The dust has settled and once again, a hugely expensive government union effort to elect John Leos to the Anaheim City Council has fallen short.
In 2010, the Orange County Employees Association spent $——- in independent expenditures on behalf of John Leos candidacy. He came in third with 12.1% of the vote.
OCEA’s John Leos at the union’s celebration of Jerry Brown’s inaugural, with OCEA Prez Robert Gibson and OCEA GM Nick Berardino
In the Fall of 2011, OCEA spent an estimated $100,000 on direct mail Anaheim voters promoting John Leos and his “transparency ordinance.”
This year, the OCEA put $350,000 into its pro-Leos campaign. Leos finished third with 13.9% of the vote.
That’s $650,000 in members’ dues money that OCEA has spent over two years in a vain attempt to make Leos an Anaheim City Councilman (and I’m not counting the $138,000 from the government union umbrella group UEOOC).
That additional $450,000 the OCEA spent for Leos in 2011-2012 only barely budged his percentage of the vote from 12.1% to 13.9% – even in a year with presidential election turnout. When you consider that unlike in 2010, this year Leos had the active support of the city’s well-liked conservative Republican mayor, as well as conservative Republicans Supervisor Shawn Nelson and Assemblyman Chris Norby, the failure of the Leos/OCEA campaign effort is even more glaring.
$650,000 is a huge sum of money to burn with nothing to show for it.
I find it somehow gratifying that while Chris Norby was screwing around in Anaheim trying to get a big union thug elected to the City Council, the unions were taking him out in his Assembly seat. Nice work, Chris!