The June primary is 18 days away, and the 5th Supervisor District race is getting real with campaign mail hitting voter households. I’m told the campaigns of Mission Viejo Councilman Frank Ury and Laguna Niguel Councilman Robert Ming have each dropped two positive mailers, with one mail piece from Dana Point Councilwoman Lisa Bartlett.
The overall momentum of the race continues moving in Ury’s direction since my previous post on the race on May 5. He’s mounted a robust grassroots walking and phone-banking program, and has raised $19,000 since March 17, and has fundraisers scheduled practically until primary day.
Ming’s fundraising remains stalled, as it has since early this year when he began paying back his $50,000 personal loan to his campaign. He’s raised just $7,000 since March 17.
Bartlett raised $2,900 and loaned herself another $20,000 – bringing her total personal loans to her campaign to $95,000. This raises the question of why would Bartlett loan herself even more money when her campaign has only put out one mailer? According professionals I’ve spoken with, the most likely answer for why Bartlett is loaning her campaign even more money is her vendors are requiring her to pay for everything up front. Candidates have to pay for postage to get the mail out, but their printers and consultants will often defer payment for their services if they have confidence in the likelihood of victory — and ultimately being paid. It is far harder to get a defeated campaign to pay its bills. Consultants and vendors who don’t think their candidate is likely to win want to get paid before the election.
Why Is the Republican Party Even Thinking Of Endorsing In This Race?
Even though there are three Republicans running, the Republican Party of Orange County on Monday night will consider endorsing in this race. God forbid we allow the voters to sort it out themselves. The reason the OC GOP will undergo a counter-productive internal fight over this seat? There had been a gentleman’s agreement among the candidates not to seek a pre-primary endorsement – an agreement that ended when Ming waited until the deadline to file his application for endorsement. Since that left Ury and Bartell hanging in a lurch, the OC GOP Endorsement Committee initially deferred consideration until they also had the opportunity to apply.
The Endorsement Committee met on May 5 to take up the matter again and much was made of the fact that during the February 2010 recall of Mission Viejo Councilman Lance MacLean, Frank Ury endorsed of Dave Leckness in the replacement election. At the time, the conservative Leckness was still registered as a Democrat. The other replacement election candidate was a guy named Dale Tyler, who had been put up by Larry Gilbert and pro-recall faction. Tyler shared Gilbert’s fondness for ballot-box land-use planning, which erodes property rights. Tyler had also for years had been registering his cars out of state in order to evade paying California’s vehicle license fee, and had been a relentlessly adversarial toward Ury. Given the choice about who he wanted governing with him on the Mission Viejo council, Ury made the rational choice of supporting Leckness – who re-registered as a Republican soon after being elected.
According to what Alice-in-Wonderland view of politics is it considered a black mark to bring a conservative Democrat into the Republican Party? What kind of message does it send to punish a Republican elected official for doing so?
If endorsing a Democrat in a non-partisan election is now to become the latest disqualifier in the OC GOP endorsement process, then the party cannot endorse the re-election this year of Orange Councilman Fred Whitaker nor Anaheim Mayor Tom Tai, each of whom did the same thing in the 2012 and 2008 elections, respectively.
The plain truth of the matter is there is absolutely no compelling reason for the Republican Party of Orange County to endorse in the 5th Supervisor District race. None. The 5th District candidates do not represent a choice between a Republican versus a Democrat, or a conservative Republican versus a RINO. The front-running candidates are both conservative Republicans, between whom there is little difference in terms of philosophy.
That’s the reality. Granted, a few South County activists like Larry Gilbert loudly claim Ming is the only conservative in the race, but that is not so much about Ming as it is a manifestation of an long-standing personal vendetta against Frank Ury. For example, this past August, Ming helped craft a pretty sweet deal for Laguna Niguel’s new city manager: a $925,000 home loan from the city with an interest rate of just 3.375% interest and 6% down payment – not exactly the kind of loan available to John Q. Citizen. Furthermore, $925,000 is about $300,000 more than the median home price in Laguna Niguel.
If Frank Ury had voted for the City of Mission Viejo to give that same deal to its city manager, Gilbert & Co. would be flaying him alive and pointing to the loan as “proof” of his apostasy – but since it is Ming’s name on the home loan deal, they are silent about it. The point here is the anti-Ury mud-slinging should be seen for what it is: sour grapes from a few embittered Mission Viejo gadflies.
Tonight’s endorsement fight is an unfortunate waste of time and energy, in which minute differences between Ury and Ming will be needlessly magnified in an attempt to conjure some imperative but imaginary need for the OC GOP to choose between two elected officials who have worked to advance the conservative cause. It is needlessly divisive for a party that should focus its energies on opportunities to defeat Democrats in year that is shaping up to be the best the GOP has had in California in a long time. The wisest course, and most beneficial for the Republican Party of Orange County, would be stay out of this contest altogether and let the voters of the 5th District sort out which Republican they want on the Board of Supervisors.