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SUMMARY AND LESSONS
- Democrats lost the Senate. Good luck getting any decent Supreme Court justice in these next two years if one of these septuagenarians croaks. Silver lining: The Republicans will be so obnoxious that Democrats will keep the Presidency and take back the Senate handily in two years. (Dr. D tells me we STILL can’t get back the lower House because GERRYMANDERING)
- VERY HAPPY to see Prop 47 pass 58% to 42%… that is a BIG DEAL, a BIG drawback in the War on Drugs and the Prison-Industrial Complex. It even passed here in the OC. This is almost good enough news to drown out most of the bad news.
- VERY DISAPPOINTED that the lies against Prop 45 worked. I hope everyone who voted NO on that, who fell for the Insurance Companies’ lies, enjoy their RATE HIKES NEXT YEAR!
- LIES THAT DIDN’T WORK: $1 million worth of them against MAYOR TAIT and DISTRICT ELECTIONS IN ANAHEIM – both victorious! The enigmatic if handsome James Vanderbilt takes Gail Eastman’s place on the dais – that should be interesting. Tait will have ONE ALLY up there, as he did with Lorri two years ago.
- Not happy to see Sharon Quirk-Silva’s “butt kicked” by the very unworthy Young Kim. I had assigned myself, if Sharon had won, to talk some steel into her spine on either marijuana issues or police reform issues. Well, I’m not even gonna try with the altogether malevolent Kim.
- COSTA MESA WOW … It looked like Riggy was GONE but now… up by 21 votes over Humphrey? That could change with mail-ins, and is likely to go to recount. Katrina TROUNCED him, and his Mussoliniesque Measure O went down like a lead zeppelin, but he may just hang in there, with his loyal majority, by the skin of his teeth.
- Santa Ana will now have a medical marijuana regulation regime; not the best of the two options but still incomparably better than the status-quo “ban.” My friends preferred CC to BB, but this is great news for MMJ patients in and near Santa Ana, and folks who wanted to run law-abiding dispensaries and collectives. And this is such a culturally conservative, anti-drug town, which elects the likes of Benavides and Reyna? Let’s do this everywhere.
- Most depressing of all was my town of HUNTINGTON BEACH. My friends, the environmentalist/Democrat Team HB, came in near last, but their loudest foes, the conservative Republicans, didn’t come out on top – THAT was the developer/chamber/union/Poseidon-backed trio of DELGLEIZE, POSEY, and O’CONNELL. The three I’ve been preaching against. Think the Kris Murray majority taking over Surf City. Conservative Peterson came in 4th, he’s an allright guy. But it looks like 4 out of 7 pro-Poseidon now, so I hope that issue doesn’t come before this council. We SHOULD have 4 out of 7 who will stand up against High-Density Development (the 4 who are not Delgleize, Posey or O’Connell.) Bad news for mobile home owners, bad news for Bolsa Chica and other open spaces.
- IRVINE has gone even MORE Republican and developer-slave, although Melissa came close. (I hope to see Melissa and SQS come back on Hillary Year.) Lalloway and Choi’s lies worked… they’re joined by far-right Lynn Schott who actually came in first. Larry Agran has been retired, and Beth Krom is isolated. Will they really keep their wink-and-nod promise to the Chinese Americans to stick the shiv in the Veterans Cemetery, or will those Chinese Americans end up feeling like fools?
- BAO did surprisingly well against old entrenched corrupt Broadwater for GG Mayor. He was ahead for a while there … ended up 43% to 41%. When do we get the rematch, 2 or 4 years?
- Lazy stupid STANTON voters reached for the names they recognize – the ones who try to raise their taxes every two years, usually successfully. Too bad for tax-fighters Kevin Carr and Bryan Palomares. Hey, let’s do THIS again in 2016, you two!
- My water board candidates all failed. I feel like Schindler at the end of the movie. “I could have sold this, I could have sold that, I could have helped you more!” Except I don’t have anything real good to sell, so never mind.
- FOOLERTON Council remains exactly the same. BOring.
- Scum rose to the top in many places. Too many to mention.
LESSONS (Old ones)
- Big money still usually trumps all; big lies backed by big money still mostly work.
- Democrats still suck eggs during midterms
- And yet, despite all this, as we see with Prop 47 and pot in Santa Ana, the slow march toward justice continues.
UPDATE 8:45 PM – things that really look irreversible even at the counting absentee ballot phase:
- Proposition 47 winning – YAY!
- Proposition 45 losing – BOO! Too many lies.
- Proposition 1 winning – BOO.. Everyone was thirsty I guess.
- MAYOR TAIT KICKING ASS in his re-election for Anaheim Mayor.
- Measure L for district elections in Anaheim also way ahead!
- Surprisingly, Bao ahead of Broadwater a little in Garden Grove!
What we’ll be keeping the closest eye on today, and letting you know as soon as we find things out:
NATIONAL – Will the Democrats keep the Senate?
STATE – Will Propositions 45 and 47 pass? (We sure hope they do!)
ANAHEIM – Mayor, Council, and the historic Measure L? (District elections)
SHARON QUIRK-SILVA vs YOUNG KIM?!?!?
HUNTINGTON BEACH – Will Team HB be able to continue their defense of Surf City’s beach and open spaces? Or will developer-funded candidates take over?
COSTA MESA – Can the Riggy era be put behind us, by Katrina Foley, Jay Humphrey, and a defeat of Measure O?
IRVINE: Will MELISSA FOX get on council, and what sort of council will she have to work with?
GARDEN GROVE – Can BAO Nguyen beat corrupt old commie-baiting nepotistic Broadwater?
FULLERTON – Will either reformist candidate, Paden or Rands, get on the council, or are we looking at 2 more years of mediocrity? (Sorry guys I never got around to writing your story)
STANTON – Will Kevin Carr get on council? Or will it keep being the same old thieves year after year?
OUR WATER CANDIDATES – will any of them make it onto the Boards – Wendy Leece, Robin Marcario, Leslie Daigle, Greg Diamond, Ron Varasteh?
WENDY GABRIELLA???
Will SANTA ANA have a new Marijuana Ordinance – BB or CC??
New entries to this post will be up at top – keep checking back for news!
Ive been keeping an eye on Prop 47, well mostly the NO on 47 camps FB page. They keep putting out these scare tactic memes. For every 25 “I’m voting YES on 47” comments theres one comment stating they will vote NO. All the NO comments have that thin blue line as their FB pics meaning they are some sort of LEO.
Nice turnout this morning at my local precinct. Definitely higher turnout than for the June 3rd primary.
voted early
voted often
I’m posting this whole report from the Center for American Progress here. Those of you who say ‘No Taxation Without Representation” should be scandalized:
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then should I go back to my polling place and rescind those six votes I cast for greg
How did you cast any votes for me in Newport Beach? If they were write-ins, leave ’em!
who said i voted for you in newport
to quote the beach boys, i get around
voted five times for my good friend tom tait in anaheim
You are REALLY taking too much advantage of Tony Rackauckas being our DA.
The Early results from Irvine have Lynn Schott leading, and Agran in fourth place. whoa!
Looking solid. with 2/3 rds of the precincts reporting
LYNN SCHOTT 9,776 23.3%
JEFFREY LALLOWAY 9,667 23.1%
MELISSA FOX 9,365 22.3%
* LARRY AGRAN 8,147 19.4%
EVAN CHEMERS 4,953 11.8%
Larry Agran has lost his second consecutive election. He is gone from city politics.
Schott’s success is quite a surprise. Apparently the lack of hit mailers against her was a mis-calculation by the Agranistas.
Where do you think that Daigle’s votes go if she wasn’t in the Mayor’s race, Tyler? I think that they mostly go to Choi. I also think that, now that we seen how vulnerable Choi really was, she could have won as a fusion candidate. And Melissa would have won as well.
If Daigle had not been in the race, where would have those votes gone? I don’t know. However, Gaido would have need 60% of Daigle’s 3507 votes to closed her 668 vote deficit, which seems unlikely given that Daigle was putting elephants on her campaign signs.
There is always a bonus for being a new name on the ballot. Both Daigle and Chemers dropped by about 3% from their 2012 performance. I am going to claim that is the source of Gaido’s getting 43% over my predicted 40% — to most Irvine voters, she was a new face ( few remember her 2006 run, and almost no one recalls her service in the 80s).
Evan Chemers has to be crushed. He knocked on 8,000 doors for his campaign, and got only 6639 votes. Ouch.
The outcome that has me baffled is Schott. She’s reliably underperformed her slate by 4%, as you’d expect the less member of a slate, and then she beats Lalloway? whoa. I have more to learn….
I attribute Schott’s lead to the absence of attack mailers against her — either entirely or at least in number and force.
As I think you know, my theory is that — if the DPOC gave a “NOT CHOI” recommendation and Agran and any IEs picked up on it — Daigle keeps most all of her current votes and picks up most all of Gaido’s votes.
Yep, Agran wouldn’t be able to control her. Bit Daigle and Melissa would be replacing Choi and Lalloway on the Council, and even if he didn’t win he should prefer that, because while he would still be investigated it would not be with the same level of vituperation and vindictiveness. It would, ironically, also have led to an all-female City Council.
But they didn’t listen to me.
Big congrats to Tom Tait and measure L.
They both made it look easy — but that’s not how I remember it being!
Dave Ellis has run up against a force mightier than his own hot air:
The Irvine Company.
SATORU “SAT” TAMARIBUCHI 10,744 28.9%
DAVID L. ELLIS 10,052 27.0%
JOSE VERGARA 8,901 23.9%
RON VARASTEH 7,528 20.2%
Now that is one tightly packed quartet. I presume that people will concede that Varasteh did have a “path to victory.”
While Ron and I have been embroiled in a legal fight with Tamaribuchi and his lawyer, Mark Rosen, I’m glad to see him beat Ellis. Ellis had been asserting that his having to change his ballot designation due to Ron’s lawsuit against him actually helped him. All I can say is that I hope to be of equal “help” to Ellis any time that he ever runs for office again. I’d like to think that we made a difference there — and that we also made a difference in forcing Tamaribuchi to acknowledge the Irvine Company connection that he had been hiding. It would have been nasty to only discover it now.
I am baffled how these results suggest Varasteh had a “path to victory.”
He came in DFL (dead-effing-last), losing by more than 8 points. He was, objectively, the weakest candidate in the field. By Far. Even if he added 3.6 points, which would have been enough to keep Larry Agran on the city council, Ron would STILL would have been DFL.
Given your political preferences and political reality, I’d say this race went reasonably well for you, Greg.
The Irvine Company runs good water boards. The IRWD is arguably the best water board in the state. Irvine is sitting pretty water-wise, because we started preparing for this drought years ago.
Irvine Company is what political scientists call a “stationary bandit” — they have a vested interest in the the long term (economic) health of the polity. Rather unlike the out-of-town single-project focused Poseidon, who are very much is about the one time deal. I understand you prefer Ron. Of course you’re not happy about this outcome. But when given a choice between Irvine Corp and Poseidon, one should choose Irvine Corp every time.
Dave Ellis was stopped. That was a high-priority around here, and it happened. That’s not a bad silver lining.
You have all four candidates bunched within less than 8 points. In that situation, any of them had a path to victory.
What he had going for him was distinctiveness: the only Democrat, the only Poseidon opponent, the only government transparency advocate. He would have done the worst in any one-on-one, but this wasn’t a one-on-one. He expected the three others to divide the vote pretty equally — and they did.
Had he gotten the Sierra Club and LCV endorsements, that would have helped him move up a bit. But, basically, he hadn’t done the prep work to allow him to put “water” in his ballot designation, and that is what blocked him. Enough money for a big mailer would have helped.
I’m not unhappy with the result: yes, I’ll take the Irvine Company over Dave Ellis and the likes of Poseidon every time. And Ron took on Ellis much more effectively than Tamaribuchi, so he gets some credit.
In hindsight, being the only person other than Fox or Gaido to buy space in Larry’s slate mailer probably wasn’t the best idea.
That $6,000 almost certainly would have been better spent not tying himself to the the electoral anchor that was Larry Agran this year.
The rejection of Larry was quite impressive.
He only needed 30% to win. If he got the votes of everyone who liked Agran, he’d have won with room to spare.
It took a series of articles in the Weekly years ago, but people finally know who Steve Rocco is:
ORANGE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT Governing Board Member, Trustee Area 7
Completed Precincts: 164 of 164
Vote Count Percentage
* RICK LEDESMA 16,756 57.0%
TIM PEREZ 9,363 31.8%
STEVE ROCCO 3,300 11.2%
You’ve got it backwards… Weakly readers all voted for him! They are hipsters after all.
From where I sit this chilly but clear Wednesday morning it looks like a damn good night for Anaheim. If the weenies who were complaining about Tait pushing around the other four losers were mad then, well, watch out. The people of Anaheim know he’s got their backs. Now, I doubt the others will be bringing the Moreno deal back next month, especially since Kring now knows how little it means to be Moreno’s girlfriend.
Measure N, the usual perfidious government lie to hide what’s going on seems to have lost. I am amazed and heartened.
And finally, we now know that Jesus wants little Lorri to return to her Good Works and leave politics to others, an outcome that just has to be good for Anaheim.
Overall, the Kleptocracy took it in the shorts yesterday; maybe there is a benevolent Deity after all.
“IRVINE has gone even MORE Republican and developer-slave”
When was Irvine ever not “Developer-Slave”? Just look at the name of our town, fer-cryin’ out loud. The Developer interests that won this election are the same developer interests that won in 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012. They even used the same political hit men — Dave Gilliard and the Strader family.
Also, you forget, these are only the second- and fourth- most powerful developer interests in town. Lennar may have won this round of the game, but Irvine Company writes the rules.
Lennar won, but this is not a gold-plated result for them. Their “point man”, Jeff, didn’t win. Schott did. There are deep divisions within the Republican slate (Christina Shea fired Jeff Lalloway in 2010, for example). With the common enemy of Larry Agran gone, expect cracks to show in Shea-Lalloway-Choi front. It’s unclear to me to what degree Lynn feels she has, through hard work, established her own base and can maneuver somewhat-independently of Lennar.
Time will tell.
“Will they really keep their wink-and-nod promise to the Chinese Americans to stick the shiv in the Veterans Cemetery, or will those Chinese Americans end up feeling like fools?”
Neither.
This wasn’t an issue with any Irvine Chinese I know. It’s an issue for Lennar, and for a few specific neighborhoods near the Great Park.
It’s no secret that Lennar is going to try to spike the Veteran’s Cemetery, probably through the budgeting process in D.C.
Lennar won the election.
Connect the dots.
We’re not done fighting for this cemetery.
I
In a significant win for drug policy reform not just in CA but in the US. Oregon, AK & DC vote to legalize adult consumption of marijuana. Guam adopts medical marijuana, we almost win in Florida at 57% (stupid to have run a constitutional amendment) and a resounding victory on prop 47 at almost 59%. In the mid-terms. We may see this as the beginning of reducing the influence of LE organizations on drug policy. Interesting enough the CCPOA did not back the No on 47 campaign. Yeah it was a bad night for the democrats, but a good night for reform. Which is weird.
What a predictable disaster for Solorio! SQS less so predictable but equally disasterous.
Can she get her classroom back or is she now part of the “machine”.
She looks like a one hit wonder and Jose like another loser from the WASTELAND that is SanTana.
Because every time I try to re-post the local elections item that I put up yesterday evening it shuts down the site, I’m just going to put the liveblog portion into a comment here:
First results will be posted at 8:05. You’ll find them at this OC Registrar of Voters link. Once I mentally and emotionally process the initial results, I will be out doing some light and brief party hopping and probably won’t be back until 10:00 or later. So you’re on your own for a while; put what you want to in comments.
A reminder: if past practice is a guide, Orange County will post all of the absentee ballots that arrived in time to be scanned prior to the election in one big chunk — but then will say that “0% of the precincts” have been counted. This routinely drives people insane. So you’ll want to note the absentee ballot figures and SUBTRACT THEM from the later votes if you want to get able to extrapolate based on the number of precincts to what you think will be the final result. In other words, “25% of precincts” means that you have the “early absentees PLUS one quarter of the precincts; it does not mean “25% of the vote is shown.” It is WAY WAY MORE than 25% of the vote, because that first gush of results may have half the vote. It’s missing only (1) votes cast at the polls; (2) absentees that came in on time but too late to tabulate in advance (including those turned in at the polls) which are sometimes called “late absentees” even though they’re still “on time”; and “provisional ballots” that are cast when someone can’t cast a normal vote because, for example, they have moved.
To make it easier for us to calculate where we stand, I’m going to put in that first report as soon as it hits; it’s why I’m not already out celebrating with people. We’ll then be able to use that to do the necessary subtractions when it comes time to forecast close races. (We really should know which precincts have reported and what their track record is if we want to do it right, but if you’re reading OJB for free you’ve already decided that you’re OK with Quick and Dirty reporting. It’s better than nothing — usually — and is easier to update when new info comes in than if we just hang around and then start from scratch.)
DISCUSSION OF RESULTS BEGINS BELOW!
We know that votes-by-mail in OC favor Republicans, but in OC that doesn’t always tell you what you need to know. The full results of the first run are included below for our later calculations of the race; I’m just going to run through some that I find of immediate interest.
Don’t pay much attention to the statewide races — except that they tell you that early voters like to two alleged “moderates who can win” — Peterson nd Swearingen — a few votes more than the rest. Top-polling Dems: Jerry Brown and John Chiang.
No surprises among the OC portions of the Congressional races. Jose Solorio is trounced by over 25 in absentees — running just ten points ahead of Gary Kephart.
Sharon Quirk-Silva will start with a 16-point deficit to make up based on the early count. I won’t say that it’s impossible; I will say that it’s very difficult. Wendy Gabriella is having a tough time in South County, but I don’t think that she’ll end up losing by 29. And here’s a surprise to everyone except Vern — Matt Harper is 14 points ahead of Keith Curry!
KC Jones loses to Haskins so far. Gila Jones is way ahead of Ellen Addonizio in votes-by-mail! Congratulations to the Gila monster, because that’s going to be hard to make up.
Valerie Amezcua and Shuntelle Andrews virtually tied for 2nd behind John Palacio in the Santa Ana USD race. Al Jabbar ahead in VBMs in Anaheim UHSD, which means he’s probably won. Hoagy Holguin is mounting a decent challenge to Randle-Trejo in the same board, but absentees would tend to favor him. Baeza gets repudiated!
DR Heywood and Ryan Ruelas start out with a head start for the two seats behind Jeff Cole on the Anaheim City Board.
No surprise that Steel’s ahead in absentees for the Supes; but look at Bartless, up by 12.6 over Ming! Parrish will wait for today’s vote with a 4% lead over Guillory.
In Anaheim, Tom Tait starts out with almost a 35% lead over Lucille Kring, who is 3 points ahead of Lorri Galloway. LoGal will pick up some from today, probably, but probably not much.
The leaders after VBMs are the three Republicans. Murray is running about 1000 votes ahead of Eastman — which should be a wake-up call for Eastman, because that’s 1000 betrayals by the Pringle supporters. She’s in third, just behind Vanderbilt. Expect Murray to fall and Eastman to rise in today’s vote. Moreno has about 2200 votes to make up to finish 2nd and 3200 to finish ahead of Murray — but he wasn’t ever going to get a lot of absentees, so that was always about turnout in the flatlands.
In Brea, the developers ticket did best. Brett Murdock is in 4th. I think that he’ll pick up some now.
In Costa Mesa — deja vu. Foley is running well ahead, 300 ahead of Righeimer, who is 250 ahead of Humphrey. What part of “YOU HAVE TO VOTE FOR BOTH KATRINA AND KAY” do Costa Mesans not understand?
In Fullerton, Bennet is breathing on Sebourn’s neck for 2nd, 250 votes. I don’t think he pulls it off, though.
In Garden Grove, Bao is ahead of Broadwater in VBMs, by 550. Phat Bui is way way ahead for Council, while Kris Beard is merely way ahead.
Huntington Beach is too depressing to discuss at this point, but hopefully it’s just the conservative slant of the VBMs talking.
In Irvine Choi and Gaido running almost even for Mayor in VBMs! Schott and Lalloway divided by just one vote — See, Gail Eastman, that’s how an HONEST slate works! — and both ahead of Melissa Fox by less than 200. Agran is 1000 cotes behind the Republicans.
In Mission Viejo, Greg Raths is in the lead!
We’ll skip Newport.
In Orange, Kim Nichols is clearly going to take 2nd or even 1st!
Placentia is a dogfight for 2nd.
RSM finds Petrilla out of the money based on VBMs!
Santa Ana: Pulido up by 20. Mark Lopez’s withdrawal did not take. All the incumbents on Council look to win.
Stanton is slanted towards the incumbents.
It doesn’t look like the good guys are going to make inroads on the OCWD. Nor will I on the MWDOC — one of these days, I’m going to campaign and then we’ll see what happens — but Ron Varasteh is 4th in a tightly packed field for his MWDOC seat, with Sat Tamaribuchi ahead, and any of the four could literally win.
Countywides and bonds: E and G both ahead. All bonds up barely above 55% (K is just short.)
Measure L is WAY WAY UP! Measure M is only up by 7%! Maeasure N trails slightly.
Measure O is LOOOOOOOOOSING in VBMs, by almost 25%! P slightly ahead.
T up by 11% in HB.
In Irvine, V and W both killing it.
In RSM — Measure Z is slightly losing. Buy a bigger ad next time, guys!
In Santa Ana, Measure BB has over 2/3, and is 11 11% ahead of CC!
And that will be that for now. Party time!
Important news from San Juan Capistrano: Sam Allevato’s Pals LOST.
Kramer and Taylor were Sam Allevato’s closest allies on the San Juan Cap. council. and they are GONE. It’s not even close.
CITY OF SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO Member, City Council
Number To Vote For: 3
Completed Precincts: 20 of 20
Vote Count Percentage
PAM PATTERSON 3,431 17.9%
* DEREK REEVE 3,237 16.9%
KERRY FERGUSON 2,893 15.1%
* LARRY KRAMER 2,193 11.4%
ROB WILLIAMS 2,013 10.5%
* JOHN TAYLOR 2,010 10.5%
JAN SIEGEL 1,671 8.7%
STEPHANIE FRISCH 1,528 8.0%
GREG ACHO 230 1.2%
This slipped under my radar, but clean (three out of three) sweep for the sane people down in Capo Unified School District! Lynn Hatton kept her seat, and our friends Martha McNicholas and Gila Jones trounced anti-education zealots. That contentious districts is solidly in good hands for some time to come now – some rare good news for sanity in the South County.
And was it the coveted Orange Juice bounce, propelled by Matt’s strong stance on toll lanes and fire pits, that hurtled him past Newport’s Keith Curry in that assembly race? Musta been. You’d better pull off this toll lane miracle now, Matthew!