Is O.C. GOP really worried about “union attacks?”
I spent most of the day flying and driving, as I made my way up to Sacramento today. While meandering about, I realized that virtually nothing has been heard from Janet Nguyen’s campaign for the 68th Assembly District, in quite some time. I later had some time to get online for a few minutes, and lo and behold I couldn’t even find her campaign website.
In the meantime, Nguyen’s opponent for the GOP nomination, activist Jim Righeimer has been busy. He locked up another endorsement today, from U.S. Representative Darrell Issa. But then things got a bit weird. The Righeimer press release that touted Issa’s endorsement noted that “the local GOP continues to defend Righeimer from the expected union attacks.”
Now I have no doubt that the unions despise Righeimer, given his past involvement in ballot measures designed to “give union employees the right to exempt themselves from political contributions,” again according to Righeimer’s press release. However, I wondered if Issa, being so concerned about the unions, had also endorsed pro-union GOP hack Jim Silva, who is running for the neighborhing 67th Assembly District.
I easily found Silva’s website online, and sure enough Issa endorsed him too. What gives? How can the “local GOP” be freaked out about unions in the case of Righeimer, but just fine with the unions when it comes to Silva? That is at the very least schizophrenic.
I also noticed, while perusing Silva’s endorsements, that they include two O.C. Republcans who, in the past, like Silva, supported the now defunct Orange County Project Labor Agreement (PLA) which essentially banned non-union contractors from bidding on county public works, for a period of about five years. That’s right, both Ken Maddox and Curt Pringle have endorsed their union-loving buddy Silva.
I suspect that the strong anti-union language in the Righeimer press release had more to do with the presence of Chad Morgan on his campaign staff, then with any collective O.C. GOP concern about the unions.
I decided to dig a little deeper and actually look up Silva’s contributions. Here are the unions that are supporting him, and their contributions:
- International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 12 – $1,000
- Orange County Employees Assocation – $1,000
In past years Silva has also received contributions from:
- The American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees –
- Drive Political Fund – Affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters
- I.B.E.W. Educational Committee, $1,000.00
- Reinforcing Iron Workers Local Union 416
If the local GOP is indeed worried about the unions, they need to dump Silva posthaste and endorse his conservative opponent, Mike McGill, instead.
Did you check out Dianne Harman’s report and all of the Union support there? WOW!
Also, check out calraces.com, They posted that someone has done an IE through a website called http://www.righeimerexposed.com
Could it be that the Janet Nguyen endorsement list on her campaign website is a lot different than her council endorsement list? Her campaign pulled it so that any potential voters would find her endorsement list for the council instead. This is very misleading because many of the elected officials who supported her city council campaign would not even consider supporting her for the 67th.
Went to Anonymous’s website and saw a lot of the old news on righeimer. It’s fair game stuff but it won’t badly hurt Righeimer because he has that impressive endorsement list from local elected leaders. Besides, how accurate is the information at this website authorized by janet’s campaign. Business people do get sued because liberal politicians give them the authority to. If Janet were in business not the gov’t , she would probably understand.
Lastly, what issues might the voters have with Janet’s indiscretions? I heard that she’s prefers the company of both men and women. Is this true? Or is it one of those blown out things that politicos bring out to mislead the voters.
Either way, I’m sure both candidates understand that everything concerning their past is fair game.
Joe Brown
Joe,
I am not sure what you are trying to allege about Janet. I hope you aren’t making a strange innuendo about her gender affinity. That would be a low blow.
You are correct however in pointing out the fact that dirt comes out in campaigns. I just hope that Righeimer and Nguyen keep it clean. I think they will – but already it looks like some of their supporters are going to play dirty. Where is Scott Baugh? He needs to put an end to that…