Zahra Shoots Wad

And not in any sort of good way.

In 2022 D5 Councilman Ahmad Zahra raised, and spent a small fortune hanging on to his low-pay gig as a Fullerton councilmember. Check it out:

At the end of 2021 Zahra had almost $33K in the bank, the product of furious, rabbit-fornicating fundraising from all sorts of strange people and places. In the next year – an election year – he really went to town putting the screws to donors.

During 2022, Zahra raised an enormous $83K from a wide assortment of unions, boohoos and lots of out-of-towners. And guess what? He spent it all! Plus $26K more. At the end of the year he had only $6.5K to his politcal name. This may be a record for Fullerton elections, certainly in the new district set up. And that leads to some fun math.

Looking at the election results we can discern two undeniable facts. First, Zahra spent an astonishing $42 per vote, and still won by only 300 votes. And, second, without the nearly 600 votes that went to Zahra’s stooge Latino-named candidate, Tony Castro (who has since disappeared), he would have lost to Oscar Valadez by 300 votes.

It takes money to make money…

These numbers really make you wonder why it was so necessary for Zahra to raise and spend all this loot just to stay on our City Council. The inescapable conclusion is that his political career, such as it is, is the only thing this miscreant has going for himself. He’s not a doctor and he’s not a film maker. He’s an unemployed flim-flam artist. He did use his campaign credit card to pay for personal expenses in 2022, but that sort of self-indulgence can only go so far.

Another conclusion is that he has and will use his position of limited authority to continue fundraising and influence peddling, including and perhaps most of all with the legal marijuana cartel. The end game for Zahra must be for higher office – an elected job like State Assembly where he can continue peddling his brand to a wider audience and get paid a real salary to do it.

But as with most grifters, the end game becomes more remote as the lies pile up; and in politics the less bread you have to cast upon your own waters, the harder things are going to get for you.

Who Wants to be a Doctor?

Zaius: Yes, of course I am a doctor!

Ahmad Zahra mas mentioned over and over again that he is a doctor, believing this exhalation will give him standing. After all getting into and and out of medical school, plus passing the necessary qualifying exercises takes dedication and effort and conveys a prestige unknown to us mere mortals. He has even claimed to have assisted his brain surgeon dad in lengthy open cranial endeavors. Of course his followers believe the tale.

But is Zahra really even a physician? Normally, nobody would question this assertion; but, since Zahra spends so much time lying about himself, the question needs to be posed.

Could be…

Nobody seems to have seen his diploma or his license to practice medicine. Meantime, diligent efforts to find any mention of his name on the rolls of physicians in this country and the UK has drawn blanks.

So whazzup?

Man of Medicine?

If Zahra really is a physician in the USA, hell, or anywhere, I would sure welcome proof of it. But getting the truth out of Ahmed is like squeezing blood out of a stone.

Unemployed and Out of Touch, That’s Our Boy

Here’s something for Latino voters to contemplate: their current representative in District 5, Ahmad Zahra. Dope near schools. What a piss-poor idea. Well in Zahra’s orbit, marijuana money talks. Loudly. Zahra is always bleating some “progressive” platitude or other to manage his little social media coterie, but the fact is he is in deep with the weed lobby despite the Latina opposition that spurred a recall attempt.

Here’s the front of a mailer we just received:

And of course there’s a backside.

No, Zahra isn’t working for D5. In fact he isn’t working for anybody. He’s unemployed. But he is looking for work – with the Long Beach Cannabis Cartel that’s just dying to make inroads into Fullerton.

LEADERS NOT LIARS

The Fullerton Collaborative hosted a candidate forum, which featured some good questions and some not so good. It featured 5 out of 6 City Council candidates running in Districts 3 and 5 this year. Shana Charles received a hall pass and did not stay for the forum.

Ahmad Zahra was his usual full of himself self. The notorious man who never wasted a selfie opportunity was untruthful, effortlessly deceived the audience, remaining true to his duplicitous self.

SERIAL LIAR

Here’s a list of the many, oh, so many lies.

LIE #1: “The district I’ve called home for the last 21 years.”

TRUTH: Zahra’s voter registration record doesn’t agree.

LIE #2: “As a medical doctor.”

TRUTH: Zahra is not a licensed medical doctor or a medical professional of any kind.

LIE #3: “The budget needs to be reflective of the needs of our community.”

TRUTH: Zahra wasted a million dollars of the people’s money frivolously suing a local blog and its authors, and were it not for the new Council, that bill would still be accumulating. A million dollars would have paid for a fire engine and more than a handful of Parks and Recs, Police, or Firefighter, or Maintenance employees.

LIE #4: “We have a shortage of staff and we need to invest in those areas.”

TRUTH: Zahra had an opportunity to pass a budget with a 1% cut and $1 million dollars to the City Manager to fill staffing concerns. He voted no, not once, but on three different City Council meetings. 

LIE #5: “I would love to see more drug programs and engaging our school district on drug prevention programs.”

TRUTH: Zahra advocated for publicly and voted for on four separate occasions to have weed sold in Fullerton with only a 100 foot buffer zones to schools or homes or churches or parks.

LIE #6: “Supportive housing is crucial, but we need to make sure we are also outreaching and creating transparency.”

TRUTH: 1600 Commonwealth is an affordable housing development and so little transparency and outreach was done that the neighbors protested en masse and killed the deal with Pathways of Hope because of lack of outreach and transparency.

LIE #7: “We need to make sure our parks are maintained and cleaned.”

TRUTH: Zahra voted to give away Union Pacific Park in the heart of his district to a for-profit event planner for weddings.

LIE #8: “I have been one of the most engaged Council members. Everybody knows I’m out there.”

TRUTH: Woodcrest neighborhood mothers and residents have come to one Council meeting after another in the past 2 years complaining about Zahra’s lack of accessibility and lack of engagement with them. But then again, they are not kissing his ass and stroking his giant ego. He works with the Center for Healthy Neighborhoods. Why? Because their director donates to his campaign and their employee Egleth Nuncci is his permanent tag-a-long. No other non-profit or community group gets any engagement from Zahra.

LIE #9: “We also need to expand our ability to do corporate partnerships.”

TRUTH: Zahra strong armed Republic Services, the City’s trash hauler to give his pet project city in a foreign country a trash truck and then promptly took a selfie and credit for saving democracy. That’s not a corporate partner. That is a quid pro quo.

LIE #10: “I have worked with this Council, despite sometimes the hard times and differences we’ve had.”

TRUTH: Zahra only works for and with Zahra. He has no contact with his Council colleagues. So how are you working with this Council, Ahmad?

LIE #11: “Be faithful with my votes.”

TRUTH: Zahra made an impassioned speech about how important voting was in his country of Syria and that the at large Council seat vacated by Jesus Quirk-Silva should be determined in a special election to betray the people and his faith in democracy the very next meeting and appoint the elderly disaster Jan Flory, who in turn voted to appoint him to the Orange County Water District and its healthy stipend, one he took without objection and then donated to his campaign.

LIE #12: “We see so many Councilmembers come and then they make backroom deals.”

TRUTH: See TRUTH #11.

The truth is Ahmad Zahra is nothing more than a serial liar. Things come apart so easily when they are held together by lies. It’s always the ones with dirty hands doing all the finger pointing isn’t it?

Why Do You Think They Call It Dope?

Here’s some Tuesday photo fun.

Apparently, Ahmad Zahra held some sort of meet and greet (I’ll talk to anyone, but I won’t tell them the truth) Sunday morn, behind a donut store.

There to greet him were some protesters who seem to be angry that he voted several times to allow marijuana dispensaries within 100 feet of homes and schools – at the behest of emissaries from the Long Beach weed store cartel.

Now, that’s not very good, is it.

The Line Up

(Revised: I missed the Date Qualified column and so missed the fact that Shelby Perea and Rosalia Guillen did not qualify for the ballot. The text of the post is revised to reflect this)

Here’s the list of candidates in Fullerton’s 3rd and 5th District elections in November.

The most notable feature is the number of Spanish surnamed candidates in the 5th, a fact that makes it much easier for the arrested and charged incumbent, Ahmad Zahra, to continue his sanctimonious hypocrisy from the dais.

This is all ya got?

We already know that Tony Castro is an unemployed dead-beat who gives off the aroma of a Zahra plant meant to split the Latino vote. Oscar Valadez seems to be a good Catholic boy with a family, a house, a real a job, and standing in the community – all of which set him apart from the empty suit, Zahra. Valadez’s statement says a lot of popular sounding stuff and he’s a Stanford graduate. Geez, it would be nice to have a councilman who wasn’t a preening, self-absorbed weasel? Oscar has the support of Fred Jung, so that’s another positive indication. Zahra wants to save murals and “assets.” He says he’s lived in Fullerton for 21 years which is probably just another Zahra lie he figures nobody can disprove. Among his other supporters of dubious intelligence, he lists the octogenarian bird-brain Molly McClanahan – which is almost cause for pity.

This is a Boohoo. There’s just no getting around it…

Over in D3 there are 3 candidates. We’ve already been introduced to Shana Charles, whose statement includes “progressive” catch-phrases. Her statement about restoring Fullerton’s “gutted” services means one thing – another swing at a tax increase. Her backers are the Quirk-Silvas, of course. I wonder if she’s ever even bothered to thank the Council for creating a district that she is in and that Jesus Quirk-Silva is not! The second candidate is Arnel Dino. But Dino Arnel sounds way better, so that’s what I’m calling him from now on. Mr. Arnel seems to be a lefty also, which doesn’t bode well. Those who have seen him perform on the Planning Commission are immensely underwhelmed. The final candidate is John Ybarra who seems to have relocated to the 5th District. His campaign statement is concise and rational. It appears to be a somewhat conservative and pragmatic voice. One thing is certain: the other two will never fight for accountability at City Hall.

The final element in this election will be the Independent Expenditure committees. The cops and emergency truck driver unions will back Zahra and most likely Charles – liberals, yes, but public union supporters, uber alles.

Things could be better. Or they might get worse…

Then there’s Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform, an I.E. run by Tony Bushala that evidently has set its sights on Zahra. They have already launched a shot across Zahra’s bow, and are likely to continue the pummeling until Zahra’s attitude improves.