Rick Rieff On Fuentes Campaign Event
Posted by: Jubal | 08/22/2008 5:41 PM
I thought I'd share this item from this week's OC Insider column by OC Business Journal Exec. Editor Rick Reiff:
It was almost like old times--a couple of hundred loyalists enjoying drinks and cigars at the Balboa Bay Club, conservative stalwart Bruce Herschensohn signing books and Tom Fuentes at the center of it all. The event launched Fuentes' re-election campaign for trustee of the South Orange County Community College District, job enough these days for the once-powerful chairman of OC's Republican Party. The old lion held court, told stories, trumpeted the college district's fiscal conservatism and blamed the GOP's woes on power brokers who value "money" more than "people" or "ideas." But a slowed Fuentes was gracious, and more philosophical than combative. He did not partake of the libations, a small price to pay, he said, for his new liver: An encounter with cancer "makes you realize what's really important."
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2008 Elections
Mr. Ayer registered as a Republican to be electable in an interim election with no incumbents. He did...
For some reason, Tom chose not to trumpet our district's equally outstanding "accreditation brinksmanship" or its "50% Law cluelessness." And then there's its remarkably persistent employee "hostility, cynicism, despair, and fear" (that's the Accrediting Commission's language).
The Orange County Republican Party should be ashamed that its former chair has brought his ruthless and destructive political ways to a community college district (Saddleback and Irvine Valley colleges). Fuentes has jeopardized the accreditation of our colleges (owing to micromanagement and an insistence on retaining the incompetent puppet-chancellor Raghu Mathur) and has brought us infamy--remember the time he nixed the study abroad trip to Spain because that country had "abandoned our fighting men and women" in Iraq? Good Lord.
Fuentes is running against Bob Bliss, who is also a conservative Republican, but one who will not run the SOCCCD into the ground or further diminish its once-fine reputation.
Why is Fuentes even running again? Is it just to keep any scary "dangerous outsiders" from getting elected?
This was the habit of the old CUSD trustees. Run for election to fend off anyone with any new ideas, then see to it that another good ol' boy (or gal) was appointed (or elected in a low-turnout special election).
Is Fuentes following the playbook of the discredited CUSD trustees? And why isn't anyone calling him on it?