Former Anaheim Councilman Harry Sidhu no longer has the Republican field to himself in the race for the 68th Assembly District (currently held by Assemblyman Don Wagner, who is termed out next year). Former Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly, one of the most polarizing figures in OC Republican Party politics, has jumped into the race.
This isn’t shocking, since Pauly has not-so-secretly hankered for legislative office for several years. Pauly touts herself as a Tea Party Republican, although her political activism has diverged from the pro-property rights and liberty stances one would expect of a Tea Partier. In recent years, she has allied herself with a coalition of NIMBYs and environmental groups such as the Sierra Club to fight two residential developments in East Orange. She also vigorously opposed allowing Villa Park residents to celebrate the 4th of July with safe-and-sane fireworks.
In 2012, she was removed as 1st Vice Chair of the Republican Party of Orange County Central Committee following controversial remarks she made at a rally protesting an Islamic charity event:
Speaking outside a community center in nearby Yorba Linda during the February event, Councilwoman Deborah Pauly pointed at the center and said, “What’s going on over there right now … that is pure, unadulterated evil.”
I can’t think of another instance of an OC GOP officer being booted by the membership, let alone the second-ranking officer. Pauly subsequently was narrowly re-elected defeated when running for re-election to the OC GOP Central Committee. [Editor’s note: I incorrectly stated in an earlier version of this post that Pauly had been defeated for re-election to Central Committee in 2012; I apologize for the error.]
The divisive and abrasive Pauly will certainly brings sparks to the race. She describe her M.O. to former OC Register columnist Frank Mickadeit a few years ago:
“Squeaky wheel,” Pauly nodded with satisfaction. “Be the squeaky wheel.”
This is a hatchet job masquerading as a news story. Readers can assess the competence of the entire effort by the fact that your photographer couldn’t get a picture of Councilwoman Pauly with her eyes open (or you chose not to print it). And the liberal use of adjectives such as “polarizing”, “divisive”, and “abrasive” tells us more about the writer than it does the subject of the story.
There’s nothing untrue in this story. Deb Pauly is a caustic, abrasive, dishonest phony. We need people who can build the Republican Party, not cranks like Pauly who only know how to attack and divide.. It would be a disaster to have her spend the next 12 years embarrassing the GOP in the Assembly.
The OC GOP Central Committee voted to dump her as their second-highest ranking officer, Mr. Wallace. Were all those Central Committee members shills for “The Establishment”? There has always been a contingent of the local party that equates being obnoxious with “fighting for principles.”
Removed from the central comittee chair post you say?
Sounds like the OCGOP version of Greg Diamond!
Diamond’s never held office. If he did, nothing would ever get done
If you don’t think Pauly is “polarizing” “divisive” or “abrasive” then you’re simply kidding yourself. She’s going to have a tremendously tough time in Irvine as a significant number of Muslim-Americans live in AD-68 part of the city. Her entry into the race makes it easier for Irvine Mayor Steven Choi to throw his hat in the ring because Pauly will take votes away from Sidhu while Korean voters in Irvine will come out in force for Choi.
So let me get this straight. Cunningham works for anti-homeless NIMBYS = good. Pauly happens to take the same position as some other groups Cunningham says are NIMBYS = bad. Got it.
Meantime maybe this blog can explain Harry Sidhu’s willingness to consider “satellite” County Clerk offices…in outer space!!!
Don’t forget the power plant. Another “good” Cunningham approved NIMBY project.
Ryan – opposing building equestrian homes on one-acre-minimum lots on a site zoned for one-acre residential lots in a community that consists of big equestrian homes on lots of 1 to 5 acres is a lot different than preferring other uses than a power plant on a lot next to businesses and homes. Not that I expect you to let facts get in the way of a cheap shot.
I know.
One pays.
The other doesn’t.
How’s that for cheap?
Since when do you care about shades of grey?
Pretty cheap, but par for the Cantor course.
If the difference between the two issues looks like shades of gray to you, Ryan, you should have your ideological vision check. It’s getting blurry.
Yeah, kinda like the difference between making it easier to permit a brewery in Anaheim and giving away a 9 digit tax subsidy.
Check your own vision.
[False, malicious personal attack deleted]
Not the same, Ryan. The difference between special regulatory consideration for craft breweries (with which I have no issue) and the Hotel Incentive Policy is one of degree, rather than kind. You’re drawing a dollar distinction; the mayor did not. He’s opposed to any preferential policy to attract 4-diamond hotels. There’s no real difference between the two policies in principle; they both engage in the dreaded “picking winners and losers.”
Nimby One, meet Nimby two . . . one red, one blue?
Update those lenses, Matt. [False, malicious personal attack deleted. Again.]
Oh, that was FALSE? Bull.
[False, malicious personal attract deleted. Again]
Doubling down on belligerence isn’t an argument, Ryan.
And the truth is neither false, belligerent, malicious, or in this case– personal.
You get paid for that work. Why you can’t even be honest about that is quite a mystery.
You don’t talk about the issue, Ryan. In your Alinsky-ite way, you are trying to make me the issue. You try to make my profession the issue. You try to make it personal. Perhaps you can be honest about that. And your behavior is belligerent.
Now how is that different than ANY OTHER COMMENTATOR ON YOUR SITE AS IT RELATES TO ME.
Not so pretty when the shoe is on your foot, now is it?
You’ve gone on record here describing yourself as a hypocrite, Ryan. Now you’re on record believing two wrongs make a right. Keep it up!
And a sinner.
I take it that you’re not willing to admit the same.
In any case, your two wrongs making a right makes no sense. I’m hardly making such a claim.
Post your address Randy, we will send the homeless your way. I’m sure your neighbors will be pleased.
I’ll make it easier for you to understand, Randy: Pauly was siding with anti-property rights NIMBYs who were working hand-in-glove with the environmental lobby. Not exactly conservative, Tea Party territory.
Oh, so now the people you work with are what validates the principle?
Unbelievable.
I’m not sure I’m following your argument. Perhaps that is due to its absence of logic and fact. Which “people”?
It’s not an argument, Matt. There’s neither a premise, nor a conclusion.
So, it probably has less to do with lack of logic or fact so much as your ability to read.
It’s a question.
What’s the purpose of this clause?
” . . . who were working hand-in-glove with the environmental lobby”
Does that really need to be explained to you? Deb Pauly joined up with and gave conservative cover to groups that don’t want any development. Of anything. Anywhere. I suppose that’s expected in Santa Monica or San Francisco.
And with that, you can argue with yourself or others. You may like to spend your workday arguing on blogs. I have better things to do.
I don’t spend my work day arguing on blogs, but thanks for the false malicious personal attack.
I’m glad to see that you’re immune from your own standards of good behavior. Maybe you should stick yourself in moderation.
What does the group that shared an opinion on one unique issue with Pauly have to do with her qualifications as a conservative?
It appears you’re attempting to drown her candidacy through guilt by association.
That’s not a new tool for you, I’m sure.
“It appears you’re attempting to drown her candidacy through guilt by association.”
You gotta be joking! Pot, meet kettle! Ryan, you and your pals at the Orange Juice Blog playground are all about guilt by association. That’s the main M.O. of you and the other kiddies.
Admitting you’re a hypocrite doesn’t make it OK for you to BE a hypocrite, Ryan.
Really?
Show me.
Doesn’t it bother you Ryan that Pauly is an avowed TeaBagger and a board member of the John Birch Society? But as long as she’s an ally of Tom Tait, it doesn’t matter.
I don’t know what a TeaBagger is.
Sorry.
With regard to the JBS, no– that doesn’t exactly give me the warm and fuzzies.
Shouldn’t you be working Ryan?
You want a GPS tag location, too?
If I respected you Ryan (spoiler: I don’t) I’d remind you your employer benefits from corporate welfare. Are you going to quit out of principle?
Dan,
You have no clue what you’re talking about.
But, seeing how we’ve never met, it’s nice to know you assign value to a person based on blog comments.
So let me see if I understand this. A homeless shelter is a legal use on this property. Therefore the owner of this property has the right to profit off of its sale for a homeless shelter. That is a property right. You are getting paid to stop this individual from enjoying the full and legal value and benefit of his property.
I assert that YOU are the one working hand in glove with the anti-property rights NIMBYS. In fact you are trying to create new anti-property rights NIMBYs.
And you have the nerve to criticize this woman for doing the same thing YOU are doing for money.
So getting paid really is the defining element for you.
Thank you.
Seriously, Randy: consider checking into Logic Rehab.
Consider this an intervention. No one is suggesting the entity that owns the building at 1000 Kraemer Place does not have the right to sell it, and try to make money in the process. Are you saying local residents, businesses and property owners do not have the right to protest the County’s decision to locate a 200-bed homeless shelter? That’s very different from a faction of residents in OPA and the environmentalist lobby opposing a property owner’s decision to develop his property in accordance within the existing land-use designation.
You’re only going to injure some mental muscles with these logical contortions.
“That’s very different from a faction of residents in OPA and the environmentalist lobby opposing a property owner’s decision to develop his property in accordance within the existing land-use designation.”
Actually, it’s not.
At all really.
You are so small ball, Ryan. Don’t you see how you come across as obsessed and nasty? The only thing you really seem to care about is lashing out at Matt. Did he run over your cat or something?
He did. I loved that cat.
The only person contorting himself here is you – as you continue to slice that baloney ever thinner. I predict you will end up hurting yourself.
The difference between these two events is that in the case of the homeless shelter in Anaheim your vaunted City Council has made this property a “by right” zone for the shelter – meaning that there doesn’t even need to be any Council approval at all or even any public hearings for this kind of use. Even the government has recognized this use as a “right.” I don’t even need my one year of law school to recognize that.
You are fighting the owner’s rightful enjoyment of his property, i.e.selling it for a perfectly legal purpose. Therefore you oppose “property rights.
QED as my geometry teacher used to say.
Now who’s the bigger NIMBY – the woman who does it, perhaps on principle, or the guy who’s getting paid by the NIMBY neighbors?
If nothing else, RR, you have invented a new definition of property rights. “Any time someone speaks against a government purchase, they are ipso facto ready inc the property rights of the seller”. Good luck with that.
You succeeded in showing you aren’t as clever as you think you are.
And your definition of property rights is whatever you want it to be – so long as the check clears.
And there’s Randy Roddy with the gutter dive! Always a tell-tale sing of a guy who has lost the argument. Thanks for playing, RR.
Diving into the gutter? Yes. Guilty as charged. I did that when I first decided to post comments on this site, a site that you want to fool people into believing is about “civic affairs” but is really nothing but paid for advertising for Anaheim’s ruling and grasping clique. And of course nasty (and paid) attacks on that clique’s enemies – like Tom Tait and this Deb Pauly person.
“Thanks for playing?” A game? I’ve been playing a game with you? Well, okay, if you say so. But you don’t seem to have been having any fun.
As far as “argument” goes, I don’t think my comments were doing that either. I see them as a moral undressing…of you. And finally, there you stand, naked as a jaybird for everybody to see. And boy, it ain’t a pretty sight.
My work here is done. For now.
Randy Roddy – over and out.
Blah, blah, blah. More cliche moral preening and posturing from Anaheim’s revolutionary vanguard. Do any of you have an original thought?
Yeah.
[Puerile person insult deleted].
Somebody call a WAAAAA-mbulance!
Randy Roddy is David Zenger, the clown who sued the county for a million dollars after Shawn Nelson canned him.
I think you’re right! Sounds like Zenger: smug, condescending, waspish.
What I have the nerve to do is criticize Deb Pauly for allying herself with left-wing environmentalist groups in their ongoing campaign against development, which necessarily undermines property rights. Pauly’s allies were advancing the novel theory that property rights belong not to individuals, but to “the community.” She was either blind to whom she was allying herself, or knew and helped them anyway. Neither explanation recommends her for higher office (if you’re a conservative, that is).
Clearly that’s not her argument, so why even bring it up?
Oh, right.
Again, guilt though association– just another tool in your ad hominem belt.
You don’t even know what her argument was, Ryan – not that that stops you from asserting what she wasn’t arguing.
My criticism is not guilt by association, and it is not ad hominen. But I am clearly wasting my time with you, untethered as you are to any commitment to being logical or truthful when you comment here.
You mean like that time Matt and SunCal jumped into bed with the affordable housing and Unite Here union people in the fight against Disney back in 2007-08? Like that, Matt? Hey, weren’t you also aligned with Lorri Galloway on that issue? But it’s only OTHER PEOPLE’s alliances that you want to link as proof of some shared vision for a socialist tomorrow.
Nope, no hypocrisy here. Move along, folks.
Randy Roddy, you ever come out of the internet ID closet and I am buying you a beer. OK I’m pretty sure Ryan will bring some craft brews so I can buy you a beer…right Ryan?
Absolutely.
Enjoy your pie, Matt.
You’re easily impressed.
I like beer.
Ah. Cynthia, you’re referring to your “I was a dupe for Disney” phase when you were the chief online smash mouth in favor of forcing Resort district property owners to undergo a city-wide vote to obtain any change to their zoning – a requirement made of no other property owners in Anaheim. What version of Cynthia Ward are we on now? 7.3? It’s difficult to track your continuously evolving philosophy.
In my role as a part of SunCal’s consulting team, I had no involvement with UNITE-HERE and OCCORD. They weren’t fighting for property rights – they supported the SunCal project because it included units for folks with low-incomes. Since that led them to support the pro-property rights side, great.
The anti-Ridgeline forces wanted to stop a property owner from developing the old Ridgeline golf course in accordance with the existing land use designation – a project that was totally consistent with the surrounding neighborhood. Opposed to this project were a faction of homeowners who controlled the Orange Park Acres Association, and who allied themselves with environmentalist groups demanding the property owner or taxpayers or SOMEONE pay to make it a golf course or park in order to mitigate the “loss of recreational open space.” This faction and the enviros wanted to use government to coerce a property owner to dispose of its property according to their wishes. That is who Deb Pauly sided with – that is the goal she threw in with.
But since personal animosity is the mental gyroscope that governs the direction of your thinking, the obvious differences elude you.
Deb Pauly doesn’t just “happen” to do anything. When she allied herself with that anti-development crowd, she was making a calculated political decision. She’s a phony.
What is painfully obvious from Greg’s comments is that this blogging stuff is HIS WHOLE LIFE!
No, but politics and social justice ARE big parts of my life — and blogging just happens to be a good way for me to pursue them, because the cost barrier to entry is low as free and it’s hard for opponents to shut down a conversation prematurely. And we can save and review the published material, too. That comes in really handy at times.
Blogging works especially when the people arguing against my position stay anonymous because they are afraid to let what they’re doing sully their reputations. This does not go as unnoticed by readers as you might prefer. People have watched enough Disney movies to be able to spot how the bad guys behave.
Oh this is rich, once again Greg’s fall back position is: Identify yourself so I can stalk you.
Nevermind:
– He is chief counsel for CATER a largely secretive organization.
– He supported the (RIOTING) protesting by guys in masks.
– He frequently allows anonymous comments which support his view and malign others on his blog.
Yeah, you are a real picture of transparency, and your subjective judgement of “social justice” is about as consistent as your paycheck.
Stalk you? I know who Cunningham and Chumley are, yet I don’t “stalk” them. Get over your frightened little self. I’d probably rebut you and point out your (presumable) hidden interests in promoting kleptocracy, but you pretty much deserve that.
CATER is not “largely secretive.” Our officers and our staff (me) are publicly known. Our donors are not known, because they actually DO stand a likelihood of stalking and repercussions in Anaheim and beyond if known. I’m a pretty good example of what can happen to people on my side of the fence — shameless personal attacks by political ninja wannabes — while you’re a good example of how people hiding behind masks get away with any damn lies and insults they wish.
If you’re talking about Occupy OC, I’m one of the main reasons why it STAYED entirely non-violent. Far from “rioting,” it had the longest-lasting continuous occupation of public property in the WORLD (so far as I have been able to determine) and did it in such a way that it could reach out to people without a single arrest (for anything related to Occupy) for its first 5 months. When I stopped participating, after about 5 months, is when people did get arrested in Huntington Beach — whereupon I negotiated a satisfactory settlement with the City. So you either don’t know what you’re talking about or you’re deliberately lying.
OJB is not “my blog” — I do much of its management, but Vern owns it and sets the policy, with some of which I disagree. (His pro-free-speech position, though, is highly defensible.) He’s more willing to put up with anonymity; unlike here (and at LibOC), though, we’ve agreed that while it can be used for satire and parody we try to weed out defamation. At OJB, by FAR most of the comments from those supporting the blog’s position come from named individuals. Compare that this this place!
I doubt that you’d be a good one to lecture about social justice even if you did have the courage to do so under your real name.
You are one of the “main reasons” violence did not erupt across Orange County? If you were not here, then it is more than likely that violence would have engulfed the streets?
That’s pretty incredible stuff. Have the police commended you for such impressive work?
Greg — Occupy OC accomplished very little other than destroying grass at Irvine City Hall and annoying the neighbors there. No Occupy candidates ran and won. No voter registration tied to the group. And it was a leaderless organization that you worked so hard to be a leader of. Instead of all these hours sitting in the cold, you could have worked at Albertson’s bagging groceries or something.
I love this — “shameless personal attacks by political ninja wannabes” — which is what you do all the time. And what OJ does too.