Resort unions are ratcheting up their effort to elect their political allies to the Anaheim City Council, pouring at least $125,000 into independent expenditure committees. On September 22, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324 contributed $125,000 to an IE committee called “Helping Working Families Get Ahead in Support of Aitken for Mayor and Leon for Council 2022, Sponsored ...

On Tuesday, the Anaheim City Council voted unanimously to approve ocV!BE, an ambitious $4 billion development project by the owners of the Anaheim Ducks to transform the 100-acre area around the Honda Center with new entertainment, dining, residential, officce, hospitality, and lifestyle amenities. OcV!BE is an initiative of Henry and Susan Samueli, the longtime owners of the Anaheim Ducks and ...

UNITE-HERE Local 11, the militant hospitality workers union, is circulating an initiative to impose a series of costly labor rules – including a $25 an hour minimum wage – on Anaheim hotels and event venues. Buried in the initiative is language exempting hotels and event centers from these mandates if they agree to unionize. Obviously, the numerous Garden Grove hotels ...

District 3 Councilman Jose F. Moreno wants the Anaheim City Council to put itself on record as supporting the “community schools” education model being pushed by the Anaheim Union High School District and the Anaheim Elementary School District. This evening, the city council will vote on a resolution of support for the community schools model. Earlier in the week, the ...

A coalition of Resort unions, led by a militantly left-wing hotel workers union focused on imposing a $25 minimum wage on Anaheim hotels and event venues, has launched an independent expenditure (IE) campaign to elect Anaheim mayoral candidate Ashleigh Aitken and council candidates Carlos Leon (District 2) and Al Jabbar (District 2). All three Democrats are part of a candidate ...

On September 18, I broke the story that Hari Lal, running for Anaheim City Council from District 6, hadn’t paid his property taxes the beginning of 2019 and owed $146,377.93 in delinquent property taxes. This is public information, and accessible to any member of the public on the OC Treasurer-Tax Collector’s website. The article also included Lal’s convoluted explanations, which ...

Hari Lal, an attorney running for Anaheim City Council from District 6, has falsely claimed endorsements from Assemblyman Tom Daly and Anaheim Councilman Avelino Valencia. He also submitted a “if I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you said yes” endorsement request to a current member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. Taken together, they call into question the ...

[Editor’s Note: this article was originally published the evening of September 13, but has since been updated with additional information. I sent several e-mails to Mr. Lal yesterday asking for additional information and clarification regarding his delinquent property taxes and his explanation for it. Mr. Lal has not responded.] In a September 8 post on his campaign Facebook page, District ...

Tomorrow night, the Anaheim City Council will vote on a $6.6 million proposal to purchase the red-tagged Covered Wagon Motel on Beach Boulevard as part of its ongoing efforts to revitalize the troubled corridor and West Anaheim in general. The city intends to re-develop the property as a mixed-use development. The squalid, 70-room motel was shut down by city officials ...

The Anaheim mayoral race is more open – and Mayor Pro Tem Trevor O’Neil more strongly positioned – than prior convention wisdom assumed, according to polling results released by the O’Neil campaign. The poll was conducted on July 8-12 by Public Opinion Strategies, with a margin of error of +/- 4.9%. O’Neil’s opponents in the mayoral contest are OC Fair ...