When council districts were finally created in Fullerton – in response to a lawsuit, one district was designed to support Fullerton’s large Latino community – District 5. In 2018 D5 elected a non-Latino which of course was surprising but perfectly legal. But what would Latinos think about a concerted effort by the OC Democratic party to make sure the Latino vote was divided to protect Ahmad Zahra, the non-Latino incumbent?
Enter Tony Castro, the dead-beat nobody who popped up out of nowhere and pulled election papers the day after Oscar Valadez, who has lived in D5 for over 20 years.
Recently FFFF has been bombarded with spam comments all of which came from Tony Castro himself. I took out the trash, but not before salvaging this little gobbet of that is quite revealing: a statement that Castro was approached by one Ajay Mohan:
This snippet has the ring of truth. There is an Ajay Mohan and he is the director of the OC Democrat Party. Here he is:
Now that’s not very good, is it?
Now why would Mr. Mohan recruit an unknown, broke, Tony Castro to run against the incumbent who has the endorsement of Party Central? The answer is, unfortunately, crystal clear: to take votes away from Oscar Valadez. This dirty little trick is as old as elections themselves, of course, but to see the Dems do it to working class Latinos betrays a special sort of cynical mindset.
Get off my grass…
Which brings us to the OC Dem Party Chairperson, Ada Briceno, a Latina unionista who apparently has decided to bamboozle La Raza in support of the egregious Zahra – who has supported dope stores near schools, who battered a Latina woman, and who voted to give away a public park in the barrio to a private events center/caterer.
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.
Fullerton 5th District Councilman Ahmad Zahra seems to have adopted the strategy of rewriting his previous interaction with the wheels of justice, to wit: he was not arrested because nobody cuffed him and tossed him in the FPD slammer. And oh, by the way, “there was no case.”
Well there sure was a case, Friends.
Here’s what it looks like:
Looks guilty to me…
Zahra has previously claimed he was somehow exonerated, too, although he seems to think that statement is satisfactory. And yet other than his say so, he has shown no evidence to show the DA dropped the case – for any reason. Meantime, a source in the DAs office has indicated that Zahra pled guilty, did community service of some sort, and had his criminal record safely sealed.
Here is a fun video in which District 5 Councilman Ahmad Zahra stumbles and stutters his way into denying that he was arrested for battery and vandalism. It happened right outside his fundraising party when protesters showed up.
With some coaching from a masked friend he concludes that there was no “case,” and no arrest because he was not handcuffed and was not taken to a jail cell.
It was not an arrest says Zahra because some “citizen” (in air quotation marks) did something.
Uh huh. Get a kick out of how Zahra tries to incriminate Tony Bushala of something dishonest; the woman rightly points out that it is Zahra who was elected to represent Fullerton and who needs to come clean.
The confrontation then disolves into Zahra’s Spanish speaking camp followers adding a little ethic flavor like they constantly do at council meetings.
Well the thing is simple. The District Attorney, Todd Spitzer chargedthis miscreant with crimes, so the fact that he may or may not have spent some time in the FPD lock up is hilariously irrelevant.
Come clean Ahmad. If there was no case you can prove it by sharing the correspondence from the DA saying so. But one thing will always be undeniable: you were arrested and charged. No getting away from that albatross around your neck.
So I’m driving down Commonwealth yesterday afternoon and notice a protest in front of D’Vine, another one of downtown Fullerton’s scofflaw noise nuisances.
And then I noticed this:
Hmm. Nice sign, black and white. That’s appropriate.
Turns out that Ahmad Zahra was holding a fundraiser for himself at D’Vine, with special guest, career politician Lou Correa. Apparently, Fullerton Taxpayers For Reform financed by Tony Bushala have decided to remind Mr. Zahra that he was arrested and charged by the DA with battery and vandalism, perpetrated against one “Monica F.”
The hors d’oeuvres were divine…
Zahra publicly claimed he was “exonerated” although a conflicting narrative emerged from a source in the DA’s office – that he pled guilty to get his slate wiped clean. He hasn’t bothered sharing any evidence of his alleged exoneration and probably hoped the whole issue would disappear. If he though that he must now know he was wrong.
The explanation was simple. Arrested and charged…
It might be interesting to find out what Lou Correa thinks about his boy now, especially considering there’s still twelve weeks before election day. Zahra’s devoted followers will cry out his victimhood, yet again, but there’s only so far he can ride that donkey.
Word from a well-placed source suggests that back in 2020 after being arrested and charged with battery and vandalism perpetrated against a woman named Monica F., Fullerton City Councilman Ahmad Zahra, through his Irvine attorney, hired a P.I. to investigate his “alleged” victim.
Now why would anybody do that?
I leave it to readers to draw their own inferences from this.
The issue of whether Zahra was “exonerated” as he exclaimed publicly, and that he and mom were the real victims; or whether he pled guilty to get his dirty slate wiped clean remains in doubt. He has never provided any evidence from the District Attorney Todd Spitzer that charges against him were dropped.
Whatever the case, the broader story is not going to go away, and in fact is likely going to become a focus of opponents in this fall’s City Council election.
FFFF has squirted some cyber-ink on the missus, so I thought we ought to start spending a bit of time with Pilferin’ Paulette’s hubby, the egregious Doug “Bud” Chaffee.”
If the snout fits, wear it…
This piece was recently sent out by Chaffee’s OC Board of Supervisor challenger, Sunny Park of Buena Park.
The swine were offended by the comparison…
The reference here is to an early foray of the Chaffee Crime Family into “affordable” housing, the subsidized sort that always costs so much more than the regular kind. Of course this was thirty years ago and Chaffee has a much longer list of grifts large and small, including selling out the advocates of preserving the West Coyote Hills, creating phony districts in Fullerton, supporting overbuilt prison, I mean apartment blocks with inadequate parking, and of course spending all his time failing to reform the Fullerton Police Department.
On the Board of Supervisors Chaffee has distinguished himself by hiding COVID information from the public, overseeing the public humiliation and politicization of the Health Care Agency, and being a lackey for the misfeasance of his fellow board member, Andrew Do. And the funniest thing of all is that he, as Chairman of the Commission to End Homelessness, had to confess to reporters that he didn’t know what the Commission does.
Putting politician’s faces on animals has always struck me as desperate and sort of silly, persuasion-wise. But Sunny is running against an incumbent (and recumbent) Democrat and needs to syphon enough votes to 1) at least come in second; and, 2) keep Bud from reaching the magic 50%+1 number thereby forcing a runoff in November. Will this help?
So what do you do as a candidate when you’re a liar, a self-admitted thief, a phony carpetbagger, and quite possibly the worst human being in north Orange County; and because of these sad truths you can’t raise any campaign dough?
Night time is the right time!
If you’re Paulette Marshall, the Constant Candidate, you write yourself a check. A big check
Making an investment in good government…
Ms. Marshall did it last time, too, when she previously ran for the OC Board of Education in 2020, and blew through hundreds of thousands of dollars to come in 3rd, 5,000 votes behind Vicki Calhoun who spent almost nothing.
Apparently Marshall and her hubby, the odious rodent Doug “Bud” Chaffee, who serves as our County Supervisor believe any amount is worth it to promote the missus into some elected office – any office probably.
Meantime, she and her pals are trying backdoor legal means to get rid of the incumbent Tim Shaw, and if that works maybe she can save some of that money.
