immigrant” and then heard “UC Irvine” in the call, the call is quickly going south.
She doesn’t explain a single issue stance or give any reasons why anyone should vote for her.
Finally, Namazi fails to say who paid for this call, as required by FPPC regulations. Oddly, she gives half the FEC statement required for candidates for federal office (“I’m Naz, and of course, I approved this message”). Since she is running for state office, she does not need to say she approved this message. For either type of message, she has to say, “Paid for by X” (I assume this call was “Paid for by Namazi for Senate 2015” but can’t rule out anyone else paying for it since she didn’t disclose.)
Posted in 37th Senate District | Tagged: Naz Namazi | 5 Comments »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on March 5, 2015
On Tuesday, San Juan Capistrano City Councilman Sam Allevato announced his plans to resign less than month after John Perry was appointed to replace Councilman Roy Byrnes who announced his resignation six weeks earlier.
According to the Orange County Register, Allevato resigned because he felt “blindsided” by “total retribution” by the City Council majority who wished to remove him from the board of directors of the Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA), which runs all of Orange County’s toll roads, (other than the 91 Express lanes, which are run by the Orange County Transportation Authority).
New Councilman John Perry had made the proposal to remove Allevato from the TCA. Prior to joining the Council, Perry had led an unsuccessful recall effort against Allevato. Councilwoman Kerry Ferguson supported Perry’s proposal to remove Allevato from TCA because she wanted to bring “decorum” and “professionalism” to the Council.
The 90-year-old Byrnes announced his resignation in January declaring that he had accomplished his goals and wanted to move on.
Byrnes was elected in 1972 at the age of 48, served one term, and then was elected again in 2012 at the age of 88 before resigning in January 2015, three months after the November 2014 elections.
(Allevato had himself been appointed to the City Council in March 2004 to succeed Councilman John Gelff who had suddenly passed away at the age of 54 in February 2004, just nine months before the election. Allevato was re-elected in November 2004, 2008, and 2012.)
Councilman Derek Reeve was first elected in 2010 and re-elected in 2014. Councilwomen Pam Patterson and Kerry Ferguson were both first elected in 2014. For the stability of San Juan Capistrano, hopefully, Reeve, Patterson, and Ferguson don’t resign.
Posted in San Juan Capistrano | Tagged: Derek Reeve, John Gelff, John Perry, Kerry Ferguson, Pam Patterson, Roy Byrnes, Sam Allevato | 1 Comment »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on March 4, 2015
Matt Cunningham over at Anaheim Blog has had pretty thorough coverage of the mailers in the SD-37 special election. However, I think I got one in the mail yesterday that I’m pretty sure Matt couldn’t possibly have received (unless something is seriously wrong with Don Wagner’s mailer list).
(Click on each thumbnail below for a larger, readable version)
According to PDI, there are 11,980 Vietnamese voters in 7,255 houses in the 37th Senate District.
Wagner’s mailer features his endorsements from the two of the highest-ranking Vietnamese American elected officials in California: Senator Janet Nguyen and Supervisor Andrew Do. It also features the endorsement of Congressman Ed Royce, who is popular in the Vietnamese community.
Wagner’s mailer also hits on three issues near and dear to Vietnamese voters: small business, education/affirmative action, and taxes.
The Vietnamese vote is truly up for grabs as John Moorlach and Don Wagner have similar name ID. At the Orange County bankruptcy in 1994, there was one Vietnamese American elected official in the country (not county, country), and the Vietnamese community has become much more engaged in politics since then, but the Orange County bankruptcy is not an issue that resonates with Vietnamese voters, so with this mailer from Wagner, Moorlach will need to respond with his own Vietnamese outreach.
Posted in 37th Senate District | Tagged: Andrew Do, Don Wagner, Ed Royce, Janet Nguyen, John Moorlach | 2 Comments »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on March 3, 2015
An OC Political reader with a strong knowledge of recounts pointed out SB 183 (Correa, 2011) to me. I had earlier written about the difficulty of getting new results in recounts in California. SB 183 is the bill that made successful recounts virtually impossible.
Prior to SB 183, recount strategy typically relied on getting ballots tossed for identifiable marks, such as the infamous flower ballot of 2007.
Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana) put an end to that with SB 183. Identifiable marks no longer invalidated ballots. Consequently, the only way a ballot can be tossed is if the voter voted for more candidates than were available on the ballot (e.g. two candidates for Supervisor, four candidates for three city council slots) or voted both yes and no on a ballot measure. Even then, the whole ballot wouldn’t be tossed, just the race in which the voter overvoted.
With more accurate ballot counting software and SB 183, recounts of anything other than provisional ballots are almost pointless in California. That’s why the Garden Grove mayoral recount had no vote changes, the State Controller recount had 8 vote changes statewide, etc.
As one friend suggested while I talked to her about this situation, perhaps Correa wrote SB 183 in 2011 expecting to narrowly lead in a future election and wanted to prevent a recount from overturning his result. Instead, he found himself narrowly behind in 2015 and wasn’t able to overturn the result.
Correa’s SB 183 of 2011 was actually identical to SB 387 of 2009 by Senator Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), which was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who
The provisions of this bill allowing elections officials to process ballots that contain extraneous non-identifying marks are acceptable; however, I am concerned that remaking a ballot that contains personal identifying information compromises ballot secrecy and increases the opportunity for fraud.
The only difference two years later for SB 183 (Correa) of 2011 versus SB 387 (Hancock) of 2009 was a new Governor, Jerry Brown.
The two key changes in SB 183 were for Elections Code Sections 15154 and 15208:
SB 183 modified Elections Code Section 15154 as follows:
Any ballot that is not marked as provided by law or that is marked or signed by the voter so that it can be identified by others shall be rejected.
SB 183 struck this sentence out of Elections Code Section 15208:
Any ballot that is marked in a manner so as to identify the voter shall be marked “Void” and shall be placed in the container for void ballots.
SB 183 also replaced the voter instruction “All distinguishing marks or erasures are forbidden and make the ballot void” and replaced it with “Marking the ballot outside of the designated space to vote for a candidate or measure may compromise the secrecy of the ballot.”
Promoted by Common Cause and now-disgraced Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Correa introduced SB 183 on February 7, 2011. It passed the Legislature on near-party-line votes (oddly, Assemblyman Chris Norby voted against it in Assembly Appropriations and for it 12 days later on the Assembly Floor). Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 183 into law on October 9, 2011, and it took effect January 1, 2012.
Posted in 1st Supervisorial District | Tagged: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chris Norby, Debra Bowen, Jerry Brown, Loni Hancock, Lou Correa | 9 Comments »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on March 2, 2015
Business Owner/Assemblyman Donald P. Wagner, former Orange County Supervisor John M. W. Moorlach, and Naz Namazi
In the SD-37 Special Election (polls close in 15 days), 28,555 ballots have been returned so far. Of those, 11,940 (41.8%) have come from the 68th Assembly District, 9,988 (35.0%) have come from the 2nd Supervisorial District, and 6,627 (23.2%) come from neither of those districts.
Assemblyman Don Wagner has represented the 68th District since 2010 and was on the ballot there most recently in both June and November of 2014. Former Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach represented the 2nd District from December 2006 until January 2015 and was on the ballot there most recently in June 2010. Moorlach served in Countywide office from March 1995 to December 2006 and was most recently on a Countywide ballot in June 2006.
The Wagner camp should be pleased by their district of strength leading Moorlach’s district of strength by 6% in ballots returned in SD-37.
Naz Namazi remains a wildcard who could eat up as much as 5% of the vote. Write-in Democrat Louise Stewardson is probably good for another 4% of the vote.
While well over 60% of the votes are from Republicans, the wildcard is what did non-Republican voters do? There are 5,783 Democrats (20.3%), 3,783 NPP (13.2%), 596 AIP (2.1%), 185 Libertarians (0.6%), 49 Greens (0.2%), and 20 Peace and Freedom (0.1%).
Faced with three Republicans on the ballot, only a fraction of those Democrats are going to notice their write-in candidate, and the Greens and Peace and Freedom voters were only 69 people. The NPPs, AIP, and Libertarians comprise 15% of the vote.
Which candidate campaign most effectively to the non-Republicans, and especially the Democrats? Wagner and Moorlach are both acknowledged as two of the leading conservatives in Orange County. Which campaigned best to Democrats? Or which IE best campaigned to Democrats?
Posted in 37th Senate District | Tagged: Don Wagner, John Moorlach, Louise Stewardson, Naz Namazi | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on February 18, 2015
The hearing in the North Orange County Community College District Measure J case is slated to be heard this morning. After the initial count showed Measure J winning by a very narrow margin (34 “yes” votes need to be tossed for J to fail), Opponents of Measure J launched a recount in order to examine the provisional ballots cast in the election. Measure J is a $574 million bond measure.
They found 42 provisional ballots that weren’t signed by the voter and “identified hundreds of signatures [on absentee and provisional ballots] that a reasonable person could not identify as similar to the signature on the voter registration card.”
With a four-year-old state law making it harder to toss ballots in a recount, very few recounts (if any) have overturned the results of an election in California. Indeed, in Orange County, no recount since then has managed to change any winner’s vote margin.
Former Senator Lou Correa has not yet filed his lawsuit in the First Supervisorial District Special Election, but I would suspect that is because his camp is keeping a close eye on the Measure J hearing. When not even a single vote changed in the recount, leaving Andrew Do in office as the new Supervisor, Correa switched to examining provisional ballots (i.e. the Measure J opponents’ strategy).
If the Measure J opponents prove wildly successful in tossing ballots, that’d be a good sign for Correa. If the Measure J opponents fail to toss ballots, that’d be a bad sign for Correa. If Measure J opponents barely prevail in that ballot tossing effort, then Correa’s camp needs to carefully scrutinize whether they have enough ballots to toss to make a difference. Measure J opponents only need to toss 34 ballots out of 154,118 cast. Correa needs to toss 43 ballots out of 48,339 cast (technically, 48,626 ballots were cast in the First Supervisorial District Special Election, but those 287 voters who cast blank ballots aren’t likely to matter; had a bunch of them been Correa undervotes, we would have heard about it by now).
Posted in 1st Supervisorial District, North Orange County Community College District | Tagged: Andrew Do, Lou Correa, Measure J | 6 Comments »
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