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THE EARLY POLITICAL BUZZ
As you may have read in the almost daily Daily Pilot (if you're still reading the thing), Mayor Mansoor is putting the pieces in place for a 2010 run for the 68th State Assembly District seat currently held by Assemblyman Van Tran who will be termed out.
The surface buzz is that Van Tran is considering a move to the State Senate.
The deeper and more interesting buzz is that he really wants to challenge Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez for her 47th Congressional District seat.
If Tran does challenge Sanchez, he may be on a fool's errand given the demographics of the 47th District which includes a small part of Fullerton, a large part of Anaheim, a large part of Garden Grove and a very large part of Santa Ana. Comprende, Senor?
Still, once you move up the political ladder to State Assembly, the State Senate is not that attractive, and a national Congressional seat is where you start to get into the big time.
Here's how some of the pieces on the political chess board should start lining up.
Mansoor would like an endorsement from Tran. However, endorsing Mansoor would do little for Tran in his next move (whatever it is) and might hurt him with certain constituencies. Think demographics again, Senor.
Thus, expect Tran to endorse a Vietnamese candidate for his Assembly seat. But, since Tran will need the support of people such as Dana Rohrabacher and John Moorlach (and other GOP bigs), his support of a Vietnamese candidate may be little more than lending his name to a leaflet or two. In other words, he won't go negative on Mansoor.
As for Mansoor's seat on the Costa Mesa City Council, expect Jim Righeimer to take it in the next election.
Many voters believe that it's unfortunate that the talented Mansoor is boxed in and can't run for the U.S. Congress.
The only two Congressional seats that would make geographic/demographic sense for Mansoor would be those held by Dana Rohrabacher and John Campbell, but both of these guys are pretty much on the same page as Mansoor politically, and if he were to challenge either of them, he probably wouldn't get far and could hurt his future chances for higher office.
And what about Assemblyman Chuck DeVore who is challenging Barbara Boxer for her U.S. Senate seat?
It would take a miracle for him to win. He knows it, so he's doing everything he can think of to get name recognition, including writing lyrics to old songs by Don Henley of the Eagles and challenging Henley to sue him.
That's how we see things shaping up as of today. Expect changes as more players enter the stage.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
Katrina (the sky is not falling) Foley ignored signs for over a year that things were not going well with the Costa Mesa finances. After all, she saw people at South Coast Plaza, so the economy is not really bad. It is just negative talk from the Finance Department, who in her words were too “doom and gloom”. She paid attention last night and now she will solve all of our problems. Her friends at the Police and Fire Departments can keep their jobs. She found ways to cut expenses in 7 hours that finance staff and all the other city department heads could not find in 7 months. We obviously don’t need them. We can get rid Bobby Young, budget director, who needs a budget anyway. We just spend until the checkbook is empty. And we certainly don’t need Marc Puckett to keep track of all of our cash and investments because they will be gone in less than 2 years. Just about all we need is one payroll clerk to continue writing those payroll checks……
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