Posted by Newsletter Reprint on August 4, 2012
This came over the wire from Congressman Gary Miller’s office yesterday…
August 3, 2012
Congressman Miller Votes to Prevent Tax Hikes on Taxpayers and Job Creators
Looming large over our economy is the pending expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief. Beginning January 1, 2013, the lowest-income taxpayers will see their tax rate rise from 10 percent to Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in 39th Congressional District | Tagged: Gary Miller | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Former Blogger Chris Emami on August 3, 2012
The rumor that I have just been made aware of is that today i the last day that Red County (Orange County) will be up online. One of the reasons that we started this blog was because we believe that they lost sight over there as to what it meant to be a local blog. As many of you know I got my first real start in blogging at Red County and it is actually really sad to see it go away.
I am actually sort of sad to see it go because it used to be a really good blog back in the days when Matt Cunningham, Chip Hanlon, etc… were running the show over there. Once they started censoring posts that writers were trying to put up and also leaving a 3 day delay between when posts were submitted and posted I realized that things were just not the same.
As we approach 100,000 hits here at OC Political we (Erik Brown, Chris Nguyen, and myself) want to thank the readership and hopefully welcome in some new readership from those that used to read Red County.
Posted in Orange County | Tagged: Chip Hanlon, Chris Emami, Chris Nguyen, Erik Brown, Matt Cunningham, OC Political, Red County | 4 Comments »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on August 2, 2012
Mark McLaughlin, David Chapel, and Claudia Alvarez
You may have seen Emami’s Twitter-style post, so here’s a more in-depth examination of the race for Rancho Santiago Community College District Board, Trustee Area 5.
In what may be the most awesome November slugfest not involving Republicans, Santa Ana Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Alvarez, has pulled papers to run for the RSCCD Trustee Area 5. There are already two incumbents in the seat, as the RSCCD board recently switched from a multi-member three-area at-large election system to a vote-by-area system. When they drew the lines for Area 5, they put three incumbents into Area 5, but Brian Conley chose to retire in June, leaving David Chapel and Mark McLoughlin to duke it out in November.
Now, we have a three-way slugfest with RSCCD Trustee Chapel (NPP), RSCCD Vice President McLoughlin (D), and Santa Ana Mayor Pro Tem Alvarez (D). City council members have typically been able to defeat sitting school board members for school board seats (for example, Costa Mesa Councilwoman Katrina Foley unseated Newport-Mesa Unified School District Trustee Michael Collier 55%-45% in 2010). Here, Alvarez is a sitting Councilwoman running for a single college board seat where two trustees are already in the race.
Alvarez has several advantages:
This will be a tall order for Chapel to beat both McLaughlin and Alvarez. It will be a similarly tall order for McLaughlin to beat both Chapel and Alvarez. Of the three, Alvarez has the clearest path to the RSCCD victory in November.
For those wondering, Area 5 is:
For visual learners, it’s the yellow portion on this map:
Posted in Costa Mesa, Newport-Mesa Unified School District, Rancho Santiago Community College District, Santa Ana | Tagged: Brian Conley, Claudia Alvarez, David Chapel, Jose Solorio, Katrina Foley, Mark McLoughlin, Michael Collier | 2 Comments »
Posted by Former Blogger Chris Emami on August 2, 2012
Many of you may have read recently about Councilwoman Claudia Alvarez failing to convince a judge to allow her to run for a 4th term on the Santa Ana City Council. It apparently didn’t take her very long to come up with another office for her to run for.
According to the Orange County Registrar of voters filing log Alvarez pulled papers today to run for the Rancho Santiago Community College District, Trustee Area 5. This race currently holds 2 incumbents vying for just 1 seat and Alvarez jumping in makes things very interesting.
It is still very early to make a clear prediction as to who would win, but if the election were today I would say Alvarez is the clear front-runner for the seat.
Posted in Rancho Santiago Community College District | Tagged: Claudia Alvarez | 2 Comments »
Posted by The Master Cylinder on August 2, 2012
Perhaps the state motto should be changed to “The Taxman Cometh. And Cometh. And Cometh.” That’s the animating spirit of state policy under Governor Jerry Brown, whose Adminstration deals with the huge perma-deficit by levying taxes hither and thither without regard to the human or economic cost.
The Brown Administration’s is proposing a budget trailer to “reform” the Timber Harvest Plan by creating a Lumber Retail Sales tax that would be assessed on the purchase of any lumber product at the point of sale. The funds generated from this tax would be used to fund state and industry regulatory agencies.
At what cost? This proposed tax would target small businesses and do-it-yourself consumers who utilize lumber products. Many of these small businesses, which use lumber regularly, have already been devastated by recent financial events.
Home builders, carpenters and roofers – just to name a few – were very successful during the housing boom, and now many can barely find work. Under this plan, when these hard-working Californians do find work, their cost of doing business will be even higher. How can any intelligent policy maker or elected official consider this is a smart plan to promote economic recovery.
Why would any administration want to harm consumers and small business by forcing them to pay additional taxes? Is making it harder for a prostrate industry to recover pro-growth or even compassionate? That’s a question the Brown Administration and supporters of this tax need to answer.
Posted in California | Tagged: Jerry Brown, lumber tax | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on August 1, 2012
Long-time Garden Grove Councilman-turned-Mayor-turned-Councilman “Bulldozer” Bruce Broadwater (D) has made it official: he’s pulled and filed papers to run for Mayor of Garden Grove again, confirming that his June 27 mayoral fundraiser was no mere exploratory effort.
With Mayor Bill Dalton (R) termed out, Broadwater is the early front-runner for the mayor’s seat, unless Mayor Pro Tem Dina Nguyen (R), Councilman Steve Jones (R), or Councilman Kris Beard (D) decide to challenge Broadwater for the seat. Jones and Beard are both up for re-election to the council this year, but Nguyen and Broadwater would get free passes since neither of their council seats are up until 2014, so even if one of them makes an unsuccessful bid for mayor, they’re still on the council.
The sole other person to pull papers for Mayor against Broadwater is businessman Myke Cossota, who made an unsuccessful bid to unseat Dalton in 2010, losing in a landslide 74%-26%.
Broadwater has been either Mayor or Councilman for 18 of the last 20 years. Specifically, he was a Garden Grove City Councilman from 1992-1994, Mayor from 1994-2004, when he termed out and ran for Orange County Supervisor (losing in the runoff 55%-45% to Lou Correa), and returned to the City Council in 2006, where’s he been ever since.
For those of you wondering, “Bulldozer” Bruce Broadwater acquired his nickname from his aggressive use of redevelopment and eminent domain.
Posted in Garden Grove | Tagged: Bill Dalton, Bruce Broadwater, Dina Nguyen, Kris Beard, Lou Correa, Steve Jones | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Chris Nguyen on July 31, 2012
“To run or not to run?” “To resign or not to resign?” Those are the questions facing John Williams.
Williams (R-Irvine) is a former South Orange County Community College District Trustee and former Orange County Public Administrator/Public Guardian. He resigned both posts in the last 20 months, but has pulled papers to challenge his SOCCCD successor.
You may recall his much-publicized flip-flopping on his resignation: In March 2011, Williams resigned as the elected Orange County Public Administrator, effective more than ten months later on January 23, 2012. In June 2011, the Board of Supervisors stripped Williams of his role as the appointed Orange County Public Guardian. Then, bizarrely, on January 23, 2012, the day his resignation was to take effect, Williams refused to leave office – not just from a legal sense, but he literally refused to leave his physical office; the Board of Supervisors had to order the locks on his door changed after he left for the day at 2:00 PM. After two weeks of legal wrangling, Williams finally gave up. The Board of Supervisors even put a measure on the June ballot to change the Public Administrator from an elected position to an appointed position to enable them to fire Public Administrators, but the measure was defeated by the voters.
However, forgotten in the bizarre story of his County position is the fact that Williams resigned as a Trustee of the South Orange County Community College District on December 2, 2010, effective December 31, 2010. Williams was unable to make any attempt to rescind this resignation, as Education Code Section 5090 clearly states, “A written resignation, whether specifying a deferred effective date or otherwise, shall, upon being filed with the county superintendent of schools be irrevocable.” Two weeks after the Williams resignation took effect, the SOCCCD Board appointed Dr. Frank “Mike” Meldau to replace Williams.
On July 23, Meldau pulled papers to run for a full term for the SOCCCD Trustee Area 7 seat. Then earlier today, Williams pulled papers to try to regain the seat he had resigned by challenging Meldau – the man appointed to succeed him.
Anyone following the political career of John Williams could get whiplash trying to keep track of his decisions. Presumably, the voters will be a bit more decisive in November.
Posted in Orange County, South Orange County Community College District | Tagged: Frank Meldau, John Williams | 2 Comments »
Posted by Former Blogger Chris Emami on July 31, 2012
It has been a relatively slow news day after yesterdays Santa Ana craziness. One thing that popped into my inbox from Capitol Weekly was an article about the Jerry Brown tax initiative committee raising a
lmost 8 million dollars through the final week of July.
Taxes being raised in California is not a very popular concept right now and most experts believe that the tax increases will fail unless a lot of money comes in to help the campaign. A great barometer for this is the slim margin of defeat for the cigarette tax that was on the ballot this past June. If voters are unwilling to pass a tax on cigarettes in California then it will be an uphill battle to get any other kind of tax raised.
However, with almost 8 million dollars raised at this early point in the campaign it will make for a very interesting and probably close race.
Another question that some have is what impact the Molly Munger PTA initiative (Proposition 38) would have on this as Munger is clearly not happy that her initiative was moved lower on the ballot. Proposition 38 has raised almost 9 million dollars during the same time period.
Posted in California | Tagged: Jerry Brown, Molly Munger | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Former Blogger Chris Emami on July 30, 2012
The Santa Ana Mayoral race is one Councilmember away from a Brown Act violation at debates with Councilman Sal Tinajero also pulling papers to run for Santa Ana Mayor. This comes on the heels of Councilman David Benavides announcing this morning that he is running for Mayor.
We were tipped off on this just a few minutes ago from a reliable source and will continue to update readers as more information becomes available.
Posted in Santa Ana | Tagged: David Benavides, Miguel Pulido, Sal Tinajero | 3 Comments »
Posted by Former Blogger Chris Emami on July 30, 2012
Here is the official press release from the Benavides for Mayor campaign making it official:
Santa Ana Councilmember David Benavides announces candidacy for Mayor; thanks incumbent Mayor for over 25 years at City Hall.
Santa Ana, CA (July 30, 2012) – “Santa Ana is ready to once again be the thriving urban center and heart of Orange County. I am ready to be the Mayor with the vision and commitment to help our city realize its potential,” Benavides said. “As Mayor I will engage our residents and businesses and bring our community together around the common goals of safe neighborhoods, strong businesses, and building our city into a cultural destination – a city in which we can all take pride.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Santa Ana | Tagged: David Benavides | Leave a Comment »
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