In Anaheim, there’s a battle of Jose Moreno’s for city council with Dr. Jose F. Moreno needed a courtesy title and middle initial to differentiate himself from Jose “Joe” Moreno who’s a Republican. In Santa Ana, Alex Padilla is running to replace council member David Benavides in Ward 4 and, as he told me at the Truman Dinner last week, he’s more than happy is voters there confuse him with State Senator Alex Padilla who represents SD-20 in the San Fernando Valley, whom many people have already heard of because he’s on the ballot for Secretary of State.
The Santa Ana Padilla is running on a platform based on a premise that because Santa Ana is a young city, he’ll get votes from his peers because “they want to vote for someone who looks like them. They want to vote for someone they went to school with. They want to vote for someone who will represent their interests.”
We pointed out that Council member Roman Reyna has spent his entire career focused on youth and community programs and Padilla countered that young voters wanted to vote for a young candidate such as himself. One teensy-weensy problem: Padilla, a lifelong Santa Ana resident, has never voted before. His voter registration form on file with the county Registrar of Voters is a blank sheet. Padilla says his never voting before is a problem with other young adults in Santa Ana.
So why didn’t he vote, even in presidential years?
“I wasn’t informed,” he said. “I didn’t know what was going on. I want to make a change in my city and that starts with me. And I need to get my peers registered to vote and get them to the polls.”
He made some reference that the City Council didn’t do its job in informing young voters which isn’t their job. So we asked what he’d focus on if he were elected. “Youth programs to help steer today’s youth towards getting investments to start new businesses and steer them away from gangs and gang violence,” said Padilla. When we asked how he’d fund these new programs, Padilla volunteered that the city should legalize and regulate the sale of legal cannabis “to increase our tax roles by hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
So does it bother him that some voters might think he’s state senator Alex Padilla? “Not at all,” he said. Padilla has been endorsed by Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido.
This candidate is after the support of young non-voters? Good luck with that.
Dr. Moreno was granted a Doctoral Degree (as well as Master’s Degree) from Harvard University. Most would understand and recognize that to be an earned, honorific title. Courtesy titles are typically associated with nobility, where the title has not been earned, but gratuitously bestowed based upon birth.