.
.
.
Fullerton councilmembers Bruce Whitaker, Sharon Quirk-Silva, and Pat McKinley.
So, next month tonight (Tuesday Dec. 6) it’s time for a new mayor in Fullerton, and according to the town’s tradition of mayoral rotation, it should be the turn of the very popular Sharon Quirk-Silva, one of the only two stand-up councilmembers to respond to the Kelly Thomas murder with action rather than obfuscation, to take that seat. That is, unless she gets screwed over again like she did last year.
She needs the votes of two of her Republican, male colleagues, and she’s been promised the votes of Bruce Whitaker and Pat McKinley, as she was last year. But last year McKinley stabbed her in the back, switching his vote to his utterly comical Republican colleague Dick Jones. It sure would have been nice to have the compassionate and accessible Ms. Quirk-Silva as the face of Fullerton during this tumultuous year, instead of the utterly insensitive and buffoonish “Doc Heehaw.”
This year, Bruce Whitaker (the OTHER stand-up Fullerton councilmember) has once again told Sharon she’ll have his vote. But this time his promise, as described to me by Sharon over delicious hors d’oeuvres at Loretta Sanchez’ wedding reception last night month, was couched in conditionals: Basically he doesn’t want to once again be the ONLY Republican defying his Party and backing a Democrat for Mayor. So it comes down to Pat McKinley.
McKinley, one of the “Three Blind Mice” councilmen currently facing recall, has also told Sharon she has his vote, but … of course that’s what he said last time. Will the looming recall make him more or less dependable? Will it make him more susceptible to pressure from OC GOP Central to break his promise and screw over the Democrat woman? Or will Pat McKinley want to be known and remembered for one action that is not ratlike?
*
It’s all part of the demise of civil politics these days, at least in the OC’s Republican-controlled towns – the scuttling of decades-long traditions like mayoral rotations for partisan reasons or other political revenge. Just earlier this year (or was it last?) the world-renowned community activist and La Habra Councilwoman Rose Espinoza was denied her turn at the mayoralty by the GOP majority there.
Same thing happened to Wendy Leece in Costa Mesa last year, and she’s not even a Democrat – but she HAD committed the cardinal sin of saving the cash-strapped town millions of dollars by voting to accept a negotiated giveback of wages and benefits from the town’s cops and firefighters, rather than holding out for a harsher deal as the OC GOP overlords wanted her to do.
Funny, her colleague Gary Monahan voted the exact same way, and gave a similar decent, reasonable and humane explanation… and yet he is giddily happy in the Mayor’s seat right now, presiding over the decimation of the workforce and cutting that unforgettably ridiculous figure on the day of Huy Pham’s suicide.
Maybe it only happens to WOMEN, and is another manifestation of the GOP’s sexism. Ya think so? Sharon, Wendy, Rose, Christine Shea, and Pam Keller do.
So we’ll see what happens in Fullerton next month tonight, and hope that Whitaker and McKinley do the right thing. (And by the way, in case anyone was still unclear – Bruce Whitaker did NOT, repeat NOT, kill and eat Cletus’ dog, or anyone else’s dog for that matter.)
http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2011/01/is-bruce-whitaker-a-man-of-his-word/
http://www.fullertonsfuture.org/2010/bruce-whitaker-did-not-kill-and-eat-cletuss-dog/
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see McKinley do it. I’m sure Dick Ackerman has told him to do it. Unusual? Yes. These are unusual times, and the Three Blind Mice are fighting for their dubious legacies – plus tens of millions in contracts and subsidies they hand out to slimers and bagmen like Ackerman. They now find themselves embracing Fullerton’s dimwitted Old Guard Left. Any port in a storm, it seems.
Pam Keller made her own bed, and then had to lay in it.
Just to be clear, the “dimwitted Old Guard Left” is not a slur on Sharon, right? – but more the Fullerton Observer crowd, people excoriated by Baxter for not taking a stand in the Kelly Thomas matter.
Rotation sucks. You could end up with a Wendy Leece with that formula. Or a Boardman or Shaw in HB. The way it works now, even with all its serial Brown Act violations, reflects the voters will. The majority put in place by the voters decide who is mayor. Playing the sexist card is weak ladies, in fact, you just lost a vote by playing it. Go to the end of the dais, do not touch the gavel. Did Monahan make a promise he broke? (No) Has Monahan come full circle and is now fighting the unions? (Yes)=Mayor
*It will be Sharon or Bruce…..either one is just fine! The other three should just step down now and avoid the brutal retaliation of the voters and recall folks!
Kind of puts a political spin on the phrase “don’t fuck up the rotation”
In the scheme of things does it really matter who is the Mayor of this City? Isn’t the Mayor position mostly fluff, with no more authority than any other Council member? Seems pretty insignificant, especially from where I sit (and that is not in Fullerton).
In the wake of the Kelly Thomas fiasco, I think that it matters more than ever. The Mayor is the public face of Fullerton. That alone makes it worth not having someone like Jones or McKinley in that chair at a time like this.
Unanimous vote: Sharon becomes Mayor. Score one for the Oracle of Bushala.
Yay! Wonder if Juice-friend Sharon wanted that title, just in case she decides to take on Juice-friend Norby. So wondereth aloud the Oracle of Nelson.
In any case kudos to the Three Blind Mice for doing the right thing for ONCE! Now let’s get back to work recalling them!
I don’t think she’ll run against Norby. In fact, I think that becoming Mayor makes Sharon more likely to run for re-election rather than in AD-65. It improves both her odds and the likelihood of being able to bring a fellow Dem into Jones’s seat — if Jones does still hold a seat after the recall.
I have not spoken to Sharon about this (nor do I think she’d tell me, as she knows that I blog and she is not the reckless sort), but I would not be surprised to see a “liberal-tarian” non-aggression pact between Quirk-Silva and Whitaker next November, in which no serious Dem challenges Whitaker and the libertarians support Quirk-Silva over whatever Ackermaniac runs against her, while both factions compete against one another and the mercantile-conservative bloc for Jones’s seat.
Of course, this would likely depend on the results of the recall, if it does happen — as the Oracle of Bushala insists it will.
“Mercantile conservative.”
Now that’s a brilliant charcterization. The emphasis belongs on the mercantile, meaning a state of affairs in which certain businesses are subsidized and promoted by the government. Redevelopment, in fact.
Thanks — reaching back to my Poli Sci professor days, I think that it’s the proper technical term, in fact, for the opposite of a laissez-faire conservative such as you. The problem for opponents of mercantilism is that it seems to work well to build the economy in a lot of countries — China and Japan and Germany, for example.
The problem (which I know you already know) is that “good mercantilism,” if you’ll accept the possibility that such a thing could exist, can very easily slide down the slippery slope to crony capitalism. — and, when the state starts to put its muscle behind enforcing public acceptance of such arrangements, to fascism. (Not Nazism per se, but the “merger of state and corporation” envisioned by Mussolini.)
One can try to prevent that by eliminating all mercantilism (as I take it you would) or by carefully scrutinizing and regulating it, which includes giving critics of mercantilism the information they need to test any given proposal (which is what I favor.) To me, the idea arrangement is when Democrats like me propose state subsidies for programs that address the market failures of laissez-faire capitalism — and there are many — and Republicans like you torture-test them to keep everyone honest. That gives us the most meat with the least fat.
Unfortunately, mercantilist proposals often tend to be driven by considerations like “how can my campaign contributors make more money” and “how can I hide what’s really going on from potential critics.” Opposing that kind of thing — stealing from the commonweal — is (or should be) common ground for right and left. We’ll always differ on details and some value judgments, but we can all reject pigs.
Mercantilism was all about creating colonies and exploiting them through government issued charters (and protected by the mother country’s military) for the benefit of government chartered companies.
In America the policy led to a revolution.
I think of the concept as applying more broadly than just to that (obviously appropriate) situation.