According to the OC Registrar of Voters, Doug Chaffee has requested a recount in the election for Fullerton City Council in which he finished 90 votes behind former Po-lice Chief Pat McKinley.
90 votes. A seemingly insurmountable lead, really. After all, any errors in counting are just as likely to go against Chaffee as for him. It sure seems like a fool’s errand, but what the hell, gotta give it that last shot, right?
Not too sure how this effects next Tuesday’s swearing in of McKinley since the recount will not have happened.
A lot of people in Fullerton are wondering why council candidate Doug Chaffee permited himself to be a GOP establishment punching bag. Did his natural inclinations lead him to avoid attacking the out-of-control public employee pension mess as embodied in his two GOP and union backed adversaries? Probably.
If so, it cost him the election.
When he finally reached down and grabbed hold of his huevos he produced this devastating comparison piece between himself and his “public safety” union-backed opponents.
Although effective, it was too little, too late. By the time it came out absentee voting was well underway. The oblique admonition to “bullet vote” was already an effort in vain.
Here’s a fun video of something that occurred a couple weeks ago. The entertainment value is pretty good.
I was minding my own business while having a bowl of delicious Pho at my favorite Vietnamese restaurant – just like I have been doing for 25 years. I was approached by a man inside the restaurant claiming that I was not allowed to park in his parking lot.
I finished my Pho quickly paid my bill and went outside only to be surrounded by a gaggle of Roland Chi supporters. It turns out that this restaurant is in the same center as Roland Chi’s scampaign headquarters! Those guys sure were interested in what I had in my truck!
Once outside I was again approached my the same man who claimed to own the shopping center telling me that I could not park there because it was his parking lot. The man in the video did actually push me, but being the sweet and gentle guy you all know and love I got in my truck and motored off.
Oh, and by the way, guess what I saw parked in front of Chi Headquarters? You guessed it. The white sign theft van!
At close of day 11/07/2010 Pat McKinley’s lead over Chaffee was reduced to 34 from yesterday’s high in the 50s.
At close of day 11/5/2010 Pat McKinley had vaulted his agile self back into the lead – by 36 votes.
As of last night Doug Chaffee’s lead over ex-Po-lice Chief Pat McKinley in the Fullerton City Council race.
With absentee voters generally leaning to the Republican flavor it looks like the desperate hours are about to set in for Chaffee backers, especially considering the anti-Chaffee hits unloaded by the local GOP.
Maybe the repuglican cartel that backed the over-pensioned relic McKinley can put the champagne back on ice, after all!
Well, technically it’s not over yet. But the trend since election day is going the wrong way for Doug Chaffee. In second place on election day and looking good for the second council opening, Chaffee has seen his slim lead shrink and then disappear in the ensuing days.
Which leads me to reflect upon Fullerton’s liberal clique, and the choices it makes. You will recall that in 2008 the Fullerton Observer endorsed the egregious Doc Heehaw, who came in ahead of dyed-in-the-wool liberal, Karen Haluza. Sure, you you remember. We wrote about it, here.
And this year? We posted a piece about how ex-Police Chief and astronomical pension-puller-downer Pat McKinley was getting support from some of Fullerton’s most prominent lefties, most notably Jan Flory and Molly McClanahan.
I'm a trustee. You can always trust me.
I visited the Fullerton Observer website and noticed that according to to its editor, second place support by the herd of Yellowing Observers was split between McKinley and Jesse la Tour! Could support for the hand-picked boy of Ed Royce and Dick Ackerman, a career cop, really have been that high among the hardest core Observers? Is Ralph Kennedy rolling over in his urn?
Of course Sharon Kennedy will blame out-of-town money used to hit Chaffee. But how many of Fullerton left-leaning tribe are starting to regret their second vote?
Here’s Fullerton Council candidate Jesse La Tour, standing on the corner of Chapman and Harbor yesterday pitching his handmade campaign for Fullerton City Council. Click and enjoy.
Well, that’s pretty damn cool if you ask me: a guy having fun standing up for himself. His ideas? Debatable. But you’ve gotta love the stripped down simplicity of the whole thing: no IEs, no union or repuglican support. This guy would be a hundred times better than the empty sack Bankhead or the hollow log McKinley.
Well it’s about time. The Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers has a blog!
In fact, FACT just released their “Last Minute Voter Guide” to help us shovel through the great heap of 2010. It’s good to see new bloggers out there in Fullerton… and it’s even better when we get to call them our Friends.
Some new mailers came in this week. In addition to fresh copies of the Roland Chi and Aaron Gregg fliers that we saw earlier, our mailboxes were stuffed with: A brutal comparison of Pat McKinley’s pension to the city of Bell’s Robert Rizzo; a stop-the-unions slate, a comparison piece on Whitaker’s behalf, a large piece of cardboard put out by the Republican Party against Chaffee, and finally, a lame comparison piece that tries to make Roland Chi look special.
The only reason FFFF sprang into existence was because the people who pretended to be professional reporters stubbornly and steadfastly refused to do their jobs.
Their jobs. The jobs to which they accrete a professional aura, a sanctimony, self-righteousness, and institutional importance that demands as a concomitant an objectivity that is exercised in the public interest.
Of course all that stuff is pure bullshit. Oh, yeah, these people want to be treated as if they actually performed a function that allows them to claim an official title: “Fourth Estate.” But in reality their work is almost never objective, never diligent, and often downright incompetent. And the closer you get to tour own community the worse it gets.
The Great Unwind.
But back to FFFF. We started in the fall of 2008 because F. Richard Jones, the Braying Donkey of Raymond Hills, the man for whom no issue could not be used to spin off, dervish-like, on an insane rant, was getting a free pass. Twelve years of insulting people from the dais, weird, barnyard rantings and raving, backtracking on key issues, and generally insulting the collective intelligence of the City was ignored.
And this being Fullerton very little has changed. Consider 2010.
The chicken was ready for plucking.
Does “the press” inquire into how candidate Roland Chi got rung up on criminal charges by the DA for serially ignoring health inspection failures? Or ask why he is using a 501(c)(3) to prmote his political ambitions? Or even ask this miscreant how long he has actually lived in Fullerton?
Hey, that vest was not designed on company time.
Does “the press” ask Pat McKinley about his $215,000 pension payout – far more than he ever made actually working – and his ability to make rational pension decisions?
Aw, Hell. Close enough.
Does “the press” ask Aaron Gregg why a guy who skipped out on $75,000 in back taxes and stiffed local creditors though bankruptcy is qualified to manage the city’s $100,000,000+ budget?
The Mayor's Prayer Breakfast took longer than anticipated...
Does “the press” inquire into what appears to be Don Bankhead’s increasingly diminished capacity to participate in, let alone conduct, a public hearing?
Of course our local reporters never said boo about the carpetbaggery of Hirsute Sidho or Linda Ackerman, either.
For some reason people who work for the Times and the Register would rather look the other way than admit that the emperors have no clothes on. What are they afraid of?
