I have been asked why I endorsed Allan Mansoor for reelection as Mayor of Costa Mesa. Yes – I did endorse Mansoor. I have known him for a long time, and I believe that despite his well-publicized foibles he is a good man and he does have the best interests of his constituents in mind.
Mansoor is in fact endorsed by many of my friends in the OC GOP, including: OC Supervisor John Moorlach; Dr. Ken Williams, Orange County Department of Education Trustee ; Westminster City Councilman Kermit Marsh; Garden Grove City Councilwoman Janet Nguyen; Cypress City Councilman Mike McGill; and the OC Young Republicans.
Mansoor’s plan to deal with undocumented residents who commit felonies does not bother me in the least. He is not going after all the undocumented – he just wants to make that the the ones who commit felonies, often against their own, are held accountable for their misdeeds.
I am a bit bothered by the apparent attempts to squelch soccer playing in Costa Mesa, but I am told that there are legitimate reasons for this, such as trying to preserve landscaping. I don’t know that I buy that entirely – young people need more things to do on weekeends and after school, not less.
I do know that scarcely a day passes without some kind of gang violence flaring up in Costa Mesa. Mansoor, as a deputy sheriff, is the right guy to have in office when it comes to dealing with violent criminals. He is also opposed to eminent domain abuses.
That said, I was disappointed to find out that he had in the past apparently had some kind of connection with the Millard fellow that my co-blogger Claudio is always posting about. I condemned Millard, and here is what Mansoor had to say about the issue, in an email he sent me:
No committee member is appointed by a single individual council member as we do not make direct committee appointments.
The appointment of any committee member requires a vote by the council.
The city council has never turned away any applicant.
The city council has never had a policy of investigating committee applicants or asking personal questions.
The person in question has since left the committee and I am glad he is no longer on the committee. I do not support him being on a future committee and find myself in disagreement with much of what he says.
Art,
I think what you fail to see is the role a city council and its mayor has when it comes to legislating federal issues. Mansoor has no business trying to enforce a lae even the federal Govt. is hesitant to do for practical reasons.
More importantly, if he objective was truly to get rid of criminals, as anyone would support, he would not be attending CCIR meetings, and becoming honorary members of organizations such as the lame minutemen.
That mere indication should lead you to hesitate any kind of consideration for Manssor as an elected official, but to boot, he also votes in favor of placing a well known racists on commissions!
This is very diassapointing to hear Art. I wish you would reconsider your endorsement, and understand what getting the man re-elected will really mean.
Luis,
It is, I think, hard to attack Mansoor for his organizational affiliations, when so many politicians in Santa Ana used to be allied with Nativo Lopez, who himself has belonged to many racist organizations. That’s right – there is racism on both sides of the aisle.
For example, we could attack Sal Tinajero for being a former amigo of Lopez – but really shouldn’t we look at the issues instead?
Let’s take a look at Costa Mesa, in terms of how it is run, versus Santa Ana:
Population – Costa Mesa is at 103,823. Santa Ana is at 351,697 .
Libraries – Santa Ana has one main library and one small branch. The bookmobiles were cancelled this year. Costa Mesa has three libraries including one devoted to technology.
Parks – Costa Mesa has 26 parks, while Santa Ana has 41. Do the math – Costa Mesa offers more parks to its residents, on a per capita basis.
Police – Interestingly, the Costa Mesa website has a section on terrorism. Santa Ana doesn’t address that on theirs. Costa Mesa lists wanted criminals on theirs. Santa Ana doesn’t. Santa Ana does however provide their annual police reports online. It will take me a long time to compare the two cities with regards to crime, so I will save that for another day.
City Manager – You can email the Costa Mesa City Manager. Not so in Santa Ana. In fact Costa Mesa provides an email directory on their website. Again, not so in Santa Ana.
City Budget – Isn’t it interesting that you can read all about the Costa Mesa budget online, but again not so in Santa Ana – all they give you is a couple of graphs.
Agendas – You can read all the past agendas on the Costa Mesa site. Not so in Santa Ana!
City Council Meetings – Costa Mesa has archived meetings online, in video format. Again, not so in Santa Ana.
Summary – Costa Mesa is a much better run city than Santa Ana. You guys can rip Mansoor all you want, but Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido has just as much to answer for – indeed he needs to step up and answer a lot more! Remember the riots this year? Pulido was nowhere to be found! Do you think Mansoor would have been hiding under his desk? No way.
If we are going to judge Mansoor, we need to first have a look at Pulido. Get past the fact that Pulido is a Democrat and realize he is a truly terrible Mayor.
Art pedroza’s conclussion : Pulido is worse than Monsoor.Take the heat away from Pedroza and Monsoor and put it on Pulido.Getting totally of subject.Defend without attacking someone else not in the question.
Art, I think you’re totally off the mark with your Mansoor endorsement, but that’s why Orange Juice is increasingly becoming an important voice in Orange County. Compare your song of praise to Claudio’s continued “Millard Monday” posts. Now that’s diversity!
“well known racists”
careful luis.i hold in my hand a document from the racist mecha club signed by the candidate of your choosing.
God Bless you Art for standing up to the racist Latinos amoung us.
Gustavo,
Exactly! There is room for all divergent opinions here – with the exception of Fiala’s obscene posts – which I know nobody misses.
Time may yet prove me wrong re Mansoor, but should that happen I will be sure to blog about it.
The bigger question is whether or not Carlos Bustamante will endorse him. Five bucks and a bucket of cold ones says he will because Carlos can be had easily. Just ask Fabian Nunez.
Art,
Thanks for the reply to my question. I’m glad you provided the link to Mansoor’s endorsement page. Others have now had a chance to note that fewer than 25% of the individuals named are from Costa Mesa. Mansoor’s support comes predominently from people and organizations outside Costa Mesa. He’s been embraced by Jim Gilchrist, who named him an honorary Minuteman and the “ladies” of the Minuteman Project have hosted a fundraiser for him recently. Most of the correspondence in the Daily Pilot over the past couple months that supports him has been written by outsiders, as well.
Contrast Mansoor’s list of endorsers to those listed on the web site of Bruce Garlich, the strongest challenger for a seat on the Costa Mesa City Council. which shows upwards of 95% Costa Mesa residents and business persons. It reads like a Who’s Who of Costa Mesa activists, including some of the most respected former and present council members. I’ll leave it to you to determine which man best represents the views of Costa Mesans.
The recent spate of violence in Costa Mesa may well be a result of moves Mansoor and his cronies have made over the past 20 months which have caused increasing pressure within the Latino community. Information sources previously relied upon by the Costa Mesa Police Department have virtually dried up because of growing apprehension about Mansoor’s cross-designation plan for certain CMPD officers.
As far as Mansoor’s links to Millard are concerned – they are undeniable. Mansoor may denounce him – as he did at a candidate forum last week – but that doesn’t change the facts. Denial is not truth, it is only denial.
No offense, but most of us would just as soon the outsiders leave Costa Mesa politics to Costa Mesans – we can handle it, thank you very much.
The list of Mansoor’s missteps would clog your blog. Those folks interested may visit my web log, A Bubbling Cauldron, for which you have kindly provided a handy link.
Thanks to Claudio for his continuing attention to our little corner of Orange County.
Potstirrer,
Are any of your Return to Reason candidates running for Mayor? It sounds like Garlich is just running for the Council. Also, I could not find a website for Return to Reason, neither on google.com nor on your website. Do they have one?
Your comments regarding the growing gang violence are hard to believe. Very rarely are the victims of crime to blame for the crime itself. Do you know of any data that indicates whether or not the gangs in your city are made up of immigrants or are they citizens? Usually this type of crime stems from second or third generation citizens – not illegals, with the exception of the gangs from El Salvador.
I really think it is a stretch to blame Mansoor for the behavior of the hoodlums in your city. But, as you pointed out, I don’t live in your city. I do agree that generally you want to see local support for local candidates. However, the voters are not always reflected by the “community leaders,” as is the case here in my city.
Art,
In Costa Mesa the mayor is elected by his peers on the city council. The term is presently two years. The mayor pro tem, in this case Eric Bever, is also elected by the council. There is no direct election of the mayor at this time.
Regarding your question about the make-up of the criminals in our city, that very question was asked by former Police Chief John Hensley last March during questioning before the city council. He told us at the time that no statistics are available as to the “legality” of those arrested. It was during that council meeting that Hensley told the council that he didn’t think the plan they had approved would work. The mayor had not consulted with him before launching his plan. Actually, them mayor’s plan was much more draconian than the plan presently approved, but not implemented. Mansoor’s original scheme was to cross-designate all Costa Mesa officers as immigration screeners – to the tune of more than $1.4 million in inital costs. Lame duck councilman Gary Monahan headed that one off with a compromise, which theoretically will mirror Mike Carona’s plan – the one that is still pending and has not yet been approved by ICE and the Board of Supervisors. Monahan’s compromise will cross-designate fewer police officers – the gang unit, special enforcement unit, detectives and jail staff. If implemented, it will cost around $200,000 initially.
The specter of the implementation of the current plan has caused the Latino community to withdraw from contact with the CMPD, which in turn, caused the source of much intelligence about gang activities in the community. The recent increase in apparent gang-related shootings may well have been a result of that loss of critical intelligence so necessary for our police to fight this gang problem.
To my knowledge, Return to Reason has no web site. They are, in fact, supporting Bruch Garlich and Mike Scheafer for council this time around. Both men are dedicated community activists with decades of volunteer activities behind them. Scheafer is a former councilman and Garlich will end six years a planning commissioner this year, having served two years as Chairman. Both are supported by what amounts to a Who’s Who of Costa Mesa municipal leaders, including some of the most highly respected former mayors in the city’s history.
Potstirrer,
I found Katrina Foley’s website and added it to our links as “Return to Reason/Katrina Foley,” as she has a lot of information about the group on her site. If indeed they start another site, all the better.
I also found a website
that lists the email addresses for each of your Costa Mesa candidates.
I could not find a website for either Garlich or Scheafer.
If the Return to Reason people are really serious about these candidates, they need to set up websites for them ASAP.
Art,
Bruce Garlich’s web site is as follows: http://www.garlichforcm.com/.
Mike Scheafer’s is: http://www.mikescheafer2006.com/.
Incidentally, in his correspondence with you Mansoor says every applicant for commissions and committees are accepted. That’s not true. Bever, Mansoor and Monahan have failed to appoint nominees by Foley and Dixon, the female minority on the council. The mayor plays fast and loose with the truth, which one of the many reasons he’s become untrustworthy as a civic leader.
Potstirrer,
Thanks! They must not have their meta tags set up correctly as I could not find their sites on google.com. I have added their URLs to our campaign links here at the Orange Juice. I’ll leave it to our readers to find out more about them.
As for your comments about Mansoor, they are somewhat troubling, but as long as Mansoor has cut his ties and denounced Millard, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Return to Reason has a website that is under construction, but can be found at http://www.return2reason.org. Check back frequently as the site is developed and improved.
Art…
“I do know that scarecely a day passes without some kind of gang violence flaring up in Costa Mesa.”
C’mon Art, that’s hyperbole.
The fact of the matter is there are approximately 100 active gang members in Costa Mesa according to the CMPD’s gang detail. With a population of 113,000 folks, that’s minsicule on a per capita basis compared with most other cities surrounding Costa Mesa (1 gang member for every 1,130 residents). Costa Mesa logs, on average, 150 Class I crimes a year (1 for every 753 residents). Our interim police chief has told me that Costa Mesa is statistically more safe than Anaheim Hills.
The BS that Costa Mesa is a hive of gang activity is nothing more than campaign hype drummed up by the city’s law-and-order candidates. The mayor’s ICE proposal (really the compromise proposal of Councilmember Gary Monahan) doesn’t nothing to guarantee that an undocumented felonee detainee will be deported. The city’s former police chief opposed the plan, and said that it would maybe – MAYBE – ensare 8 to 12 folks a year.
Mansoor peddles the cost of ICE training at $200,000. But, it’s not a one-time charge. As officers revolve out of the ICE program, new officers will need to be trained. Costa Mesa is already down 17 officers just this year (10% of the police force), many having left because they don’t like the ICE program (Costa Mesa Police Association opposes it).
Minimally, given the cost of ICE training and the anticipated result, we’re talking about $20,000 per bust. CM can achieve the same result working with OCSD and the TARGET program.
Art:
“On Mansoor”
I think you should stick with the facts. Mansoor has been in touch with Millard since the late 1990s, and more likely he knew about his political views ever since. Both of them belonged to the now defunct group Citizens for the Improvement of Costa Mesa (CICM), though Millard has always publicly denied being part of this group. He has been the most influential members through his writing in a website called “concerned citizens for Costa Mesa”, through which people exchanged ideas of redevelopment. One of Millard’s favorite sites, American Patrol, documents this fact. Now, Millard was in the Costa Mesa 3R Committee for more than four years, and has been in Costa Mesa politics for about a decade and a half. When Mansoor says he didn’t know about Millard’s racist background (notice he doesn’t call him by name today), that’s a blatant lie. The Daily Pilot documented Millard’s racist ideology in 2001. Remember back then he and Mansoor were part of the CICM. Also, I wrote about Millard’s Social Darwinist tendencies in 2005 in my Spanish and English columns. Other people like the “pot stirrer”,