AND \u2026.. <\/p>\n 3. There are a lot of videos we haven\u2019t yet put out from our last couple of Club meetings. Good ones! Which let\u2019s put em up here, on this open thread! <\/p>\n Wow, it\u2019s been TEN YEARS now since the Anaheim Democrats Club was formed in 2016, and when we have time we\u2019ll tell the whole story of that raucous decade: \u201cA Thorn in the Side of the County Party Since 2016.\u201d Maybe over the spring, we\u2019ll tell that story.<\/p>\n But just looking at our lineup for tomorrow, it\u2019s clear that we are becoming the progressive, good-government counterweight to the currently reactionary County Party. And, as hard as the DPOC has tried, first under Ada and even more under Florice Hoffman, they haven\u2019t managed to kill us yet! Like the Rooster in that Alice in Chains song:<\/p>\n \n Let\u2019s see, our last meeting was in early February, during the time our City Manager James Vanderpool was on the hot seat and fixing to resign (our Club has always paid a lot of attention to local corruption.) Former Councilman Dr. Jose Moreno happened to be in the audience and wasn\u2019t planning to speak, but folks wanted him to. He shared what he knew from working with Vanderpool, and also once again expressed his disappointment in how little had changed since Anaheim had gotten a \u201cDemocrat\u201d Council majority. (This video also has, at the beginning, a couple of our local ICE fighters whom we support every way we can \u2013 Steve \u201cwetdog\u201d Acevedo and Ruben the Nurse.)<\/p>\n .<\/p>\n Our two scheduled speakers were supposed to be Congressional candidate Esther Kim Varet, AND San Clemente Mayor \/ state senate candidate Chris Duncan. We invited Chris not so much for his race as the fact that he\u2019d used to be an ICE attorney and I\u2019d heard he had a really timely and fascinating presentation about ICE. And we\u2019d sorta been friends for a few years, since I supported him running against klepto-MAGA Laurie Davies for assembly<\/a>. Even though I knew he was kind of a cautious, establishment insider kinda guy. But then AT THE LAST MINUTE Chris told me he couldn\u2019t make it. When I asked him why, he replied \u201cAsk Florice.\u201d AKA Florice Hoffman, the DPOC chief \u2013 apparently she TOLD HIM NOT TO COME TO OUR CLUB. She was back to her old tricks from last year! <\/p>\n What kind of self-respecting politician takes orders from Florice Hoffman? It\u2019s not like the DPOC was gonna take away his endorsement (as they\u2019d threatened with others.) Chris had already driven our good progressive friend Rick Foster out of the race (with the backing of Senator Umberg) which was a pisser but none of us were gonna get into it. But\u2026 very disappointing that Chris was scared off from talking to our Club. A lot of people had shown up to hear his ICE talk, including Dr. Moreno.<\/p>\n But you know who wasn\u2019t scared off by the DPOC was Esther, who told me \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t believe how many people told me not to come here, but here I am!\u201d Good for Esther. (As well as her Democratic opponent in the 40th district Lisa Ramirez who had come to our previous meeting.) So here is Esther, and then Lisa. We sure hope one of these ladies makes it past the Top Two June Primary, to slaughter either Creepy Ken Calvert or Slick Young Kim.<\/p>\n Esther at the Club<\/p>\n \n Lisa at the Club<\/p>\n \n I\u2019ll have another couple videos up soon, but I gotta go knock on doors. For Anaheim Rent Control Signatures of course, I\u2019ll sound like a broken record these next two months. We have a member who wants to get Anaheim to become sister cities with Hebron \/ Al-Khalil (in the occupied West Bank.) I\u2019ll try to get that up tonight or tomorrow. Actually I think one of the things the DPOC (which currently has a strong Zionist tilt to say the least) hates about us is our sympathy to the Palestinians. <\/p>\n But it\u2019s OPEN THREAD TIME, talk about anything! And make sure to come to our spectacular meeting tomorrow night, Thursday night.<\/a> We\u2019ll be voting on whether to endorse Jessie for assembly, and whether to join the Working Families Party!<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2026-04-09-meeting-for-FB.png\")
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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. This blog has been needing an Open Thread. We\u2019ve been very pre-occupied getting signatures for rent control…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-258403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}