Santa Ana Council Member Sal Tinajero has dropped out of the Santa Ana Mayor’s race. The remaining candidates include:
- Mayor Miguel Pulido
- Council Member David Benavides
- Analyst/Production Manager George Collins Continue reading
Category Archives: Sal Tinajero
UPDATE: Tony Tapia to run for Rancho Board’s Area 3
Tony Tapia and State Senator Lou Correa
UPDATE: Santa Ana Council Member Sal Tinajero’s sister, Myriam Tinajero, has pulled out of the race for the Rancho Santiago Community College District’s Area 3. The remaining candidates include Santa Ana Redevelopment and Housing Commissioner Nelida Mendoza-Yanez, LAUSD asbestos inspector Thomas Gordon and Construction Laborer Tony Tapia, for Area 3 of the Rancho Santiago Community College District’s Board of Education. Mendoza-Yanez ran for the Santa Ana City Council in 2006, losing to David Benavides. She got over 10,000 votes in that election, according to Smart Voter. Continue reading
Alderete’s fundraiser attracted many of Santa Ana’s political players
Santa Ana Ward 3 candidate Eric Alderete’s campaign held a fundraiser tonight at Chapter One: the Modern Local, in Downtown Santa Ana. There were at least 80 attendees including quite a few elected and appointed officials. These included:
- State Senator Lou Correa
- Santa Ana Council Members Sal Tinajero, Vince Sarmiento, Michele Martinez and David Benavides (who came to the event by himself)
- Rancho Santiago Community College District Trustees Mark McLoughlin, Larry Labrado and John Hanna
- Santa Ana Planning Commissioners Sean Mill, Sandy Nalle, Patrick Yrarrazaval and Mario Turner Continue reading
The Santa Ana PBID tax may finally go away after next year
In the end the Santa Ana PBID tax may finally die – but it won’t be because our City Council had the guts to get rid of it. Instead it is on its last legs because some Council Members are on vacation, others cannot vote on PBID matters due to conflicts of interest, and Council Member Carlos Bustamante is refusing to attend public sessions of the City Council, according to the O.C. Register.
It is too bad our City Council did not have the guts to get rid of the PBID outright. And it is sad that the Downtown businesses are going to get stuck paying this tax again for another year. But I do hope that this will prove to be the end of the PBID. Continue reading
Updated: Santa Ana Voter Poll – Who Should be our Next Mayor?
The Santa Ana Mayor’s race is quickly growing crowded. Mayor Miguel A. Pulido will be facing off against two Council Members, David Benavides and Sal Tinajero, but there are others in the race as well, including retired engineer Roy Alvarado, CSUF student Miguel Angel Briseno, and possibly videographer George Collins as well.
You already know who Benavides and Tinajero are. Here is a rundown of the other candidates: Continue reading
UPDATE: City Council places Mayoral term limit measure on the Nov. ballot
UPDATE: A four member city council voted tonight to unanimously put to the voters a four term limit of 2 years each for the office of Mayor.
I can understand why the Santa Ana City C0uncil Members are upset at Mayor Miguel Pulido. Let’s face it – he has been running circles around them for almost 20 years. But he is now dealing with a Council that, for the most part, he did not elect. He opposed Sal Tinajero and Michele Martinez when they first ran for the City Council. He did create David Benavides, but when Vince Sarmiento was appointed to the Council, to replace Jose Solorio, he was already his own man. Unlike Benavides, he was a polished product and a guy most people respected. Who would have forseen two Pulido allies going down in flames – Carlos Bustamante’s own alleged misbehavior did him in, and Claudia Alvarez could not undo the term limits she helped create. Now Pulido, like Julius Caesar, is surrounded by short swords and although we are headed into August, it might as well be the Ides of March.
Back in Pulido’s heyday, he and former City Manager Dave Ream knew how to work this bunch. Once they got elected, they would be warmly welcomed, even if they had initially been opposed. Commission appointments would be handed out like Halloween candies and just like that Council members would be subverted. But Ream is gone and so is his magic bag of redevelopment – and now even the developers that lived high on the hog in our town for so long are slinking to the Council’s side. Continue reading
Tinajero running for Mayor, making Benavides an afterthought
Popular Santa Ana Council Member Sal Tinajero pulled papers today to run for Mayor of Santa Ana. Tinajero served on the SAUSD School Board before getting elected to the Santa Ana City Council in 2006, when he beat a candidate backed by Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido. Tinajero won by just under a thousand votes against Jennifer Villasenor, according to Smart Voter.
Tinajero just missed being the top vote-getter when he won a seat on the SAUSD School Board in 2004. He was the top vote-getter when he first won a school board seat in 2000. Continue reading
Why they can’t beat Miguel Pulido – and he will win again this year
UPDATE: Council Member Sal Tinajero has pulled papers to run against Mayor Pulido this November. Chisme has it that Benavides will be pressured to get out of the race ASAP.
UPDATE: Council Member David Benavides has announced that he is running for Mayor. Pulido has nothing to worry about.
Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido’s detractors are befuddled about how exactly he keeps on winning, every two years. What they don’t understand is that their views don’t reflect the views of the residents at large in our city.
Santa Ana is a huge city. The “inside baseball” and chismoso/gadfly set is fairly small, perhaps a hundred people at most. In 2010, mayoral challenger Alfredo Amezcua lined up a lot of these folks – and combined them with the dwindling “Usual Suspects.” Amezcua spent a quarter million dollars and he thought he had victory in the bag. But you see what he was listening to was an echo chamber – and he failed to reach the majority of voters in Santa Ana. Continue reading
Bustamante was the one who advised Onofre to switch to the GOP
Brainwashed by Carlos Bustamante?
When we revealed in an earlier post that Santa Ana City Council candidate Karina Onofre had switched parties and become a registered Republican, some folks in town started pointing fingers. Liberal OC editor Dan Chmielewski, for example, wrote a post wondering “What led Onofre down this path? Could it be a lunch with Santa Ana Council member Sal Tinajero several weeks ago?”
Well, Onofre did meet with Tinajero and he gave her very good advice. He cautioned that she should run for the SAUSD School Board instead. Let’s face it, Onofre is very young and she has no record of working in the community. The voters don’t know her. But they do know SAUSD Trustee Roman Reyna and Santa Ana Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Alvarez, the Ward 5 City Council candidates Onofre is hoping to beat. Continue reading
Santa Ana City Council establishes a term limits committee
Tonight’s Santa Ana City Council meeting, which was held at the SAPD’s Community Room, was, as predicted, a real zoo. Media vans and news crews were everywhere and residents and out of town bloggers packed the proceedings.
As we stated in an earlier post, Council Member Carlos Bustamante, who is facing serious felony sex crime and public theft charges, was not likely to show up, and he didn’t. This is his second unexcused absence. After sixty days of not showing up to work, at City Hall, the City Council can dump him and appoint someone to fill out his term. Continue reading
Planning Commissioner Alderete to run for Bustamante’s City Council seat
Santa Ana Planning Commissioner Eric Alderete has announced that he will campaign for Ward 3 on the Santa Ana City Council, which is currently held by Council Member Carlos Bustamante, who was arrested last week on a plethora of sex crime and public theft charges. Ward 3 opens up in November, although Bustamante could still run for reelection.
Alderete has already racked up a number of powerful endorsements including those of: Continue reading
Alvarez gets the last laugh as Bustamante gets arrested
Alvarez couldn’t help but smile at tonight’s City Council meeting…
Remember when Santa Ana Council Member Carlos Bustamante went after his colleague, Santa Ana Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Alvarez, after she compared landlord and developer Irv Chases’s business practices to Adolf Hitler’s ethnic cleansing? Well, last week the Orange County Grand Jury found that Alvarez was right about Chase and his friends at Downtown, Inc. – in a report that slammed the Santa Ana PBID tax. And Bustamante? Well he is now rotting in jail after being arrested today on multiple felony and misdemeanor counts.
When Bustamante raises bail he will have quite a few decisions to make – like hiring a lawyer, but eventually he will also have to write his formal letter of resignation. His time on the Santa Ana City Council is done.
I expect that one of our City Commissioners will be named to replace him – perhaps one of the many Planning Commissioners who live in Ward 3. Bustamante’s seat will be available this November in the General Election and his replacement will have a leg up on the rest of the competition. Continue reading
City Council to decide the fate of the Downtown PBID tax tonight
July 4 falls on a Wednesday this year but there will be fireworks early this week, at Monday night’s Santa Ana City Council meeting, on July 2, at 5 pm, as Council Member Sal Tinajero and Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Alvarez have placed an 85 A item on the City Council agenda to disestablish the Downtown Santa Ana property tax – the PBID.
Here is the 85 A PBID agenda item: Continue reading
Isn’t it time to end the Downtown Santa Ana Pbid?
Santa Ana Council Member Sal Tinajero may put an item on an upcoming City Council meeting agenda to get rid of the Downtown Santa Ana Pbid, a property assessment that is collected and spent by a non-profit, Downtown Inc. There has been a lot of anger on the part of small businesses made to pay these fees (either directly as property owners or passed on to them in their leases by their landords), but who feel that they don’t draw benefit from Downtown Inc’s marketing, which has apparently benefited the Downtown restaurants and bars more.
Need more proof of that? Tara Jimenez, the owner of Drapes Vintage, was hired by Downtown, Inc. to run workshops to teach local Downtown businesses how they could make their stores more appealing to the downtown’s changing demographic,” according to the Voice of OC. But she is now closing her business – and she has turned on Downtown Inc. too. Continue reading
Santa Ana City Council should vote to change racist chicken ordinance
I was pleased to read in the O.C. Register that Santa Ana Council Members Sal Tinajero, Claudia Alvarez and David Benavides voted, as the Public Safety Committee, to change a city ordinance so that residents may keep chickens in their backyard, provided they are at least thirty feet from any neighbor’s property.
Deputy Santa Ana Police Chief Carlos Rojas, who oversees field operations as well as animal control, said his staff looked at a variety of issues, and contacted both Orange County officials and the Centers for Disease Control. Like other city officials, he said he wasn’t sure why the 100-foot standard was adopted, according to the O.C. Register.
Well, the law was ridiculous and it was designed to keep chickens entirely out of our backyards. It was passed years ago when white City Council members regularly used city ordinances to punish Mexican American residents, who often kept chickens in their backyards, having come from rural traditions in their home country. Some of our residents are still clinging to the old racist ideals. Just look at Tim Rush’s comments at this link. Continue reading