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(First of a series, not necessarily chronological, attempting to examine and explain just how we Orange County citizens got shafted so badly, and if there’s anything we can still do to keep control of our Fairgrounds.)
- Judases Of The OC Fairgrounds:
Dick Ackerman and Allan Mansoor.
All citizens of Costa Mesa, Garden Grove, Fountain Valley and Westminster need to read and digest this story before you go out and vote in November: Assembly candidate Allan Mansoor will continue to distract us with divisive and pointless anti-immigrant gestures, while with the other hand he gives away public control of our precious Fairgrounds for 6,000 pieces of silver. Is this the kind of representation we want in Sacramento? Not me.
1. Forced to return $8000 in tainted contributions
On June 22, just as we were all trying to figure out how Facilities Management West (FMW) had managed to beat out the much public-friendlier American Fairs and Festivals to be Costa Mesa’s “partner” in purchasing the 
Fairgrounds, the Register reported that Mansoor was forced to return nearly $8000 in contributions from donors who had business before the Council that Mansoor intended to vote on. Nearly $6000 of that was from FMW parties and their thinly concealed front groups, who were negotiating to finance and operate the Fairgrounds. (The other $2000 was from Segerstrom, not Fairgrounds-related.)
You see, Costa Mesa City Attorney Kimberly Hall Barlow had informed the dimwitted Mayor that he could not vote on matters involving these parties when they came before the council (and she had to be alerted to this conflict by vigilant anonymous citizens) but she also told him, incorrectly, that if he just gave back the donations he could go ahead and vote.
So he reluctantly gave that money back, and all this happened over two months earlier, April 13. Why we were just now finding out about it in late June is another mystery; possibly it was thanks to the same vigilant anonymous citizens. But why it came to a head on April 13 is clearer – a special study session on the Fairgrounds sale was coming up the next day!
2. What Allan did for his paymasters
The story of the Great Fairgrounds Swindle is long and convoluted; so much of it happened behind closed doors and in darkened rooms; more of what 
happened comes to light every day, and we will be sharing what we learn with you over the coming weeks and months. It is a story of tireless activism betrayed, and of how in a few weeks we went from what seemed like a perfect solution with American Fairs and Festivals offering everything the public wanted, then somehow suddenly ended up in a 55-Year marriage with arrogant profiteers Facilities Management West, which, as Reggie Mundekis documents in her pithily titled dissection of the deal, “Can’t Get Any Worse.” (for now, click on that link for sure if you want to see what we are so upset about!)
One thing we are certain of is that Mayor Mansoor played an indispensable role during the months of April through June, in steering the deal away from American Fairs to his contributors FMW. In future installments we’ll look more closely at:
- Allan’s constant, cryptic, unexplained claims of “concerns” with American Fairs throughout the spring, and his lone vote against them at the May 10 meeting;
- Allan’s insistence May 4 on naming three new unpaid consultants (including the indescribably problematic Jim Righeimer) who were obvious FMW shills;
- The shameless behavior of these consultants throughout early May, functioning as spies for FMW and informing them of every detail of the supposedly confidential negotiations with American Fairs, thus sabotaging them;
- How Allan managed to turn a majority of the Council around to backing FMW on May 18, and closed the rotten deal on June 22.
The Mayor may have limited abilities, but for Facilities Management West he turned out to be a very wise investment.
3. Wait – he gave the money back, so what’s the big deal?
Good question, I thought the same thing at first. But let us count the ways it’s still wrong:
- The relevant ordinance is Costa Mesa Municipal Code 2-68G, which states he can’t vote on an issue affecting the financial interests of anyone who’s contributed $250 or more to him, for one year. It says nothing about whether you give the money back or not. So he violated that law. (Hey – didn’t he just declare Costa Mesa a “Rule of Law City?”) But maybe it’s a dumb law, too broadly written, and not to be taken literally? Nope, the law makes sense because:
- Even if he did give back the contributions after a period of time, they were still essentially an interest-free loan – a great thing for a campaign to get; and he had at least 2-3 thousand of this money for over six months.
- As anyone who’s raised money for a campaign knows, the earlier you get money the easier it is to keep raising money; so again, that extra 2-3 thousand early on REALLY helped!
- Does anyone seriously think that these donations won’t re-appear in the coming months, from the same sources, when he really needs them? It’s just as though Allan said, “Here, hold this dough for me for a few minutes, I’ve gotta go vote.” (Rest assured my research team will be watching his finance reports like a hawk till November.)
- This is a pattern with Allan. I’ve learned of several other cases similar to the one of Jeff Matthews, who after donating several thousand dollars to the Mayor’s campaign, was gratefully appointed to the Parks Commission. It could be Allan is a political sociopath who sees nothing wrong with this, just like Huntington Beach’s legendary Dave Garofalo or Chicago’s f-ng golden Rod Blagojevich. If so, it’s good to know that now before we send him to Sacramento.
- And in most striking contrast is this: Allan approached OC Marketplace owner Jeff Teller (a Republican) who was also part of the American Fairs and Festivals consortium, and asked him for a donation. Jeff “respectfully refused,” protesting that his issues would be coming before the Council and create a conflict of interest for both of them. Hm. Notice that Allan soon after voted AGAINST A
merican Fairs – the only councilmember to do so on May 10.
City Attorney Barlow didn’t think of any of this when she advised Allan to give the money back and go ahead and vote – or at least she didn’t think much of it. (She is a nice lady who is very much a friendly member of the gang who put this deal together. I’m told that she regularly sings karaoke at Skosh Monahan, the pub where the final touches of this rotten deal were sketched out on a cocktail napkin.)
4. Why pick on poor little Allan Mansoor?
That’s sort of a good question, given that he is a relatively minor player in the overall Great Fairgrounds Swindle. We pick on Mansoor for at least three reasons:
- For much of the year he masqueraded as a great champion of public, local control of the Fairgrounds, so his final crucial support of the group that offers none of that is a grand betrayal.
- He’s running for higher office, which at least gives us one little thing we can do about all this, which is not vote for him.
- And of course because he is an inveterate, dyed-in-the-wool, race demagogue and bully.
But in the larger picture of the Fairgrounds Swindle, Allan Mansoor is just another unprincipled, ambitious tool, no better or worse than fellow bad actors Gary Monahan, Eric Bever, Dick Ackerman, Dave Ellis, Dale Dykema, and many others.
Has Mansoor returned the contribution from Dick Ackerman’s law firm? Since Ackerman was paid by the fairgrounds during this process, although he didn’t lobby, because that would have been illegal, isn’t the contribution by his lobbying firm equally tainted?
The real hypocrisy here is the City of Costa Mesa did the exact same thing as our desperate governator.
They sold out the public oversight of our public fairgrounds to help fix a deficit in their citites budget.Behind closed doors and against near unanimous community dissent . Sound familiar?
FMW promised them more money but the city had to give them all the control…for 55 years.Also the only way to generate the $$$ needed to fulfill the FMW requirements is to develop the hell out of the property and turn it into a Costa Berry Farm.
We were screwed…….
you lost me early on believing the validity of anything in this article when you stated that Mansoor had anti immigrant policies. Totally false. He says over and over how much he appreciates and welcomes immigrants and you turn it around 180 degrees. How can I believe the rest of your article when you start our with blatant lies and also give all readers a clue that this is a hit piece on an anti illegal immigrant guy why mention immigrant on a story about a fair? your true motives showed early step game up man
My point, dead white, which I’ve made in many articles, is that this fixation on illegal immigration by politicians, and their wasting time on stunts like declaring “Rule of Law City” which don’t do anything to get rid of illegals – is something they use as a DISTRACTION, so that their anti-illegal voters don’t notice the things they’re REALLY doing!
Such as what’s in this article. Read on bro. We should both be outraged, even if we disagree on the relative importance of illegal immigration.
Hey Vern………even the Ragister is against this deal……….Although they are against it because it wasn’t stolen “fair and square”…….
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/private-256182-fairgrounds-costa.html
deadwhitemale is getting distracted by the shiny objects…..Allan FMansoWor was helping FMW even when he made the “Rule of Law” declaration. At that time American Fairs was the preferred partner with the city and community. “Blowing up the deal” and getting the fairgrounds back into a public auction scenario was exactly what FMW’s masters wanted.Screw any public oversight!
That’s why they have the lobbying firm California Strategies and Gary Hunt pulling the strings for them in Sacramento. They got the auction with Craig Realty cancelled.They reluctantly had to enter in with the city in negotiations. They had campaign $$ influence with the mayor and council members to rig the secret back room negotiations, they also had their finger on the trigger in Sac., threatening the city with going back out to auction if they didn’t take this deal.
The immigration statements are Mansoor’s M.O. whenever he runs for elected office.The fact that he chose that bad timing was either because he didn’t understand the political ramifications facing the city with the biggest deal it has ever been in negotiations with, or he didn’t care. If it’s the latter , it means he put his own personal political ambitions first and the citizens be damned. If it’s the first, it means he’s not qualified to be a politician and should go back to being a government subsidized employee/ jailer.
vern, my objection was u saying anti immigrant when it is anti illegal immigrant. that kind of spin is always a warning to me that what follows may also not be true. that’s my objection
as someone who spent a good part of the last 4 months of my life to save the fairgrounds…you are obviously politically motivated Allan had very little to do with it…Katrina and I made the deal and its a heck of a lot better than we thought we had a chance of making…Vern…what’s your tie into this????
Hi Gary! I don’t think I suggested that Allan had a hand in “making the deal,” such as it was. If it turned out “a heck of a lot better” than you thought, then I hate to think how it MIGHT have turned out. Katrina doesn’t seem so happy with it.
Still, thanks for the time you put into trying to work out a deal, I’m sure you were trying to be constructive. I know Katrina has been working on this for a year, and so have many of us.
What I wrote and know about Allan (and correct me if I’m wrong) is he got these contributions and hung onto them until he was forced to give them up; he was the lone voice against American Fairs and for FMW, back when you and Wendy were still backing American Fairs; he kept making vague statements of “concern” about them, and he insisted on naming Riggy and two other unpaid consultants who ended up acting as spies for FMW and sabotaging the American talks.
I know all this from news stories, from studying the meetings of the time, and also from people who I won’t name but I’m sure you know.
“Politically motivated?” “What’s my tie in?” Well, number one I think the deal sucks (sorry no offense) and would like to “blow it up” to steal a phrase from Riggy. Also, I suppose I am politically motivated in two other ways: I’m outspokenly against Allan’s brand of race-based politics (which you, Eric and Wendy seem to have no problem with) and it’s also well known that I’m a progressive Democrat who wants to get more Democrats into the Assembly, for the good of California.
But still I don’t want to write anything unfair or untrue about Allan and will be glad to retract anything that I should. I’m actually done with writing about Allan and the Fairgrounds now, but far from done writing about the Fairgrounds. Now that I have your attention and your e-mail address there’s lots of questions I’d like to ask you, Gary. Right this sec I gotta run… will write later!
Here’s one correction right away:
It was you, Gary Monahan, who moved to add the three stooges as consultants on May 4; Allan cast the deciding yes vote on that. This was over the strenuous objections of both Katrina and Wendy, who knew what trouble Riggy can be and how he’s always got some secret agenda.
And you aren’t politically motivated Skosh? Please don’ t think people believe you were just out to “save the fairgrounds” out of the goodness of your heart and for the love of the fair. Not a chance.
Katrina obviously had concerns about the deal since she voted against it. What does that say about your 4 months of hard work? And some deal you cut “on a napkin” at your bar! Should we really be patting you on the back for letting FMW impose a cap on sponsorship revenue vs percentage? What would have been the better deal for the city in that regard mmmmmmmm?
Seems you were acting out of desperation just to make a deal no matter what it was…God forbid you might have to go back to negotiate with American Fairs. At least they made a detailed presentation to the public about their ideas and plans. Evidently they weren’t motivated enough to pay more money, perhaps more than they thought the deal was worth… after all they were planning on truly keeping the current uses not sublease it, and sell of the name etc. for more money.
You let FMW (though this is not at all a done deal) steal the fairgrounds from the community to get a bit of revenue for the city which won’t change the fact you have to lay off staff . You gave up the local control aspect and put it in the hands of “strangers” and expect the community to just go along with it because the poor city council had a gun to their head. Why did you spend all that money on Measure C when it is looking like that was a waste too?
I guess a better question is “what’s your tie into this?” It certainly isn’t to save the fairgrounds and its current uses because we all know now with FMW in charge there is no control of what they will do with it. Perhaps it is to help your friend Riggy get elected. We see him now speaking on behalf of the deal, including tv, about what a great deal it is for the city yet he really can’t say why. Just like Mansoor could not say why there was more of an “advantage” with FMW over American Fairs or what concerns did he need to have addressed or met before he would consider his vote.
What a sham this whole thing is, and a slap in the face to the community.
Thanks Vern for exposing this. We look forward to reading more about it as well as continue the fight to kill the sale and TRULY SAVE THE FAIRGROUNDS.
Skosh…….in case you forgot……here’s a video of Vern from November 23rd 2009 , in front of the Costa Mesa City Council. He thinks this is a “Tainted Sale”
Sounds to me like Mansoor’s dealings are catching up with him. Good thing Costa Mesa is a “Rule of Law” town! We wouldn’t want abuse of public interests, graft and misrepresentation (lying?) to run rampant in the streets and corrupt our precious elected official! Would we?