OC Political

A right-of-center blog covering local, statewide, and national politics

Friday Fun: Dan Hughes Hilarious Video

Posted by Former Blogger Chris Emami on May 11, 2012

I am a fan of fun political advertisements as can be seen from my post of the Ed Lee for San Francisco Mayor video that I posted here. Despite the fact that Nguyen hates the video, I do enjoy the humor.

We now have Dan Hughes a United States Senate candidate that his put together his own video of randomness. The video includes lots of things that are funny including singing eagles, Street Fighter, and Chuck Devore.

The video can be viewed by clicking here.

In all seriousness, I do not really care who the nominee is between Dan Hughes, Elizabeth Emken, and Al Ramirez as long as the nominee is not Orly Taitz. If Orly Taitz is the nominee for Republicans in November we are in serious trouble of losing every competitive seat in California.

Posted in California | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Donate your political cash for community good…..

Posted by Thomas Gordon on May 10, 2012

20120510-175135.jpg

This evening Barack Obama drops by our quiet little state to pick up roughly $15 Million dollars from a few Hollywood types who agree with his stance that it’s unfair that they have so much money.

But what if that money went towards a better cause?

Roughly 46 children are diagnosed with cancer every day in the USA.

What if we each wrote a check today to CHOC instead of our favorite politician

You can by clicking here

Or what if instead we gave it to support those wounded warriors and their families who know what struggle and sacrifice really is.

Those brave warriors and their families can be helped by clicking here

Posted in National | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Proposition 29 Mailbox: No On 29 Strikes Again

Posted by Former Blogger Chris Emami on May 10, 2012

We got another mailer yesterday from the No on 29 campaign. The mailer was similar to the John Campbell piece that I posted earlier being an 8.5 x 11 that folds out into an 8.5 x 22. Overall the lack of color to the piece makes it appear very bland and I don’t know that it will get the attention from the voters that it needs in order to make an impact:

Posted in California | 2 Comments »

CD 45 Mailbox: Another Campbell Positive Piece Arrives

Posted by Former Blogger Chris Emami on May 10, 2012

Congressman John Campbell had another mailer that arrived at my house today. He is clearly taking this race very seriously. As of today I have yet to hear of a piece from either of his opponents John Webb or Sukhee Kang. However, Kang does have the most signs up in the district as of earlier this morning.

The mail piece was an 8.5 x 11 that folds out into an 8.5 x 22 piece. I have scanned the piece into four different files:


Posted in 45th Congressional District | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

OC Absentee Ballots Mailed

Posted by Newsletter Reprint on May 10, 2012

Editors’ Note: It’s official.  The Orange County Registrar of Voters finally mailed absentee ballots yesterday.  That means the first absentee ballots in Orange County arrive today.  Campaigns: were you ready?

This came over the wire from the Registrar of Voters yesterday…

Newsfeed header

Vote-by-Mail Ballots Mailed

May 9, 2012 – Our trucks are being loaded and vote-by-mail ballots are heading out to voters this afternoon. We are mailing 650,000 total in our permanent vote-by-mail files. In addition, we are mailing ballots to no-party preference voters who have requested a party ballot (17,000 total). We make sure the majority of sample ballots have reached voters so they have access to candidate statements before this crucial mailing.

Posted in Orange County | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Congressional Opponents Decide To Save Money By Sharing A Sign

Posted by Former Blogger Chris Emami on May 9, 2012

This election has been bizarre. Over the past few weeks we have written posts about some of the wildest things that we have witnessed, including:

Central Committee Candidate Signs

Central Committee Candidate Hit Piece

Central Committee Candidate Fundraiser

We now have a story that tops all of these in the world of the bizarre. 2 candidates for Congress in the 47th Congressional district live in the same house and neither of them is carpetbagging.

Dr. Jay Shah and his wife Usha Shah are both running for the same Congressional district. We here at OC Political found that a bit odd due to the fact that this decreases what were already slim odds on advancing to the November election. Perhaps they thought that Proposition 14 would allow voters to vote for 2 candidates to advance to the November election.

Whatever the reason they apparently also decided to split costs on signs by having a joint sign for both candidates that have started going up around Garden Grove and other parts of the district.

I think most readers would agree that the lone Democrat to advance to November will likely be Alan Lowenthal. It will be interesting to see which Shah finishes ahead of the other.

Posted in 47th Congressional District | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

AD 68 Central Committee Mailbox: More Central Committee Madness, Spitzer Hits Pauly

Posted by Former Blogger Chris Emami on May 9, 2012

In what continues to be the most absurd Central Committee election that I have ever witnessed, we now have an expensive district wide mailer that went out from the Todd Spitzer campaign hitting Deborah Pauly:

This piece is extremely crafty because even though it went out to AD 68 Republican voters the overlap between AD 68 and the 3rd Supervisorial district is huge. Other ramifications from this piece would be the fact that it may potentially knock her out of the top 6 slots for Central Committee.

I do believe that this piece went a bit far as candidates families should be off-limits. If Spitzer wanted to hit Pauly for poor judgement the evening of the DUI that would have been fine, because clearly what she did was stupid. However, do not mention her husband by name in the piece. I do want to clarify that I do not condone what he did and I am speaking strictly from the point of political etiquette.

In terms of effectiveness this piece will definitely have an impact on the election. Not that it will matter tough as most people appear to think that Spitzer winning is only a matter of time.

Posted in 3rd Supervisorial District | Tagged: , | 7 Comments »

Third Supervisorial District: Todd Spitzer in the Mail

Posted by Chris Nguyen on May 9, 2012

Excluding the Anaheim TOT mail (which has nothing to do with the June election), I received my fifth mailer of the primary election cycle yesterday.  The first mailer was from Congressman Ed Royce’s campaign on April 4,  the second one was from Todd Spitzer’s campaign for the Third Supervisorial District on April 19, the third one was another Royce piece on April 28, the fourth one was another Spitzer piece on May 1.  This mailer is the third I’ve received from Spitzer’s campaign, and the fifth I’ve received from any campaign this cycle.

This piece is obviously geared toward Republican voters.

The side with the address label has the two-star Republican elephant along with a large font highlighting Spitzer’s “Local Elected Official of the Year” award 12 years ago from the OCGOP.  It also has a picture of Spitzer with OCGOP Chairman Scott Baugh.  “Todd Spitzer” is the largest font on the page, is part of his campaign logo, and is repeated again in the caption under the picture with Baugh, thereby repeating his name thrice as a way to reinforce name ID even among voters who won’t flip the piece over to read the other side (I guess technically it’s four times since the paid for by message has his name, but that’s in the fine print).

The other side of the piece emphasizes conservative Republican values.  It includes a big CRA logo (with the official three-star Republican elephant) highlighting Spitzer’s CRA endorsement, including a quote from CRA Vice President (and OC Political blogger) Craig Alexander.  The piece also includes bullet points listing Republican stances on taxes, pensions, and crime, along with Spitzer’s membership on the Republican Central Committee and “A” rating from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.  This side of the piece also repeats Spitzer’s name in large type thrice, again reinforcing name ID even among voters who won’t read the piece and who received the piece in the mail with the address/postage side face down.

A subtle touch is the photo which has a clearly visible North Orange County Conservative Coalition logo on the banner behind Spitzer at the speech he was giving.  A casual reader might not notice the logo.  It does, however, catch the eye of anyone who recognizes the logo.

This is the first mailer from any campaign in quite a while that doesn’t include the needless logos that I admonished campaigns about in this post.

This is the first Spitzer mailer I’ve received that isn’t a four-pager that opens up.  This is a two-sided 8.5″ x 11″ piece.

2012-05-08 Todd Spitzer Mailer

Click on the picture to view a larger version.

Posted in 3rd Supervisorial District, Mail | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

OC Registrar of Voters News Feed Update: Six Marks the Spot

Posted by Newsletter Reprint on May 8, 2012

Editors’ note: Normally we don’t run newsletter reprint in the middle of a Tuesday, but this one is particularly timely.  Biggest piece of news: absentee ballots have not gone out yet; the absolute earliest they could arrive is tomorrow, assuming they start mailing today.  In all likelihood, it will be even later.

This came over the wire from the Registrar of Voters last night (key portion: “we will be mailing out 650,000 ballots shortly”)…

Newsfeed header

Six Marks the Spot

May 7, 2012 – Voting opened today for the June 5th Primary Election. Although we will be mailing out 650,000 ballots shortly voters can vote in our office in Santa Ana, and six did so today. It may not sound like a large number, but we have had a small turnout on the first few days of voting, only to grow into larger turnouts later in an election. In addition to our six in-person voters we have had 224 military and overseas voters return their ballots to date

Posted in Orange County | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Sample Ballot: Bob Huff Not Endorsed by California Republican Party

Posted by Chris Nguyen on May 8, 2012

The Orange County Registrar of Voters reports that the Republican Party issued no endorsement in the 29th State Senate District race.

This is utterly preposterous.

The only two candidates running in SD-29 are Democrat Greg Diamond and Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff.

Though some people have stated that Huff is “a bit of a squish,” the fact of the matter is that political parties always endorse their party leaders for re-election.  If you don’t like the leader, you dump him from his leadership post long before you try to dump him from his legislative seat.

Regardless, I know Huff was endorsed because I saw with my own eyes that he was endorsed  on the Orange County Republican Party’s consent calendar.  Furthermore, the California Republican Party publicly announced its endorsement of Huff.

Is there much of a political implication for this error?  Probably not since SD 29 has such lopsided registration.  However, if this had happened in a seat with much closer registration numbers, this could have been really bad.

Whose fault is this error?  Clearly, this clerical error could only have happened in one of three places: CRP, OCGOP, or ROV.  This error rests with the CRP because Huff was not listed as an endorsed candidate on the LA County sample ballot either.  (The odds of two county ROVs making the same mistake are highly unlikely.)

Right now, I would not want to be the person at the California Republican Party who left the Senate Republican Leader off the endorsement list sent to the county Registrars.

(Tangential note: interestingly, the American Independent Party endorsed Huff.)

In the meantime check out the Huff endorsement error for yourself on Page 6 of your sample ballot (or see our image of that page):

Party Endorsements in the June 2012 Sample Ballot

Party Endorsements in the Orange County’s June 2012 Sample Ballot

Check out the Huff endorsement error for yourself on Page 14 of the LA County sample ballot (or see our image of that page):
Party Endorsements in the LA County Sample Ballot for June 2012

Posted in 29th Senate District | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »