Councilman Jose F. Moreno, the left-wing Democrat running for re-election in District 3, described his Democrat opponent’s platform of re-focusing city government on “serving our neighborhoods, not grandstanding at City Hall” as Trumpism, while alleging the Anaheim Police Association stokes bigotry.

Moreno made the charges while appearing July 9 as a guest on ITZ Happening, a local progressive Internet program:


After holding forth on what he considers the deficiencies of former Councilman Jordan Brandman, Moreno states his view that calling for Anaheim city government to focus on the fundamentals of civic government is, in reality, a coded racial appeal to retrogrades eager to turn back the clock to the 195os. Here’s Moreno’s virtue-signalling smear:

“One of the opponents that’s running against me, a guy named Mitch Caldwell, talking about “Back to the Basics.” Anybody that says “back to the basics” in this era is to me, promoting this MAGA idea – which is what Trump was about, right? “Make America Great Again” – so there’s this kind of MAGA idea of Anaheim going before November about making Anaheim great again, back when Dis-nay gave everybody, you know,  a sense that they belonged to something – even though most people didn’t. It’s a 1950s spiel. This heritage. So I just really caution a lot of people about, when they hear that, when folks talk about going back to the basics, they’re talking about going back to  the base of at-large elections, corporate-dominated elections, where major parts of the city were ignored. So – and basically the infrastructure was ignored.”

Huh? Does that make any sense to anybody, or bear any resemblance to reality?

When critics derided his “Welcoming Anaheim” initiative as Sanctuary City-Lite, Moreno claimed (erroneously) they were engaging in “dog-whistle” politics.

Pot, meet kettle.

Moreno’s likening of Mitch Caldwell to Donald Trump is preposterous, and comparing the Back to Basics theme to Make America Great Again – or more properly, the twisted progressive understanding of MAGA – is malicious. Does Moreno actually believe what he is saying? Beyond a cynical but ordinary smear job, is it a window into how he perceives political reality?

A few minutes later, Moreno is dialoguing with his hosts about one of the Left’s favorite hobby horses, “the school-to-prison pipeline,” which is the belief that a disparate proportion of Latino and African-American students end up incarcerated due to unfair, racially-motivated school disciplinary systems.

Here, Moreno again makes the logic-defying attempt to link Caldwell to Trump before ruminating on the sinister influence of the Anaheim Police Association (emphases added)

“The thing about the school to prison pipeline is, I think, that we focus on the two institutions, right? Schools and then the police department.”

“So the school-to-prison pipeline approached in a social context – divestment, social divestments in neighborhoods, in schools, appropriate and relevant training of faculty, with teachers and administrators,  and of course the police department.

“But also the votes themselves! That’s also a function, or produces the school-to-prison pipeline culture because voters get all these mailers from the police associations saying they’re unsafe because of these kids who look like this. And then you have other folks saying those public schools aren’t doing their job, so that’s why those kids become vandals and delinquents, so that’s what creates public safety concerns.”

“So that’s what you’re seeing in Santa Ana with the police association, and we’re about to see it in Anaheim – we’ve seen it over the years in Anaheim. And again it goes back to which candidates are going to be supported by the Anaheim Police Association, and what are they being asked to do by the police association?”

“So it’s not good to me that the wonderful trajectory we’ve had in creating greater, stronger relationships, or are we going to try to take it Back to the Basics in Anaheim? – back when they beat (unintelligible) people in Little People’s Park, which created a police riot,  which created Los Amigos of Orange County.”

Let’s set aside the question of whether the “school-to-prison pipeline” exists outside the dogmas of leftist academics and progressive activists.  Moreno lays blames for the “school-to-prison pipeline” on voters, whose darker natures are manipulated by bigoted mailers from the police unions – and then all but says that his defeat by Mitch Caldwell will lead to Latinos being beaten by marauding Anaheim police officers.

What we see is a pattern here of viewing the world through through the resentful lens of identity politics – no doubt an occupational hazard of specializing in an ideology organized as an academic discipline like Chicano Studies. The ramshackle reasoning, the leaps of logic – those are less disturbing than the ease with which Moreno dishonestly attempts to malign an honorable man like Mitch Caldwell, and imputes such dark motives to the Anaheim Police Association.

Not very welcoming or kind.

And the election is still three and a half months away.