Friends For Fullerton's Future
FFFF supports causes that promote intelligent, responsible and accountable government in Fullerton and Orange County
2nd District County Supervisor and former County Treasure, John Moorlach, has endorsed Shawn Nelson’s campaign for 4th District Supervisor. Here’s the press release:
|
|
|
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | CONTACT: Dave Gilliard |
| March 18, 2010 | (916) 626-6804 |
Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach
|
|
| # # # Nelson for Supervisor 2010 • FPPC ID# 1316599 |
|
A few weeks ago I did a pretty tongue-in-cheek post about some guy named Thomas Anthony Gordon, a goon from Santa Ana who popped up out of nowhere with a gratuitous anti-Shawn Nelson post on the Mauve County blog. He criticized Nelson for being soft on criminals because he is a defense lawyer. I pointed out the bad luck since there was a guy in OC with the exact same name and body type as Gordon who had been busted a couple of times for driving on a suspended license – and opined about how that guy was probably in need of a defense lawyer himself.
At the time I believed Gordon was just prostituting himself for Lewis/Cunningham and hence, Tom Daly. I may have been wrong. That was before I understood the deep, moist crevices into which Harry Sidhu’s pocket change had fallen. Of course the common denominator, John Lewis, is still in the picture, although Daly quit the supervisors race to play catch with his kid.
Well check this out. Harry Sidhu, the perpetual office seeker has decided to run for the GOP Central Committee for the 69th Assembly district (which must surely be a record – carpetbagging two districts at the same time, what a hustler). Now for the fun part. Take a look at who was out circulating petitions on the very last day so Hide and Seek Sidhu could “qualify” for the ballot. None other than our old friend Thomas Anthony Gordon. Click on the pdf and take a look.
Gordo! And now we really have to wonder. Is Gordon actually on Sidhu’s payroll? If not, why not? Everybody else is!
Of course, if he is let’s hope he informed his bosses over at the Mauve County where they say they will fire you if you don’t disclose that fact that you are blogging for dollars!
Here’s a painful pill for those Yellowing Observers who offer up their criticisms about the accuracy of our blog.
Today the tattered Fullerton Observer released its Mid March bird cage liner with a front page story on the 4th district Supervisorial race. The story inexplicably claimed that candidates Harry Sidhu, Rose Espinosa and Richard Faher had dropped out of the race. Ay, caramba! Not even close! Jebus, how did that happen?
Actually, when you come to think about it, the screw up is not all that unusual for the Observer where news, editorial, and incompetency are often shot through Sharon Kennedy’s particle accelerator in opposite directions.
Anyway, the Observer elves got hard at work right away making the fix, albeit on-line:
Good Lord. And Sharon Kennedy says we are widely discredited. Hoo boy!
It should be pointed out that the Friends here at FFFF have published 721 blog posts in the last 18 months; and had my bloggers coughed up any thing this errant I would have introduced corporal punishment into our editorial board meetings.
When I posted about my interview with former assemblyman Mike Duvall a week or so ago, we got tons of traffic on the site. An awful lot of people wanted to know what was going on with Duvall – even John and Ken from KFI’s popular radio program talked about our post in a lot of detail.
And it was precisely that recognition from non-establishment voices of John and Ken that got me thinking about some big problems we have here in north Orange County that the so-called “mainstream media” just won’t touch, and specifically the growing problem with carpetbaggers – political gypsy moths who are so hungry for office that they move, or pretend to move, into another district to run for office. We’ve spent a lot of documenting the behavior of these people on this site.
If you think about what’s wrong with politics and some of the people who want to get their hands on governmental power, the issue of carpetbagging really starts to come into sharper focus.
Let’s review what’s been going on in north Orange County.
Last year Linda Ackerman, wife of former State Senator Dick Ackerman pretended to relocate from her “top-secret gated community” in Irvine to run for the 72nd Assembly District to replace Mike Duvall. She cooked a phony address at a friend’s house in Fullerton.
Then late last year somebody called Sue Perez sent up a trial carpetbag balloon against State Senator Lou Correa. With a little coaxing she has mercifully disappeared.
Now we have Lorri Galloway, who has been playing musical residences in the OC 4th Supervisorial District in order to run in the election to replace former Supervisor Chris Norby. Her real home is somewhere up in the hills in the County’s 3rd District. Her new addresses since have been provided by a big campaign contributor and contractor to the City of Anaheim. How shady is that?
And then we have the unfolding spectacle of Hide-and-Seek Harry Sidhu, the worst culprit of them all. Here is a guy who simply believes he can buy an election. He believes he’s entitled to do that.
This fine fellow is also running in the 4th District election, the latest in a seemingly unending series of political campaigns. His real abode is in the 3rd District, too.
His carpetbagging caused immediate embarrassment for himself. First he created a fraudulent voting address at 2230 West Lincoln in Anaheim:
That’s right: the somewhat marginal pink apartment building behind the pool hall was his alleged home. Coming from an extremely wealthy guy who lives on a big estate in the hills that lie was so unbelievable, that one short month later Sidhu came up with yet another, only slightly more plausible address on Lucky Way:
But this is where Sidhu really lives: a huge estate that sprawls across a wide swath of the 3rd District. It even has an aviary with exotic birds.
And check out the blatant shamelessness of this guy. He actually did a campaign “kick-off” event fundraiser for his 4th District carpetbagging run at his fancy 3rd District estate – “The Sidhu Family Residence.” Damnation, how stupid does this clown think we are? The answer, of course, is very.
Now I ask you: what weird combination of ego, insecurity, lust for power, hunger for recognition, and total disrespect for their would-be constituents animates these people? Whatever that personality mixture is, it’s toxic for politics and accountable government. These are exactly the sort of people that need to be kept away from authority at all cost.
Well, we helped get rid of Mrs. Ackerman and Mrs. Perez, and we’re doing our best to keep the latest carpetbaggers out of our 4th District. But I see a real trend here, and it’s not good. Carpetbagging success is bound to make it even worse.
And that’s a real story that people need to pay attention to.
The conservative Orange County Lincoln Club has officially endorsed Shawn Nelson for the 4th District Supervisorial seat.
The Fullerton City Council held a special meeting the other night to address the City’s projected budget deficits. It ain’t pretty.
But even uglier was watching the discussion unfold on what to whack and what to keep when the discussion turned to the City’s membership in the California League of Cities – a do nothing operation run by bureaucrats for the purpose of promoting their own policies. The annual membership cost is something like $75,000 – not an inconsiderable sum.
To their credit both Shawn Nelson and Sharon Quirk-Silva recognized the elective character of this annual expense and are willing to dispense with it – a gesture both symbolic and practical. And then into the breach to save the day leaped council members Don Bankhead and Pam Keller, relating how important membership in this organization really is. Looks like Dick Jones is the swing vote on this.
Hmm. Bankhead and Keller. League of Cities. Now why does that ring a bell?
Oh yeah, now I remember. And here. These two spendthrifts attended the October 2008 League of Cities conference in Long Beach, a mere 25 miles from their front doors and racked up $400 per night waterfront hotel bills. Keller’s total was an embarrassing $1200+. Not even her die-hard posse could defend that profligacy.
The League of Cities is wonderful metaphor for government that can’t be bothered to control its spending and is accountable to no one. The real purpose of this operation is to give bureaucrats and ambitious local politicians a chance to hobnob, network, self-promote, and eat, drink and be merry on our dime. In some circles it is being claimed that Keller is using the League to wangle a seat on the OCTA, where her mission will be to promote Curt Pringle’s HSR agenda.
As long as free spenders like Bankhead and Keller promote this expensive joke we know we are not being properly represented.
And thanks to Nelson and Quirk-Silva for being accountable to the people of Fullerton.
After my meeting with Mike Duvall the other day, I decided to see If I could learn anything more about the events of last summer that led to Mike’s ultimate resignation as the 72nd District State Assemblymen.
One of our good Friends happens to know a well-placed legislative aide who works in Sacramento and who, I was told, could help fill in some of the gaps. So I called this person.
According to this individual, it is not at all unusual for legislative staffers to request audio records of committee meetings; in fact it is a fairly standard practice. Thus, the fact that Jeff Miller’s aide requested a record of the meeting doesn’t signify any sort of prior conspiracy by Miller – or anyone else for that matter. My source logically pointed out that Miller, to a lesser extent, ended up getting painted by the same brush as Duvall.
Instead what this person says happened is that the embarrassing audio record did end up in the wrong hands – at least as far as Duvall is concerned. My source indicates that Duvall’s personal enemy Jon Fleischman did indeed come to possess a copy of the tape; and sometime between July 2009 and late August 2009 orchestrated the leak of the information to KCAL’s Dave Lopez and the OC Weekly’s Scott Moxley.
Although Fleischman’s motives were said to be personal, others such as OC Republican power broker Mike Schroeder were also aware of the impending ambush, according to my source, although Schroeder’s motives for participating in Fleishman’s scheme in some way or other were not made abundantly clear.
As with my interview with Duvall, I can not immediately confirm the veracity of my source’s information, and the journalists in question will surely not reveal their source(s). Still, our insider is indeed well-placed to know what happened and I confer a certain level of credence to the story.
What is still unknown is what other high-level Republicans knew of the tape, it’s impending release, and the obvious political fallout from that release. If indeed Fleischman was the mastermind of the Duvall ambush, it is very hard to believe he would dare to do so without the consent of at least some of the OC Republican ruling party bosses – folks such as Schroeder, Dick Ackerman, and even Party Chairman, Scott Baugh. Why these party worthies would prefer, or even allow a public scandal instead of a quiet resignation by Duvall is something we may contemplate at our leisure.
However, as I noted yesterday, discussion of the Linda Ackerman candidacy on the integrity platform seemed to appear on cue, if way out of left field, before the ink had even dried on Duvall’s letter of resignation.
UPDATE: I HAVE POSTED A FOLLOW-UP STORY HERE, ABOUT THE SPECIAL OC ANGLE OF THE STORY.
It must be tough when just about everything anybody says about you is prefaced with the words “disgraced former assemblyman.” But that’s what Mike Duvall lives with every day.
On Wednesday I had lunch with Duvall.
Now, I’ve known Mike for a long time and thought that it would be interesting to hear his take on the events of last summer that led to his resignation and replacement as our State Assemblyman by Chris Norby. And he seemed eager to tell his side of the story.
Duvall has lost a lot of weight and looks pretty good. He attributes this to getting exercise and is benefiting from being away from the non-stop Sacramento smorgasbord provided courtesy of all those lobbyists. Well, I guess every cloud has it’s silver lining.
We met at Mike’s office and later moseyed on out for lunch. As our meeting progressed, Duvall shared his thoughts about what happened last summer.
Duvall said that he had become well known in Sacramento for “rocking the boats” of other legislators, and that fact may have been at the root of the events that transpired. He was known, he said, for his unorthodox attitude to Sacramento, even upon one occasion, introducing some of his biker buddies into the Capitol.
Although he can not fully explain their motives, Duvall stated that he believe the likeliest scenario is that he was set up by a conspiracy involving Jeff Miller, the assemblyman from Corona, and his aide. He believes the whole thing was either orchestrated or exploited by Republican operative Jon Fleischman, likely in retaliation for the forced resignation of Fleischman’s wife, a former employee in Duvall’s local office. He claimed that Fleischman had become extremely hostile to him personally.
According to Duvall the “hot mike” on the day his comments were recorded was Miller’s, not his; that in retrospect Miller seemed to coach the conversation into its lewd direction; and that Millers aide almost immediately went to retrieve a copy of the recording. Duvall stuck to his story that his comments were not a true revelation of anything that actually happened, and in fact he was just repeating stuff told to him about another legislator altogether.
When I asked him what Jeff Miller’s motive was to cooperate in the alleged set-up, Duvall speculated that it might have been done, at least in part to take heat off of him from the KFI John and Ken team who had been mercilessly attacking Miller, and who subsequently appeared to have stopped their attacks.
What still remains a mystery, except to the participants, and not explained by Duvall, are the events that transpired between July 2009, when the recording was made, and late August, 2009 when the story finally broke. Almost two months passed.
I have previously wondered about the on the role of Ackerman, Inc. in events of July-September 2009, since on September 10th Linda Ackerman received and responded to an almost immediate communication from the Register’s Martin Wisckol about her possible candidacy – while she was vacationing in Europe. It struck me as very odd that Linda Ackerman’s name would suddenly occur to Wisckol out of the blue without previous coaching. Duvall couldn’t shed any light on that.
But when I asked Duvall if he thought his support for the OC County Fair last summer might have played a role in the motive of someone trying to get rid of him, he acknowledged the possibility.
Is Duvall telling the whole story? Was he really set up, or was it simply the case that his unfortunate comments, true or not, were exploited by political enemies after the fact? The passage of the two month period and then the sudden revelation has all the earmarks of an orchestrated attempt to get rid of him.
The story about a conspiracy to set him up certainly sounds plausible. But without any real evidence to support his claims, Mike Duvall is going to have a hard time convincing a skeptics of his innocence.
Harry Sidhu has been playing campaign website musical chairs and it had finally started to get noticed. But not in a good way. You see, Sidhu has his personal website to which he directs readers of his ghostwritten newsletters, and it includes a collection of endorsements that he got, presumably, from any of his many previous runs for public office. But it doesn’t say that.
We first reported on the situation, here. Tucked into the upper right hand corner is a link to Sidhu’s Supervisor campaign website.
We have learned that our State Assemblyman, Chris Norby has just sent Harry Sidhu an email demanding that Sidhu remove Norby’s name from the list that intentionally misleads people into believing that Norby – as well as a host of Orange County politicos – is endorsing Harry Sidhu for 4th District Supervisor.
Chris Norby has not endorsed Harry Sidhu for the 4th District Supervisors seat. Norby has endorsed Fullerton councilman Shawn Nelson for the job he once held.
Visitors to our site are well aware that Sidhu has proven that it doesn’t bother him to fool his constituents. in fact, his first act as a candidate to represent us was to lie about his “residence” in the seedy Calabria Apartments – right next to the Linbrook Billiard hall.
Sidhu has a big problem with the truth. Let’s see if he ever cleans up his website misdirection.
A quick google search of Lorri Galloway discovers this website, constructed during her 2008 re-election campaign.
The site appears to have been manned/operated by “researcher” and current Mauve County wholesale purveyor of sanctimony, Cynthia Ward, aka Colony Rabble, so you can take it for what it’s worth.
As a public service we pass it along.
