As FFFF has continually claimed, Markowitz was a set-up candidate, created by prominent Democrats to draw votes away from Linda Whitaker to help her opponent, Vivian Jaramillo.
I’d sell out my mother for 10 votes, and I have…
Apparently, Markowitz’s nominating signatures were collected by somebody else, but he signed the affidavit claiming he did. That’s perjury, and substantiates our conclusions about the rest of the sordid scheme.
Perjury is a felony, and whoever set him up for this had better hope that Markowitz is willing to keep his mouth shut. If he sings he may very well incriminate the people who dragged him into this perjury, in which case we would have a conspiracy to commit a crime, which is also a felony.
Another DA investigation…
Democrat Ajay Mohan is in this up to his eyeballs, of course. What about others? I keep hearing the names Ahmad Zahra and Aaruni Thakur, Ada Briceno and even Congressman Lou Correa.
On a clear day you can see forever…
Did Fullerton Observer Diane Vena know about this? She seems to have concocted tales to tell the gullible about the details of her participation. What about any of the other nominators? What about the Fullerton Observer itself, that has studiously avoided any mention of the perjury scandal.
The immediate question is what impact this will have on the 4th District election. Mass circulated campaign material has already tied Markowitz as a set up to help Jaramillo, so this is just more ammunition for the next couple of weeks. The beneficiaries of this news are obviously Linda Whitaker and Jamie Valencia, the former of which can point to the conspiracy as evidence of her own election chances.
Here’s a fun robotext message that just went out to nine thousand D4 voters reminding them of Team Jaramillo’s scam candidate and the DA complaint thereof. Simple and effective
Maybe this will make Democrat Central reconsider their meddling in Fullerton elections by creating sham candidates. Maybe it will make Diane Vena, Ajay Mojan, and Scott Markowitz regret their participation in electoral fraudulence.
If you watched the so-called Fullerton City Council candidates forum a few weeks ago, you’ll have noticed something very funny.
New and improved. At least that’s her story.
On the question of marijuana dispensaries, candidate Janesse “Jan” Flory displayed some mental gymnastic exercises.
She first noted that on the City Council she approved Ahmad Zahra’s dope ordinance that would have allowed dispensaries within 100 of somebody’s house. That ordinance was crammed through at the end of 2020 before a new City Council majority could take over. When the new majority did take over they almost immediately pulled the plug on the ordinance in 2021.
She has seen the light!
At the forum, Flory claimed to have had an epiphany, in which she finally educated herself (a little late, no?) on the matter, and discovered to her surprise that the issues of revenue and impacts to communities had been overstated and understated, respectively. She had changed her mind, she said. Oopsy. Could Flory have been misled by her precious “staff?” Well, let’s not go to that inevitable outcome of Flory’s thought process.
They always cleaned up after me!
But Janesse wasn’t through. After establishing her case against dispensaries she concluded that she was “on the fence,” a sort of tie the bow on the ribbon of saying nothing that really mattered.
Just keep moving…
Although she tried real hard to make herself sound informed and decisive, listeners still have no idea where Flory sits on the matter of marijuana dispensaries But where she sits doesn’t look very comfortable.
A Friend sent in some images of a door hanger produced by 4th District Candidate Linda Whitaker. I don’t know if it’s two sides to the same one, so I’m calling it one hanger. It’s good to see Whitaker establishing a ground game.
On this side we see a picture that I’ve been told is a much younger Linda with City Hall in the background. I hate the use of old pictures by candidates and politicians who are much older-looking, but they all do it, of course. Here, Ms. Whitaker is touting her experience around City Hall for more than twenty years as the wife of outgoing Councilman Bruce Whitaker, although for some reason she omits reference to her husband. We are admonished that “we need to move forward.” From what to what isn’t stated
This hanger image shows Whitaker at various life stages and gives us some really non-specific promises. I would have like some specificity about how she’s going to work, not just the vague idea of work itself. Still, it seems in Fullerton you don’t win elections by annoying anybody with details, even if you have them.
The bottom picture on this side is simply bizarre. Thankfully, Linda has eschewed the usual stiff-gestured, in-the-can pictures with kids, oldsters, and various ethnicities. But I can’t imagine who the Whitaker campaign thinks is going to be impressed by the support of a superannuated motorcycle club.
Overall, the piece isn’t bad, motorcycle gang notwithstanding, and many folks may find it reassuring. It’s not too slick and doesn’t have the feel of an overproduced, fancy campaign piece.
Fullerton Taxpayers for Reform has just introduced Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo to 4th District voters, and it’s a pretty tough introduction. A kind Friend in Fullerton’s 4th District forwarded this mail piece.
Side one goes after Jaramillo’s supporters for creating the phony candidacy of Scott Markowitz, and notes the DA is investigating.
The backside informs D4 voters that Jaramillo has been a vocal advocate of marijuana dispensaries in Fullerton, supporting Zahra and Jan Flory’s MJ ordinance in 2020 that would have allowed dispensaries a mere 100 feet from residential zones.
If you were paying attention in 2022 you may recall that the City of Fullerton went through a redistricting process based on the results of the 2020 Census.
Jan Flory was here…
The legacy of Jan Flory’s “Bar Owner’s Map,” ostensibly created by Douchebag Supreme, Jeremy Popoff in 2016, was fresh in everybody’s mind. Three districts had been gerrymandered with tentacles to reach into downtown Fullerton – in violation of one of the basic tenets of district map making – compaction.
The train of thought was weak but it sure was short…
One consequence of the 2016 map was to give recently elected at-large Jesus Quirk-Silva a shot a running early for the first District 3 race in 2018 against Greg Sebourn, a race that Quirk-Silva won.
Why is this man clapping?
When 2022 rolled around and the Council created a redistricting committee Fullerton’s lefties squealed in displeasure that Sebourn was appointed to it. He’s going to make a district that he can run in, cutting out Quirk-Silva, so they said. How dastardly. Members of the committee must forswear not to run in a district they created, so they said.
Out with the old…
Well, the districts were cleaned up, Quirk-Silva who had been gerrymandered into D3 was removed from it, and Sebourn didn’t run again.
She wants what you have…
But one fact seems to have gone unnoticed by all the self-righteous libs clamoring against the Council, the new map and against Sebourn. And that fact is that current Council candidate, Vivian Jaramillo, the person who sued the City to make a district she could run in, was also on the Redistricting Committee.
Not only did she support new gerrymandered maps that would protect Quirk-Silva, she supported the district she is now running in. How’s that for ironic hypocrisy?
But it’s not surprising. In their sanctimonious world, the boohoos of Fullerton’s left can’t accept the possibility that their own interests and beliefs might be effected by any sort self-serving or let alone bad behavior, which is why no one mentions the unethical and possibly illegal effort by Team Jaramillo to work a phony candidate on the ballot, a sham candidate whose only job is to divert votes from candidate Linda Whitaker.
Well, she’s at it again. The old warhorse appears yet again to darken our collective doorstep with her presence. Janesse “Jan” M. Flory was on the Fullerton City Council from 1995 to 2003, then reappeared in 2012 like the Ghost of Christmas Past. And yet, she still wasn’t done, getting herself appointed to the Fullerton City Council in 2019, and continuing her history of incompetence, negligence and indifference to her constituents.
She’s running for the 2nd District council seat currently occupied by popular Mayor, Nick Dunlap. Her rationale? That’s not hard to figure out. She is running to protect Fullerton’s highly compensated and highly unresponsible public employees.
Flory must 80 years old if she’s a day, and Fullerton has changed a lot since 1994 – thirty long years ago, but Flory doesn’t seem to have changed at all. The sneer. The disdain for anyone not toeing the bureaucratic line, not accepting any bullshit emanating from City Hall.
Here’s a robotext recently received by a voter in Fullerton’s 2nd District.
Experience? We all know experiences can range from good to horrendous.
It’s nice to see Janesse let us know her campaign promises, because they remind students of Fullerton history that she was front and center of the disasters that she helped create. We can skip over the illiteracy of the writing and focus on the issues.
Fix our roads and streets? Who the Hell was running the City for 14 years while the pavement went to shit? That’s right, you, Janesse. “Saving” the ridiculous money pit called Walk on Wilshire? Really?
You want to hire more cops and firefighters? Who gave those guys the budget busting pay and pension increases? That’s right, you Janesse.
You want civility? Who treated her constituents like trash when they had the effrontery to stand up for themselves? That’s right, you Janesse.
And now for some fun history, yanked from FFFF headlines, a Flory of bill of indictment.
Too much scotch, not enough water…
In 1994 Jan Flory, supported the unnecessary utility tax and actually proclaimed she wished it were doubled.
In 1995 Flory directed the City Attorney to disclose confidential legal advice in order to build a low-income housing project.
Looking down at someone is best…
In 1998, and in years after Jan Flory cheerfully supported the illegal Water Fund diversion, a tax, to support her pals in City Hall.
In 2000 she supported the disastrous retroactive “public safety” pension giveaway, a breathtaking gift of public funds.
Don’t go there…
In 2000 she approved the $3,000,000 Poison Park, a Redevelopment acquisition of contaminated, gang-infested property on Truslow Avenue, an action she never acknowledged or demanded accountability for. The goddamn thing is still sitting there with a fence around it, 25 years later.
In 2012 she banded together with the cops to get herself elected, and then protected the Fullerton Police Department from reform. The Culture of Corruption continued unabated.
Well, it might have happened like this…
In 2016 she favored Police Chief Danny “C’mere, Big Boy” Hughes with a big, wet, goodbye kiss, three days after he tried to organize the cover-up of the drunken Wild Ride of City Manager, Joe Felz.
The hours are great. So is the pay!
To get appointed to the City Council in 2019, she bribed the unemployed Ahmad Zahra with a lucrative seat on the Orange County Water District.
On her way out the door (again) in 2016, she supported the dishonest “bar owners map” for Fullerton’s first redistricting effort, allegedly created by the miscreant scofflaw, Jeremy Popoff that gerrymandered Jesus Quirk-Silva into a free run for City Council.
The closer you look, the worse it gets.
During the years of the Flory, Fitzgerald, Quirk-Silva, Zahra budget deficits, Flory lied to the public, insisting that the budget was balanced, when in fact, the City was raiding reserve funds to pay for increased employee contracts. Or maybe she simply doesn’t understand what deficit spending means.
Don’t Reward the City’s Stupidity
In 2019 Flory embarked with Zahra, Quirk-Silva, and Fitzgerald on an idiotic, spiteful legal vendetta against this blog, Joshua Ferguson and David Curlee, that cost Fullerton upwards of a million dollars in settlement and legal fees.
In 2020, on her way out the door for the third time, she voted in favor of Measure S, the ill-fated sales tax increase for which she was put on the Council to support.
If there were time and temperament, I could examine even more closely Flory’s “experience,” but, really why bother? Why recall all the Redevelopment boondoggles she supported in the 1990s, or the Downtown booze culture that she helped create in the early 2000s?
Mu’u mu’us and wood beads: I have always hated you, and I always will…
Flory’s bile and animus, directed at anybody who challenges City Hall – citizens and taxpayers, has been going on since 1994 and is well documented.
She once proclaimed that the City department heads were “the heart of the City,” And that tells you all you need to know about Janesse “Jan” M. Flory.
You have to enjoy it. Even when the laugh is not so much heartfelt, but the reaction to a painful example of utter head-in-the-sand stupidity; or as in this case, breathtaking lack of self-awareness.
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
A Friend alerted me to a post on the the Yellowing Fullerton Observer website, in which the “editor” thereof, one Skasia Kennedy wrote in high dudgeon about campaign signs posted by Fred Jung and Jamie Valencia on – wait for it – public property! Railing against these criminals, Kennedy admonishes all Fullertonions to “know their rights” and report the illegal signs to the City!
It’s odd that this worthy woman and crack journalist failed to identify other lawbreakers – like Sharon Quirk, and the supporters of the massive school bonds who are in violation of the letter of the law. It’s Jung they despise over there, and of course they are all in for Vivian Jaramillo, Ms. Valencia’s opponent. It’s also amusing that they never cared about this issue before, so we can surmise a level of desperation about Jaramillo’s candidacy chances.
Anyway, it’s not Kennedy hypocrisy that this post is about, well, not exactly. It’s about a fun exchange between a reader and Ms. Editor herself, when the former accuses the latter of subjective harassment of her political adversary, Mr. Jung. Then Kennedy goes sideways-funny. Check it out:
Fullerton Troll got a good laugh out of that as well he/she might. The Fullerton Observer is and always has been about emotional responses to civic issues, especially the ones that signal some sort of virtuous liberal high ground. Well, Hell that’s easier than actually finding out real facts and reporting, right?
It’s a total waste of money, but it sure is short…
And so Kennedy and the Observer not only beat the drum for nonsense like the Trail to Nowhere and the Wake on Wilshire, they refused to print a single fact that would undermine their glandularly-charged objectives. In fact, the Kennedy women, mere et fille, have actively participated in both of those boondoggles, throwing all inconvenient objectivity aside. Emotions? Check. Preferences? Double check.
This Skasia Kennedy is so damn stupid that I really think she believes her bullshit, Running free ads in that paper for “Walk on Wilshire?” Refusing to tell the public that it’s a money loser? Refusing to even address the dozen good reasons not to waste $2,000,000 of public money on the dismal Trail to Nowhere? Do those sound like the actions of someone who is free of bias and journalistic integrity?
Apparently, political campaign sign in Fullerton’s 4th District are disappearing. But not all signs. Just those of Jamie Valencia and Linda Whitaker. Now this behvaior has been going on since the first campaign slogan was scribbled on a cave wall, somewhere, but it took on epic proportions in 2022 when District 1 candidate, Ahmad Zahra, employed the services of marginal characters to remove the signs of his opponent, Oscar Valadez.
One of these individuals was caught and tagged: Raccoon Boy.
Raccoon Boy gets a job….
Fullerton Boohoo wants Vivian Jaramillo on the City Council, and no one more so than Ahmad Zahra, the egomaniacal miscreant who is desperate to become Mayor. And so I wonder whether Zahra and Dem Party Central hasn’t once again found work for Raccoon Boy and his ilk. We know it’s not a matter of scruples. Zahra, Jaramillo and Dem Central went so far as to create a fake candidate, Scotty Markowitz, whose only job was to get a pro-MAGA ballot rant on the sample ballot.
If any of the Friends espy these thieving creatures in the wild, please record their activities and send them on in. They often congregate at the water hole known as 7-ELEVEN. They are an invasive species and need to be relocated ASAP.
Today the OC Register Editorial Board endorsed Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap for re-election and newcomer Jamie Valencia in the 4th District against Vivian Jaramillo and Linda Whitaker.
The city of Fullerton has three City Council seats up for grabs and the choices – at least in two of them – are fairly clear cut. Issues there center on the same kind of major issues that confront many older north Orange County cities: housing development, homelessness, crime and budgets.
District 1 pits incumbent Fred Jung against IT consultant Matt Truxaw. District 2 in pits current Mayor Nicholas Dunlap against Jan Flory, who previously served on the council. District 4 in the city’s less-affluent southwest corner has a crowded field for an open seat vacated by Councilman Bruce Whitaker.
His wife, former campaign manager Linda Whitaker, is running against retired community preservation officer Vivian “Kitty” Jaramillo, registered nurse Jamie Valencia and data analyst, Scott Markowitz.
Fred Jung
We endorse Jung for the District 1 race. We endorsed him in the previous race because of his nuts-and-bolts approach. He’s been solid on key budget, development and public-service issues. Truxaw and Jung both offered reasonable answers to our survey questions, but we see no reason to change course.
That’s “Mayor Dunlap” to you…
We endorse Dunlap for District 2. We like his libertarian-leaning approach and have been impressed by his time on the council. Flory did not respond to our survey, but she has a long record in Democratic politics. This is an easy call.
“I will continue to fight for taxpayers and a fiscally conservative approach to governance, so I will oppose new taxes and any tax increases,” Dunlap told us. “During her 14 years on the council, my opponent voted for the 3% at 50 pension plan, to raise the city’s sales tax rate and also voted to maintain an illegal water tax. Poor decision making and failed leadership (like this) is part of the reason we have the issues we do today.”
In District 4, we quickly eliminated two candidates from consideration. Markowitz has no apparent campaign presence. His campaign statement calls on “America First patriots” to get involved, but he appears to be backed by some Democrats. We have no use for alleged ghost candidates. Jaramillo is the Democratic Party’s choice. As a self-described “advocate for city employees,” we suspect she won’t be the best person to negotiate local union contracts.
Whitaker would be a reliable and sensible conservative voice on budget issues, but in our survey she wrote that Fullerton is “almost built out” and opposed new affordable-housing projects.
Valencia also seems good on budget issues and called for expedited housing construction.
“I want to make building and plan check processes more efficient and streamline to save small business owners money and time,” Valencia told us. “Fullerton will be known as a business friendly city and encourage entrepreneurs to invest.”
Good for you…
Housing remains perhaps the top issue in our cities, so for that reason we endorse Valencia for District 4.
_______________________________________
There you have it, including a shout-out link to FFFF, detailing the phony candidate Scott Markowitz and the lying Democrat operatives who created him. What effect this endorsement will have remains speculative, but in North Fullerton it’s worth something; and in District 4 it may carry some weight with the minority Republican and independent voters.
Too much scotch, not enough water…
My favorite part of the story is Dunlap’s pithy takedown of the dreadful Jan Flory, who just can’t seem to go away once and for all.
