One more day to go in the 37th Senate District special election, which has been pretty brutal. Some seem surprised by this. However, campaign contests between candidates who are extremely close matches in terms of political philosophy have a strange tendency to turn ugly because the primary differences are those of personality and political style.
Assemblyman Don Wagner has been running a full-spectrum campaign: mailers and cable TV ads, volunteers mobilization and precinct walking. His campaign has emphasized his conservative philosophy and record and support from other conservative Republican leaders, plus hard hits against Moorlach on fee increases, his county pension and immigration.
Former OC Supervisor John Moorlach’s campaign has sent out significantly less mail (reflecting comparatively weaker fundraising), is mobilizing its own volunteers. Moorlach mail also leans heavily on plumping his conservative philosophy and positions while trying to paint Wagner as a tool of public employee unions. While it has been crying foul over negative mail from the Wagner campaign, it’s clear the Moorlach campaign had long ago decided to tie Wagner to public employee unions: the Moorlach campaign bought the URL for its UnionDon.com website on February 3 – two weeks before vote-by-mail ballots were sent out or any campaign mail began landing.
No Surprise: A Low-Turn Out Election
According to the OC Registrar of Voters, the raw count of returned vote-by-mail ballots is 54,700:
As you can see, almost half of these voters completed their ballots a few days after receiving them, as this graph shows:
The question is whether that works more in favor of Wagner, who was conducting a far more vigorous voter contact campaign, or Moorlach, who started the campaign with higher name recognition.
Registration in the 37th Senate District already strongly favors Republicans, and actual voter turnout for this election even more so: 34,295 Republicans have already voted compared to only 11,766 Democrats. This isn’t surprising given the absence of a Democrat on the ballot, the fact that turnout is being driven by two conservative Republicans and the fact that conservative voters traditionally dominate special elections in Orange County.
7,854 No Party Preference voters have cast ballots; the campaign that has done a better job of targeting these voters will be rewarded in the vote tally.
According to the OC ROV website, 30,954 returned VBM have come from areas of SD37 which Wagner has represent as an Assemblyman and community college board member versus 24,618 from communities within the 2nd Supervisor District:
Wagner-Represented Areas
Anaheim 3,896
Lake Forest 4.015
Irvine 9,730
Orange 6,737
Tustin 2,930
Villa Park 698
Unincorporated 2,948
Moorlach-Represented Areas
Laguna Woods 3,175
Huntington Beach 6,857
Laguna Beach 1,824
Costa Mesa 4,625
Newport Beach 8,137
I pinged OC Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley, who predicts voter turn-out in the low to mid-20s.
Along Comes a Pro-Moorlach Independent Expenditure
If there was going to be any independent expenditure effort on behalf of Moorlach, the assumption was it would come from eccentric conservative Republican-turned-Democrat Howard Ahmanson. Sure enough, on March 12, Ahmanson (through his business entity Fieldstead and Co.) put $25,000 into an IE to fund two mail pieces, almost certainly targeting Election Day voters.
Ahmanson has evinced an increasingly quirky campaign contribution pattern in recent years. n the 2014 election, he donated to Gov. Jerry Brown’s re-election campaign, and the failed re-election campaigns of Democratic Assemblymembers Sharon Quirk-Silva and Steve Fox. After maxing out to Quirk-Silva, he also gave to her GOP opponent, now-Assemblywoman Young Kim. Plus, he generously funded an IE campaign on behalf of Matt Harper’s successful Assembly campaign.
Mail Call
Mail has tapered off at pure VBM Casa Cunningham. Election Day voters are and will be receiving (for the most part) the mailers that have already gone to VBM households. Here’s a new mail piece I had not previously seen (nor received):
The Moorlach campaign is practicing some jiu–jitsu by trying to turn the public safety union IEs into a reason to vote for him. Our home received a Moorlach campaign robocall yesterday; the script recorded by Anaheim Mayor Tom Tait reflected the same message. The broad Shawn Nelson’s campaign did something similar in 2010 when he was running for the Board of Supervisors for the first time and the OCEA and AOCDS uncorked a humongous IE campaign against Nelson and supporting then Anaheim City Councilman Harry Sidhu. There were different dynamics at work in that race – it was a multi-candidate field that included two Anaheim councilmembers, plus the OC GOP endorsed Nelson and did most of the anti-union messaging via a vigorous member communication campaign.
Stay tuned…
I know, I know, I should spend these diminishing minutes defending Cynthia’s crazy quest for recognition, for validation. But I just can’t stop chiming in on other peoples business ( SD- 37). I know more than anyone, they JUST WON’T LISTEN to me.
I don’t get it. The democrats can’t even get a candidate to run, but that won’t stop me from ruining things, after all I ran and was DESTROYED in every race I have ever entered.
I’ll go back to my midnight blogging, I’ll ignore this weeks pending LOSS for CATER.
I’ll just keep not working.
1: Cynthia Ward’s sense of self esteem is not remotely tied to what does or does not happen in court, at City Hall, or at this blog. God help me the day I begin to care what folks here think. And may I be put out of my misery on the day I begin to think like anyone over here.
2: Oddly enough, Greg can manage to blog and work.
3: Define creamed. Diamond spent a few thousand dollars, and picked up 77,473 votes for 26.7% of the County’s nod for office. That puts him far ahead of both Lucille Kring and Kris Murray, who ran with the name recognition of incumbency and a seemingly endless pile of special interest money. Lucille Kring only took 19.4% of the vote, when she was “creamed” by Tom Tait, a man this blog has written off as a disaster who is bad for the City of Anaheim. So what does that say about Lucille if he beat her? Kris Murray took 20.7% of votes to retain her seat, and some have calculated the money from IEs into the near 2 million range. I don’t have time to stop and calculate the dollar per vote value there, but I would say comparatively Diamond did pretty well.
Referring to yourself in the third person now?
Don’t be dense, Cynthia. If Phil N. Theblank had been T-Rack’s opponent, he would have pulled the same vote share: the voters who always vote against the incumbent. And T-Rack didn’t run a campaign. Hardly an accomplishment.
Kring and Murray had opponents running real campaigns. Murray got plastered with hit pieces paid for by Tait’s family and friends. You can’t make a comparison between their races and Diamond’s “campaign.”
Just wrote in Louise for state senate. It was remarkable easy to do and I’m happy to have voted for the most decent person in the race.
Cynthia, Diamond ran for a county wide office. Murray and airing ran a city wide race. If you want a true Apples to Apples comparison, break out Diamond’s vote totals in Anaheim vs the council candidates. I bet Doug Petibone got more votes in Anaheim than Diamond did.
I don’t think Tony Rack spent all that much per vote either.
RJ: Kring and Murray had opponents running real campaigns. Murray got plastered with hit pieces paid for by Tait’s family and friends. You can’t make a comparison between their races and Diamond’s “campaign.”
Well that explains why Tait, who was plastered with FAR MORE hit pieces, including flat out lying smears from the District Attorney we are discussing, also did so poorly along with Murray-oh wait-no that DIDN’T happen, did it? So when your side does poorly it is because of all those IEs, but when your sides’ more mud-caked mail campaign fails to find its audience folks are just misguided and misinformed.
Could it possibly be that even those who don’t know or even like Diamond saw what a creep our District Attorney is and voted the “someone else” line?
So let’s see, that was Wagner and Sidhu blocked with the same election, very efficient. And Eastman was blocked from beefing up her ballot statement last week, so what’s next in the race to make it crystal clear that OC does not want what is being offered by the Kleptocracy? Spin it any way you want, but the rag tag bunch of impoverished and powerless opposition out here would not be effective if the public had not already caught on to the Crony Capitalist scheming on their own. Good luck with that.
Hoo-boy. You are so detached from reality, I don’t even know where to begin the debate, Cynthia. You seem to believe voters are aware of and share your prejudices.
You aren’t trying to take some credit for Moorlach’s apparent victory, are you?
And the Moorlach campaign could hardly be characterized as “impoverished and powerless opposition.” Quite the opposite.
And I don’t recall seeing a single reference to “Crony Capitalists” on any voter communications from any campaign or committee, Cynthia. Your hobby horse was about 0% of a factor in this campaign. The only person spinning on this thread is you.
Yeah, Cynthia — if you had had anything to do with Moorlach’s victory, you would have at least been able to get him the CRA endorsement or something!
Don’t you have a court filing to finish Diamond? Don’t go over 12 pages!
Done, thanks.
Oh Dan, that filing is done, and done well. Listen for the sound of retching from the general direction of Rutan and Tucker on Monday morning. I see no remaining objections they have left to argue, and if the Judge had not seen merit in the case he would have dropkicked it out of court when he had the chance, instead of taking a month to review it, and permitting us to amend for the technicalities we have now COMPLETELY overcome, so we can all move forward with the case. You have misrepresented the case on every angle so far, which does not affect the case itself since Judge DiCesare does not rule based on what bloggers have miscommunicated the case to be about, and merely makes you look uninformed. BTW our best offers of help come from those who have read stuff at AnaheimBlog and LibOC, so I owe you a fruit basket.
And don’t forget the limitless resources of Anaheim funded Rutan and Tucker alongside Arte Moreno’s lawyers, who wear shoes more costly than my mortgage payment, are being bested by a “loser” who can turn out a winning (if lengthy) argument with time left on the clock for a blog post. I’m not sure how calling attention to that aids you, but go for it.
Matt, I am not taking credit for the Moorlach win, that would be ridiculous, and “RJ” if you were privy to the offers of help CATER is suddenly getting, and combine that with the many election wins for candidates vastly outspent, you would understand that yes voters DO share my “prejudice” and they have woken up. They need not see Moorlach list opposition to “crony capitalism” on a campaign piece, because they already know what he stands for, and based on the who’s who of those backing Wagner, what HE stands for came through loud and clear. Wagner lost thanks to heavy handed poo-flinging directed at a guy most folks see as favorable, combined with Wagner’s alliances with people who are no longer trusted by voters. Wagner also took very bad advice from those frantically clinging to their power, and I hope he has learned his lesson.
I suspect any candidates considering those same alliances in future will also reconsider, because working with that crowd gives those of us in the grassroots “impoverished and powerless” camp an edge when opposing them. Featuring Pringle and company on campaign mailers is such a candidate killer that true fiscal conservatives should have to list those as IEs to THEM. The Kleptocracy has become a liability, a situation that Pringle/OCBC/OCTax/SOAR created for themselves with their insatiable appetites for more, no matter what the cost.
Yes I DO believe the public shares my “detachment from reality” that we are being robbed blind by the crowd of insiders that has been running things in OC, and I also believe that whole mess is about to become unraveled.
Pringle and his crowd have not enjoyed a serious win at the ballot box in years, they had to spend HUGE to keep Murray in her seat, and lost pretty much everything else they have touched recently.
Yes, voters DO GET IT, and they have wised up faster than you have. Enjoy what is left of your version of Camelot.
“Oh Dan, that filing is done, and done well.”
Does that mean you had Doug Pettibone do the filing instead of Greg?
Nope. Doug specializes in litigation, not writing the finer points of Brown Act or CPRA. I guess you have to wait and see where and when (and IF) Doug might fit into the big picture. But thanks for following the case. your concern is touching.
So you’re both ready to declare victory? Heard that song before.
Dan, we will post the 3rd Amended Complaint shortly, and you look it over and tell me which of the city’s loopholes have not been closed now, since you are such a legal expert. You will also then be able to see how dead wrong you have been in what you have claimed our suit to even be about. Not that I expect an apology….
BTW if you are referring to past actions, the City’s attorney admitted in court that if they had to litigate the Convention Center bonds case based on whether they had the right to sell bonds under the City Charter without citizen input they could hand the case over to Plaintiffs right this minute. Instead the attorneys took a position that despite the public statements during a public hearing claiming the City had the right to release the bonds, instead once they got to court (outside the view of taxpayers unless someone notifies the taxpayers) they were invoking the right to circumvent the City Charter and bypass that pesky requirement to let taxpayers vote on whether to mortgage our future, because acting as a JPA they are not bound by the City Charter’s explicit demand by the taxpayers to not sell out our next generation. Now you tell me that was a fight not worth taking on!
I appreciate the confidence. Would it be fair to ask the same of you, if the judge rules against all your claims? Admit you are dead wrong and apologize on behalf of CATER?
The long awaited THIRD amended complaint has finally been revealed. Happy reading!
https://cweb.onelegal.com/GetEServiceDocument.aspx?name=8249992-15158372&id=2130338&token=99dac211-2fb1-4a06-ab5e-07d9020d1005
Who is Chad Morgan?
seems to me like there are a number of things in the complaint that are going to be very hard to prove; have to love that Tait asks “substantive questions” but everyone else asks “rhetorical questions.” Still on the “they didn’t give us enough time” kick when they did. Good luck in court. At least this is readable.