We have fought hard to rid the CRA of Consultants and Partisan Electeds that seek to open CRA Franchises to serve as little more than endorsement mills.
Every election cycle, the story seems to repeat… hotly contested race, and the vultures attempt to descend upon the CRA.
In my home county of Placer, we have a real unit with real people so we convened an endorsing convention and did it the old-fashioned way. Apparently, having an open forum is disturbing to the political elite who want to control an outcome.
I give you the Anaheim Republican Assembly.
It’s “President” Steve Sarkis is out of control. He has publicly endorsed a woman, Lucille Kring for Anaheim City Council. (which is his right, by the way) Kring has taken Union Money despite a pledge not to and voted for a massive hotel tax in Anaheim despite a public pledge not to.
The current by-laws of the Anaheim Republican Assembly allow proxy voting and allow the President of the unit to unilaterally reject would-be new members. This is hardly the hallmark of a real CRA unit.
Steve Sarkis has used said authority to reject the applications of a staggering 49 new members.
IT does not stop there. He has sent letters to an additional 6 existing Members of the Anaheim Republican Assembly informing them that they have been expelled from the unit for various violations of bylaws. (Please note that in several cases, the violated by-laws don’t exist) 2 of the expelled members are sitting CRA Board Members as well!
Tonight, there was/is the regularly scheduled meeting of the Anaheim Republican Assembly. Steve Sarkis has been running his mouth all over Orange County to anyone that will listen – so 1/4 of the existing CRA’s Board of Directors decided to attend the meeting tonight to ensure that the attempted coup is unsuccessful.
I knew when Steve Sarkis started going berzerk that there was an election at hand. One of the rejected 49 members was none other than Tom Tait. When spoken to, Tait indicated that he was going to vote to re-elect Steve Sarkis at the meeting where he was rejected!
At the meeting where Sarkis threw out 49 members, they fell below quorum and were unable to elect officers. So, currently Sarkis is acting with no authority whatsoever.
Later, Steve started forwarding members that he had approved to the CRA’s Membership Secretary (who happens to be my brother). They included everyone’s favorite racial ambassador Consultant Matthew Guadalupe Cunningham, the President of the Anaheim Chamber and notorious bully Todd Ament, City Council Member and tax-raiser Gail Eastman , and of course Kurt Kringle the Santa Claus of Anaheim who hands out all the taxpayer funded corporate welfare to his cronies. (It should also be noted that Ament’s live-in Girlfriend also is listed as a would-be member of the CRA, an avowed socially conservative group)
Kurt Kringle (the former Assembly Majority Leader) is a cousin of Kris Kringle, the famous fat guy that runs around in a sleigh. It appears that Kringle and his sock puppets have come calling for a CRA Franchise to endorse their Crony Capitalist.
The nexus became clear Monday night – Lucille Kring was rejected famously as the normally reserved OC GOP Chairman Scott Baugh unloaded on Kring before the Orange County Central Committee overwhelmingly endorsed Tom Tait for re-election…
… which gets us all the way back to Steve Sarkis. Sarkis has a terrible reputation in Orange County I have discovered. Living 400+ miles away, it is hard to keep track of the morasse that is Orange County GOP politics.
It appears that Sarkis made promises to Kurt Kringle and his sock puppets that they would get a CRA endorsement to use as a counterweight against the Orange County GOP. Ummmm… nope. If the real members of the Anaheim CRA choose Kring, that’s one thing.
However, from going over 4 years of meeting minutes as well as their absurd by-laws, Sarkis (who lives in Stanton) has controlled the Anaheim RA with an Iron fist. (The losers that supported Karen England in 2011 were right in their criticism of Sarkis after all)
7 of the 20 would-be new members that Sarkis “approved” live outside of Anaheim.
Steve Sarkis has gone so far over the line that it is my sincerest hope that he is separated from the CRA for a very long time.
Despite threats of having their cars towed and being threatened with arrest in writing by Steve Sarkis, 6 Sitting CRA Vice Presidents were amongst the 12 State CRA Board Members that attended this evening.
Now that tonight’s meeting is over – the CRA can start to repair its’ image and return to being a real grassroots organization that stands for something, instead of being a cheap whore of political consultants and their lackeys.
Anaheim Republicans have been misrepresented for years by Sarkis, whose endorsements often have no basis in reality compared to actual votes cast by Anaheim republicans. For a prime example, see his endorsement of carpetbagging Harry Sidhu in 2010 against real conservative Shawn Nelson for County Supervisor. Sidhu claimed to leave the largest private estate in the City of Anaheim to move into a dismal one bedroom apartment in one of those complexes completely cemented in, devoid of charm, facing into one of west Anaheim’s busiest streets. Interestingly his wife did NOT register to vote at the “new home” so if Harry really did leave behind the “elegant Yorba estate” he was sleeping alone. Which is likely, since he took no furniture. This kind of nonsense is costing Anaheim dearly in voter registration as disillusioned Republicans flee the party to become DTS voters, not leaning to the left, but certainly avoiding the partisan promotion of bad people simply based on the letter following their names. Steve Sarkis has been the king of that movement, a Stanton resident working with his flying monkey, Buena Park’s Baron Night, to misrepresent who Anaheim Republicans really are behind, and while his endorsements did nothing to pull voters toward his chosen candidates (Harry got CREAMED by Nelson despite about a million bucks spent on his behalf by local unions) the bogus endorsements did plenty to poison the well for voters who drop the party in disgust. Good riddance to Sarkis, and THANK YOU on behalf of Anaheim conservatives THANK YOU VERY MUCH to those CRA officers who drove in from all over the State to help Anaheim retake the organization for real Anaheim residents.