Tom Fuentes' Community College Re-Election Campaign Off To Powerful Start
Posted by: Jubal | 08/01/2008 12:38 PM
The iconic former chairman of the Republican Party of Orange County, Tom Fuentes, is off to a powerful start to his re-election campaign for the South Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees. Word is the faculty union has recruited a guy named Bob Bliss to run against Tom and Carolyn Inman to run against another trustee, David Lang.
I don't know much yet about Bliss, other than he's a retired community college professor.
Inmon is an department chair at Mt. San Antonio College, and is a veteran unionist. She recently completed a term as president of the Community College Association, which is the community college teachers union.
Bliss and Inmon both ran for OC GOP Central Committee this year in the AD70, finishing 8th and 9th, respectively. Tom came in third, garnering more than twice as many votes as both Bliss and Inmon combined.
The faculty union might as well save their money, because Tom Fuentes will run over Bliss like a freight train. I don't say that merely as a long-time friend of Tom's: it's unsentimental political reality.
First, Tom has the advantage of incumbency. Faculty unions can gripe and moan, but their parochial beefs don't resonate with voters outside their faculty fishbowl.
Plus, Tom has toiled in the political vineyard of Orange County politics for more than forty years -- half of them running the most effective county GOP organization in the country. A person harvests a lot of friends and supporters in the course of that many years, a wide and deep network into which Tom can tap.
Following is a list of endorsements Tom has lined up in just the last few weeks, before filing has even closed:
1. Assemblywoman Mimi Walters - GOP Nominee for State SenateWho knows: this may be a case of the faculty union leadership funding candidates they know will lose, but are doing so because they need to show their members they are doing something.
2. Supervisor Pat Bates
3. Congressman John Campbell
4. Senator Dick Ackerman
5. Supervisor Bill Campbell
6. Senator Tom Harman
7. California Republican National Committeewoman-elect Linda Ackerman
8. California Republican National Committeeman-elect Shawn Steel
9. Assemblyman Chuck DeVore
10. State Assembly Nominee Diane Harkey
11. Assemblyman Jim Silva
12. Assemblyman Bob Huff : Republican Nominee for State Senate
13. United States Congressman Ed Royce
14. Buck Johns: Lincoln Club of Orange County leader
15. Shawn Fago: President, OC Young Republicans
16. Prof. Bruce Herschensohn: author and former GOP Nominee for the U.S. Senate
17. Trustee Anna Bryson - Vice President, Capistrano Unified School District
18. Capt. Emily Sanford, USN (Ret) - Sgt, At Arms Emeritus of the RPOC
19. San Clemente Councilman Steve Knoblock
20. Mary Young: Director, Orange County Fair Board
21. Lee Frodsham: Republican Women Leader
22. Kevin Muldoon: Chairman, O.C. McCain for President Volunteer Campaign
23. Former Senator John Lewis
24. Dr. Jo Ellen Allen: Vice Chairman Emeritus, Republican Party of Orange County
25. Orange County Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh
26. California Republican Party Chairman Ron Nehring
27. Laguna Niguel Councilman Paul Glaab
28. Janice Glaab, Businesswoman
29. Hon. Jim Lacy, former Dana Point City Councilman
30. Janice Lacy, Attorney at Law
31. David A. Robinson: Irvine Valley College Foundation Board Member
32. Howard Klein: former President, Irvine Valley College Foundation
33. Gina Selvaggi: Republican Volunteer Leader
34. Kathy Tavoularis: Executive Director, Calif. Delegation to Republican National Convention
35. Bill Christiansen: Former Director of the Irvine Valley College Foundation
36. Hon. Dorothy Wedel: Former Mayor
37. Hugh Hewitt, Professor of Law and national radio talk show host
38. Hon. Michael Antonovich: Los Angeles County Supervisor
39. Hon. Michelle Steel: Member California State Board of Equalization
40. Dr. Richard Van Meter: Physician
41. Sherry Van Meter: Former Mickey Mouse Club Mousketeer
42. Hon. Chriss Street: Orange County Treasurer
43. Jim Righeimer: Former GOP Nominee for the State Assembly
44. Steve Baric: Secretary of the California Republican Party
45. Dr. Ken Williams: Member, Orange County Board of Education
46. Felix Rocha: Member, Orange County Board of Education
47. Marilyn Sutton: community volunteer leader
48. Diana Gadberry: First Vice Chairman, HHRWF
49. Norm Dickenson: South County Republican Volunteer Leader
50. Julie Vandermost
51. Jeff Corless: Young Republican leader
52. Hon. Sam Allevato: San Juan Capistrano City Councilman
53. Hon. Don Bankhead: Fullerton City Councilman
54. Brett Barbare: Director, Municipal Water District of Orange County
55. Hon. Gary Capata: Laguna Niguel City Council
56. Hon. Guy Carrozzo: Mayor of Fountain Valley
57. Hon. Larry Crandall: Fountain Valley City Council
58. Hon. Jim Dahl: San Clemente City Council
59. Trustee Thomas "Hoagy" Holquin: Anaheim Union High School District
60. Hon. Joel Lautenschleger: Mayor of Laguna Hills
61. Hon. Deborah Pauly: Villa Park City Council
62. John Steward: Director, Moulton Niguel Water District
63. Michael Warder: University Vice Chancellor
64. Hon. Frank Ury: Mayor Pro Tem -, City of Mission Viejo
65. Hon. Tony Rackauckas: Orange County District Attorney
66. Susie Caskey
67. Trustee Hilda Sugarman: Fullerton Schools
68. Dr. Joan B. Davis: University Vice President
69. Hon. Joe Carchio: Huntington Beach, City Council
70. Hon. John Paul Ledesma: Mission Viejo City Council
71. Hon. Keith Curry: Newport Beach City Council
72. Ed Laird: Businessman, Former Vice President of the Lincoln Club
73. United States Congressman Dana Rohrabacher
74. Keith Rodenhuis - Deputy Treasurer, County of Orange
75. Mathew Reynard - Former SOCCCD Student Trustee, Irvine Valley College
76. Keith Carlson - Treasurer, California Republican Party
77. Yasith Weerasuriya - CEO, Stanbridge College, Irvine
78. Hon. Ken Maddox - Trustee, Capistrano Unified School District
79. Hon. Bob Zemel - Former Anaheim City Councilman
80. Professor Mario Mainero
81. Supervisor John Moorlach
A similar dynamic was at work in John Moorlach's 2006 supervisor race. he OCEA and AOCDS spent tens of thousands on independent expenditures against Moorlach and in favor of his lame opponent, Stanton Councilman Dave Shawver. I don't think the union leadership was under any illusions that Moorlach could be beaten, but the animosity their members felt toward Moorlach had reached such a point that they had to fund the IEs.
Tom had been battling liver cancer, but he received a liver transplant in June and looks as good as ever. If the faculty union is under the impression it faces a weakened opponent, a rude awakening is in store for it come November.
CATEGORY:
2008 Elections, Politics Behind the Orange Curtain
Jubal,
Carolyn Inmon vs David Lang is for District One, the Irvine Seat, so I will be covering it in my Tuesday Morning post.
In meantime, I'll point out that Carolyn ran for Republican Central Committee (70th District) and lost to Allan Bartlett by almost two-to-one. ( http://www.ocvote.com/live/pri0608/results.htm#c-101 )
Jubal, I’m not so sure, but you may be right about who will win in the trustee contest between the well-known Tom Fuentes and the unknown Bob Bliss.
But I’d like you to consider another question: who OUGHT to win?
I could list the fiscal woes with which Fuentes and his toady Chancellor Raghu Mathur have saddled the SOCCCD. But there’s an even more important problem. For the first time in the history of the district, its two colleges may well lose their accreditation (in January). Why? Essentially because the Fuentes-dominated board, despite repeated warnings from the accrediting agency, has persisted in meddling with college and district affairs and has insisted on supporting the odious Mathur, whose ruthless and conniving ways have driven morale into the ground (a “plague of despair” is the accreditor’s colorful phrase).
Last February, the Accreds wrote each college a letter indicating that the district must clean up its act (re the above) by October (2008), or the colleges will lose their accredited status. There will be no further extensions or warnings.
That’s about as bad as it gets. We’re on the brink. And, more than anyone else, we have your boy Tom Fuentes to thank for it.
What? No response? Perhaps the question of who deserves to win is of no interest to you, Jubester. Dunno.
Why do I get the feeling that OC Republicans (at least those on Red County) constitute essentially a mutual protection/promotion club? That Fuentes used to be the Den Mother of your daffy club is all you need to know, it seems. That he is in fact harming our college district doesn't seem for you even to be an issue.
(I hope this is working. Come out, come out! If not, I understand.)