Dan Chmielweski posts over at the TheLiberalOC.com that sources confirm for him what insiders have been telling me: Anaheim City School District Board of Education member Jose F. Moreno will run for Anaheim City Council instead of seeking re-election to the ACSD Board:
Four independent sources tell TheLiberalOC that Dr. Jose Moreno will run for Anaheim City Council instead of re-election to his school board seat. We’re told a press conference will be scheduled for Friday morning, campaign photos will be shot Thursday, and one source says that Moreno will be a part of Mayor Tom Tait’s “Good Government” slate even though Tait will never endorse or support a Democrat.
We attempted to contact Moreno directly through a third party (at the time, we had two sources for the story); the third party told us Moreno would speak to me if we told him who our sources were. TheLiberalOC declined the offer, but noted that Moreno’s inquiry wasn’t a denial. Two other sources contacted us shortly thereafter with details on the Thursday photo shoot and the Friday announcement.
So, it appears his pulling ACSD re-election papers was just a head-fake.
For all the attention we are giving Moreno, the odds weigh heavily against him winning. First, there are no open seats and it is very difficult to unseat an incumbent. It’s been a pretty rare thing in Anaheim. The last time it happened was in 2006 when Councilman Richard Chavez edged out by Lucille Kring by just 0.2% of the vote.
Kring, however, had been previously elected to the council and had run for mayor just four years before – and she had been running hard for a long time. Moreno, on the other-hand, is jumping in just 12 weeks before the election. Furthermore, he’s a divisive figure whose politics are well to the Left politically of most Anaheim voters. Suing the city and in the process enriching liberal out-of-town attorneys who are using part of their settlement money to tell Anaheim voters how they should elect their council…well, most Anaheim voters probably won’t respond well to that, Or to a candidate who believes the government should treat people differently based on the race or ethnicity.
Moreno’s vulnerabilities and leftism aside, he will be helped by being one of just two Democrats on the ballot (at least so far). He’s also probably counting on support from the dark money-fueled Committee for District Elections to feature him on mailers supporting by-district elections. That is a sword that cuts both ways to be sure because it risks alienating anti-district voters who might otherwise support him; however, that risk is probably outweighed by the his need to build name ID quickly in the swaths of Anaheim where he has never been on the ballot.
It’ll certainly liven up the race to have an honest-to-gosh, articulate left-winger running for council as either an formal or de facto member of the Tait Slate.
Hang on now, do you really think Moreno would do something purposefully misleading (like pull for school board with no intent to run) for personal benefit?
Doesn’t sound at all like something an ardent supporter of ‘districts’ would do………………………………..oh wait
Moreno is said to be fuming about the leak. Hothead
So he is suing the city that he is trying to run for city council in? He also thinks that the citizens should be treated differently based on ethnicity? In Anaheim where essentially the chances of unseating someone is .2% with those actions it doesn’t sound like Moreno has a shot.