Critics of our Mayor Miguel Pulido are all abuzz in the blogosphere today after it was revealed that he may have been in line to receive a “success fee” of $500,000 for helping put together the investors for the $2.3 billion real estate deal involving the sale of state owned buildings. They are calling for investigations by the District Attorney or the Attorney General and making all kinds of wild accusations. What they have failed to tell their readers is that Mayor Pulido broke no laws.
Rather than focusing on the merits of the sale itself these folks who have an axe to grind with the Mayor have chosen to bash Pulido instead. The real story is the sale of these buildings and whether it is a wise move for the state to do so. However these bloggers are so ready to smear Pulido, his allies and his agenda at every turn that they have lost site of the issue of the sale itself. That is a shame.
By most accounts Pulido in his capacity as a businessman, not Mayor, pulled together a group of investors to purchase 11 parcels currently owned by the state. There is nothing illegal or unethical about the Mayor doing this and it is “yellow journalism” for anyone to infer that it is.
Certainly given that he has been an elected official since 1986 and Mayor since 1994 Pulido has made a number of contacts that helped him pull this group together. Is there a law that prevents him from calling on these contacts outside his capacity as Mayor? Was there any conflict of interest regarding his capacity as Mayor and this real estate deal? The answer to both questions is a resounding NO!
Real estate deals like this are done quite regularly and the person or person’s who pull the investors together to make the deal happen are compensated. The bigger the deal the greater the compensation. Why should Miguel Pulido be any different because he is the part-time Mayor of Santa Ana?
All of the noise we are hearing about this in the blogosphere is much ado about nothing. The attacks on Pulido just fit into their agenda and rather than dealing with the fact that nothing illegal transpired they would rather play on the emotions of their readers and the naive public.
I encourage you to look closely at those making the most noise and you will see that they are left overs from the failed campaigns run against Mayor Pulido this past November. As far as Bill Lockyer goes he is probably just trying to get a little payback for Mayor Pulido’s opposition to his wife Nadia Davis-Lockyer when she served on the Santa Ana School Board.
