Vote Dr. Nancy Watkins! And RECALL Ledesma and Miner!
WAKE UP OC! Election Season 2024 is already upon us! Starting February 5 – seven weeks from now – you’ll be voting in the March “primary.” Which I hate to call “primary” because it is the ONLY election for a lot of VERY IMPORTANT RACES – most notably EDUCATION. And the 60% of you living in North and Central County will have an outsized voice on the future of our kids’ education.
And rather than try to remind voters to “VOTE DOWNBALLOT” to GET to those important races, THIS time we’re urging you to first flip to page 3 or 4 of your ballot to VOTE FOR EDUCATION, then “VOTE UPBALLOT!” (Because so many of you – the vast majority – never get that far – thus we get extremists winning.)
This will be especially true of the Orange Unified School District, which includes the fine towns of Orange and Villa Park, along with Anaheim Hills and other parts of East and South Anaheim, Silverado, and parts of Garden Grove and Santa Ana:
These extremist, Culture-Warrior Boards (like the OUSD, and the OC Board of Education) only come to power because what I call “normal people” – i.e. Democrats, independents, and Republicans who care about waste, good government and education, and aren’t driven wild by propaganda about “Critical Race Theory” and sex education – don’t pay attention or vote in these races. But how you vote on those races this March matters a lot more than whether you put “Biden” or “Trump” or “Haley” on your primary ballot.
Because don’t forget, it was only 111 votes, brought out by the funding and evangelizing of anti-gay Megachurch Pastor Jack Hibbs, that got the unqualified Madison Miner elected last year and transformed a functioning School Board into another Extremist Clownshow:
- Firing their distinguished and very popular Superintendent Dr. Gunn Marie Hansen (who was picked right up by Westminster) for no reason, with no notice, wasting a million dollars.
- Bringing shocking proposals to every board meeting in 2023, attempting to censor libraries, steal facility repair funds for personal projects, sell out needed school sites to faith-based charters at deep discounts, and discriminate against special needs and LGBTQ students.
- Illegally changing meeting agendas on the fly and inviting outside agitators in to box out concerned parents and turn meetings into headline-grabbing battlegrounds.
- AND MORE, MUCH MORE.
And look! (Above!) Senator Newman is DOUBLING any money you donate today to this recall! I just donated myself.
Not to be confused with…
OC Board of Education (OCBOE)
Most voters in the OUSD will also be able to vote for the amazing Dr. Nancy Watkins, to take the place of the notorious Ken Williams, the longtime ringleader of the madness on the OCBOE. That race is in “Area 3,” which stretches from Brea, Yorba Linda and Placentia down to Irvine and Lake Forest, including Orange, Anaheim Hills, and Villa Park.
But to really clean out the OCBOE, which has blown millions of dollars on losing lawsuits in the years since Ken Williams has had a majority, while greenlighting ANY AND ALL charter schools good or bad, and constantly fighting with popular, successful Superintendent Al Mijares, we need more than just Nancy Watkins, we need:
The Trifecta of Sanity.
Yes, we need to sweep the Board with:
- BEATRIZ “BEA” MENDOZA in Area 1, which is Santa Ana, most of the Anaheim flatlands, and Tustin – she’s taking on whoever that unmemorable cat was that the Board chose to take the popular Becky Gomez’ place.
AND:
- The brilliant DAVID JOHNSON, who has worked wonders with the Westminster School Board, and will be taking on Tim Shaw, who’s a nice enough conservative but nothing but trouble on a school board – in Area 4, the northwest district stretching from La Habra, Fullerton and Buena Park to Garden Grove and Westminster.
Since all three of these candidates have chunks of Anaheim in their “areas,” we’re proud to say they will ALL be speaking at the next Anaheim Democrats Club meeting, January 4, 7pm, at the Unitarian Church. We’ll be writing more about them, but just remember this time to START WITH EDUCATION and then “VOTE UPBALLOT.” Because, to once again paraphrase the grandfather of conservatism, Edmund Burke:
“The only thing necessary for madness to triumph is for normal people to do nothing.“
. . .
Didn’t want to write this in the text, but it’s both appreciated and ironically appropriate that Josh would help out with this Recall, since the recall reforms enacted by Democrats in the wake of HIS recall make this harder!
Yes, it was anticipated that most recalls would be staged against Democrats, which is why the changes were not a “reform” at all, but a politcal maneuver.
Newman deserved to be recalled after the Gas Tax increase.
Speaking as someone why was inside the decision-making machine at the time, it was not based on the analysis you offer.
It was based on a principle that both major parties know to be true: the greater the turnout in an election, the better that Democrats tend to do. Hence, Democrats wanted to move votes on statewide measures to the general elections in even-numbered years, and Republicans would like to see decisions about candidates made in low-turnout recall and special elections rather than in high-turnout primaries and general elections. It didn’t help the cause of recall proponents that so many of the claims that Carl from San Diego made to get people to sign were provably false. That did substantially piss off legislators.
Yeah, that’s sort of what I said. The blunt reality is that the vast majority of recallable offices in California are held by Democrats and the only way a Republican can win many of these seats is via recall. Make it more onerous and you protect your party.
Not exactly in the spirit of the original amendment.
“Amazing,” “brilliant.” A little sensational, no?
Choose your adjectives for this mic drop speech
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vuL0pgbMMxPWWnnxftgJiLAh2wNfFbv6/view?usp=drivesdk
Yup, that brilliant all right. Bur from what I know of her, it’s hardly amazing.
I think I said “brilliant” about David Johnson. I heard both of them speak; for some reason the DPOC let me vote on their endorsements.
Now I feel bad I didn’t give a “sensational” adjective to Bea, but she’s really good too.
I see a candidate running for office. Of course the bar is set so low these days anyone who sounds remotely articulate can come across as amazing.
Huh. Maybe. But these are pretty great candidates.
Possibly better than the average bear.