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Here’s what you missed if you played my drinking game while watching the Huntington Beach Council meeting last night, and blacked out before the public comments section was over: They voted 5-2, Ortiz and Peterson against, to stay in the OC Power Authority.
Oh… is that not what you came here to read about? Ugh, fine.
In the days leading up to the February 1st meeting, prominent Orange County QAnons fired up their outrage machines to gather phone calls and emails in support of Mayor Pro Tem Tito Ortiz, and a few HB community forum admins invited their followers to a protest at City Hall (despite the meeting being conducted over Zoom).
Insane Coup Posse sighting? Sure looks like Joe Magapit Vargas preserving the Major memory. (Click for larger view)
Smelling an opportunity to network, Major Williams, an early-bird Republican gubernatorial candidate for 2022, stopped by to say a few words on Tito’s behalf. And if you’re wondering who this guy is, I highly recommend reading his ‘Platform Q & A’ which includes answers to hard-hitting policy questions like, “What is your shoe size?” and “Do you have a black wife?”
However, it seemed that the Tito supporters who called or wrote in were outnumbered, and attendance at the City Hall protest was underwhelming despite the appearance of both Major Williams and Amber Nichole Miller. And as Councilman Mike Posey pointed out last night, not even Tito’s election support was particularly remarkable… he only received 14.8% of the vote in an election with record-breaking turnout, against opponents with a fraction of his funding and fan base. With all that in mind, it’s completely baffling that HBCC decided to indefinitely table the agenda item stripping Ortiz of his Mayor Pro Tem title.
But they didn’t let Tito off the hook completely.
Mayor Kim Carr mercifully ended the public flogging – sorry, public comments – after three whole hours, presumably to make time for her own lengthy lecture about bipartisanship, integrity, and unity. The HB Forum Dwellers said she sounded like a mother scolding a petulant child, and I have to agree. Everyone took their turn chastising Tito for his manifold snafus, including his failure to understand basic legislative principles and procedures, poor attendance, and social media scandals – except, of course, Councilmember Erik Peterson, who excused Tito’s incompetence as “a different way of doing things.”
Like many people following the situation, I had thought the vote of no confidence was a sure thing. After weeks of congressional Democrats failing to hold Republican leaders accountable for inciting the January 6th insurrection, it was a relief to feel heard by our community. One of my Twitter followers aptly described this meeting as “the HB City Council Group Therapy Session.” Sure, we didn’t get what we wanted at the end of the night– but we got the catharsis we needed during the public comments.
I imagine most of you are wondering why council members would introduce such a controversial item if they were just going to table it, and I’m afraid I don’t have a concrete explanation for you at this time. But here’s my working theory:
Me, Tito Watch, concocting my “Working Theory.”
Mayor Carr and Councilmember Dan Kalmick were fed up watching Tito utterly fail at governance and leadership, but they knew they’d fail to remove him without bipartisan support. They approached Councilmember Posey because he seemed the most likely to sign on.
Community Choice Energy is Posey’s pet project, and the final presentation and vote was scheduled for this meeting. Voting in favor of CCE wouldn’t look good if local conservatives called en masse to voice their opposition. Without any intention of voting no confidence, he agreed to put his name on the item to distract conservatives from the CCE vote.
Remember – all of this is speculation! – but if I’m right about the plan, we absolutely fell for it. I read the first 200 emails to HBCC for this meeting, and only two or three mentioned CCE at all. There were two calls in support last night [and one was from Fullerton’s Jose Castaneda – Vern] That’s it.
But regardless of whatever political shenanigans did or did not occur, one thing is absolutely indisputable: Conservatives view Tito’s ceremonial position on city council as a reflection of their values. And they fought so hard for him to keep it that they sacrificed their actual values.
Pure Poetry in Motion.
“And as Councilman Mike Posey pointed out last night, not even Tito’s election support was particularly remarkable… he only received 14.8% of the vote in an election with record-breaking turnout, against opponents with a fraction of his funding and fan base.”
He was the highest vote getter on a “pick three” ballot. That’s a pretty high percentage.
Mike Posey came in first in 2018
– 13.1%
– pick four ballot
– 71% voter turnout in OC
– no celebrities in the race
Tito Ortiz came in first in 2020
– 14.8%
– pick three ballot
– 86% voter turnout in OC
– he WAS the celebrity in the race
Of course Tito did well in the election, but winning >2% more than the top winner in a previous election year (particularly when you can make national news with an Instagram post) isn’t as impressive as some of his supporters seem to think.
Just saying it’s not a poor showing.
That’s all.
As the election results correspondent here, I’ll try to give you a definitive answer:
First, checking the “official” final results of the county (OJB version) — found here at http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2020/11/oc-final-results-1125-pending-recount-etc/, and search on, oh, “Silkerson” to get you to these results — we can see, after summing the votes for the 15 candidates and finding 248,780, that the minimum number of voters was 94,927 if every voter voted for three candidates (well, the last one would have voted for two.) You can tell that this didn’t happen because almost the same number of people voted for Kalmick (30,310) and Moser (30,185), but that the third person on their slate, Oscar Rodriguez, got only 21,696 votes — about 8,500 fewer than Moser.
(Digression: I was going to write about this at the time, but never got around to it. This sort of thing doesn’t happen accidentally: there must have been a concerted effort to, in light of Tito’s very likely win, support only the two candidates who happened to be white and more centrist. While it screwed Oscar over, it had the positive result of keeping Gracey VDM off of the Council. They had better pull out all of the stops for Oscar if he runs again in 2022 — or they won’t get the Latino votes that Oscar brought in this time. One little noticed implication of these results, by the way, is that the HBPOA endorsement — which went to Ortiz, Kalmick, and I forget whether there was a third one, if any — didn’t do a damn thing for Kalmick. Moser finished only 125 votes behind him without it, and I don’t know of any organization that endorsed Moser but not Kalmick to compensate for whatever advantage he got from the POA endorsement.)
Anywhere, that’s not really where to look. We need to look in the “Statement of Votes” produced by the OC Registrar of Voters office, which for 2020’s general election can be found here: https://www.ocvote.com/fileadmin/live/GEN2020/Run_27/sov.pdf. On page 64, 14 lines down, we can see that 119,371 ballots were cast in the Presidential race (89.9%!), which is almost always the highest vote total for any given jurisdiction. (Trump got 59,279 and Biden got 55,481, if you’re wondering. Libertarian Jo Jorgenson got 1,602 to finish third.)
But we’re interested in the Grand Total for the City Council race, and that’s on pages 838-839. It won’t tell you how many of the 119,371 ballots cast had how many votes for Council in were on what ballot, but it will let us divide them up by precinct or (generally more usefully) by larger gradations like SDs 34 vs. 37, ADs 72 vs. 74, or the various school trustee areas. I’ll get to that another time.
Anyway, for now, if we presume that 3/4 of the people voted in the Council race, then Tito got about half of that vote, which is pretty decent. Probably better than Posey in 2018 — but that’s mostly because of the very high turnout.
Why wasn’t Natalie Moser in support? Am I no longer in the universe where she was elected to the HB City Council?
Don’t worry, Greg, you’re still in the universe where she was elected to HB City Council. She made it pretty clear during her speech last night that while she shares our concerns about Tito’s performance and stances, she hopes to find common ground with him. She even encouraged him to wear a mask next time he stood outside for 8 hours intimidating peaceful BLM demonstrators and pissing his pants.
Judging by the conservatives’ reaction to Dan Kalmick last night, I’d say she was probably smart not to put her name on the vote of no confidence. And like I said in the article, they needed a Republican to improve the optics.
Is Hillary still President, then?
One alternative explanation is that Posey was willing to be the fourth vote on the winning side, but not willing to be the third vote on the losing side.
I like your theory more, though, and I hope that it’s true. Good for Posey! (On that front, i mean.)
Interesting how we heard nary a conservative word when Tito voted for Shopoff. They embrace Tito because they view his protest stance vs. BLM to be aligned with their anti-black thoughts. They’re right in that way but in short time they will see that he aligns with whoever pays him and he really needs the money. Anyone who believes that site that says he’s worth $20 million is an idiot. They’ll believe some random site but won’t believe the science behind mask wearing.
Where are the blue lives matter people now as a capitol police officer killed by Q people and Trump supporters is being honored in his death. Nothing. They have nothing. It’s not about supporting the police to them. It’s about the police supporting them. That’s what Protect HB always was for Tito. There’s so much that’s so easy to find for anyone willing to pull on that loose end. You think Jenna won’t talk?
“They embrace Tito because they view his protest stance vs. BLM to be aligned with their anti-black thoughts.”
WOW, aren’t you a stupid & hateful racist with a hair up your arse against your ex star Tito! Go away & promote your lame revenge elsewhere!
Many in HB support Tito for being an HB local, and putting himself in harm’s way by standing & protecting HB biz from what up to the week before, was the norm – BLM rioting, burning, & looting biz! He stopped & prevented fights, but also stopped the BLM push to proceed down Main St to do their rioting!
[reacts with laughy face]
“Many in HB support Tito for being an HB local, and putting himself in harm’s way”
Hey, dipshit — Tito IS “harm’s way” at this point by not wearing a mask — that’s why he’s eventually going to get tossed out of this Octagon!
And I don’t recall seeing any HB BLM “rioting” in real life — though I know that it exists in your fever dreams.
P.S. Vern and I were both HB locals back in the Harriet Wieder days — when the city was famous for surfing rather than maskhole stupidity.
So What Was The Percentage of Insurrectionist that Huntington Beach Sent to Washington DC ??