Anaheim Insider here.
In the classic 1970s novel and film The Stepford Wives, the husbands of the fictional Connecticut town of Stepford had perfected a way to create perfectly submissive, supportive wives: Stepford Wives..
Here in the non-fictional California city of Anaheim, Mayor Tom Tait has created a team of Stepford Candidates, Doug Pettibone and James Vanderbilt. As Vanderbilt and Pettibone make abundantly clear in their candidate statements and voter communications, their candidacies were created by Tait (“”I was greatly honored when Mayor Tom Tait asked me to run for Council…”) and that if elected, they will be Stepford Councilmen (“As a new councilman, I will provide support and cooperation to our mayor.”).
Read Team Tait literature: Tom Tait tried to do this and Tom Tait tried to do that and was thwarted by his nefarious council colleagues who must now be defeated for opposing Tom Tait and replaced by these two guys who have promised to do what Tom Tait wants.
After three years of proving unable to persuade his council colleagues to follow his lead on anything, Tait has instead recruited two candidates who have pre-committed to supporting Tait on whatever Tait wants to do in a second term.
Is that really what Anaheim voters want? Two Taitbots on the council who will rubber stamp the Mayor? If the situation were reversed and this were Mayor Kris Murray running two candidates who campaigned on a platform of voting with Murray, Cynthia Ward and Greg Diamond would howl at the moon and allege premeditated violations of the Brown Act.
I am voting for my good friend I have know since I moved to Anaheim Hills in 1976. James Vanderbilt has always been outstanding person and he will be good for Anaheim, I went to Crescent, El Rancho, and Canyon High School with Jim and he was meant to lead this city.