Different election, different position. In 2008 Santa Ana Police Officers strongly opposed Michele Martinez in the contest for Santa Ana Mayor, when she challenged Mayor Miguel Pulido—calling her a “self-admitted former drug dealer.”
For this year’s race for 69th Assembly, the cops are singing a different song, endorsing Martinez.
“Michele Martinez had dedicated her time on the Santa Ana City Council to keeping our kids and neighborhoods safe,” said SAPOA President John Franks. “She has been a partner with local law enforcement and her colleagues on the City Council in dramatically reducing crime in our city and we are proud to endorse her campaign for State Assembly.”
So what changed? Michele Martinez is still the former gang member and self-admitted former drug dealer she was in 2008. She voted against contracts raising police salaries back in 2010.
What is different is that Michele is “now” a strong supporter of Chief/Interim City Manager Paul Walters and voted for the recent contract with the police that had them paying a little more towards their pensions and deferring some pay till next year in order to meet an immediate shortfall in city funds. In the agreement, while every other bargaining unit had to give back pay, the cops only had theirs deferred, essentially kicking the can down the road. From Voice of OC:
“But much of the givebacks from police are in the form of deferred expenditures, city officials said, making the potential concessions part of only a temporary fix to a massive, built-in budget deficit that won’t be closed until permanent changes are made to city operations.”
At the time Martinez supported the current contract, she was launching her State Assembly campaign. This appears to be another example of Martinez playing a pay-to-play game using her votes to garner future support.
This week Martinez postponed her proposal to role back city restrictions on campaign contributions over $250 for three months following council member votes. Martinez seems to have a habit of changing her positions depending on the flow of money and support. Following her unsuccessful campaign for Mayor in 2008, Martinez suddenly dropped her “reform” agenda, and backed Mayor Pulido on almost anything he wanted to do. At that same time, she was appointed to the Southern California Association of Government’s which provided her with needed additional compensation to support her lifestyle.
I think the Santa Ana Police Officers Association had it right in their 2008 mailer.
Why are the Santa Ana Police Officers now supporting Michelle Martinez? I’ll tell you why.
1. Pulido wants Michelle off the council in the worst way. I’m told he’s embarrassed to have a self admitting gang member on the City Councl.
I’m not surpried that SAPO is now supporting a gang member for councl. Don’t you know SAPO has Pulido’s back. Pulido has to be careful how much help he gives Michelle ‘cuz he’s also helping out his buddy Daly.
Michelle a supporter of Chief Walters? Not for City Manager. She’s promising SA Public Works Director Raul Godinez that job. Michelle likes to say she knows “Raul” personally.
I don’t get the connection but maybe Godinez is helping her with his knowledge from his failed attempt for State office himself.
Having her elected to the Assembly might well be getting her off Council in one of the worst ways, but if Pulido is really that distressed by her history, I don’t see why he’d have endorsed her. I think that her history is very unfortunate but not disqualifying. (It would mean that she’d lose to Daly; I doubt that Julio would even bring it up.)
Your comment then veers into insinuations that I hate to see in OC politics (or OCPolitics, for that matter), so I wish you’d either present some evidence or drop it.
Dan, Chris, Joe — when do you write about Daly?
Greg — We write about Daly all the time. We wrote about the Tsunami of PAC money, we wrote about him blowing off the debate, we wrote about his endorsements, he wrote about the building the Clerk Recorder’s office is using for the county archives which was actually purchased by the BoS and blessed by Mauk.
This post about Martinez is based on a mailer issued by the Santa Ana police when she opposed Pulido for Mayor. Any insinuations are based on admissions Martinez herself has madeabout her past.
Dan, the “insinuations” to which I was referring were in the first comment, not in your story. Read it and I’m sure that I won’t have to elaborate.
I don’t understand your position on the building purchased to the county archives. Yes, it may have been “actually purchased by the BoS and blessed by Mauk,” but do you honestly argue that Daly was not the motive force behind it? The is the sort of thing where people call in chits. Now maybe Daly does want to say “oh, it wasn’t me doing this, it was them!” — but if that’s going to be his position then someone should ask him the question and put him on the record. I’m pretty confident that I wouldn’t get an answer; you might.
Greg — there are plenty fo similar comments on your own blog. Re; the building, I believe Daly only recommended the build due to availability and proximity. It was in fact purchased by the BoS and CEO Mauk declared it a positive asset for the county. We have addressed this at length in a post about two years ago with facts, documentation and third party research. Just because Art Pedroza wants to tag this building on Daly, doesn’t make what he writes about it true anymore than someone telling me the reason crime in Santa Ana is down 32 percent is because Martinez stopped selling drugs in the city after getting elected to the council; the facts don’t support either contention
I stand by my comments.