The worst-kept secret in Orange County politics will be revealed in the pages of the Orange County Register, according to sources at the paper, when former Anaheim councilwoman Lorri Galloway will announce she's running for mayor.
Galloway has told allies that she plans to officially announce via Register columnist Frank Mickadeit tomorrow–and she's already telling them that she believes she can win, viewing current Anaheim mayor Tom Tait as a lame duck who has little support from conservatives in the city and thinking she can peel off the liberals and progressives who have stood by Tait as he has emerged as the lone council voice against the Curt Pringle machine that rules the city. The move will shatter the strange alliance that has coalesced around Tait, and probably ensure that whoever Pringle gets to run against Tait and Galloway will win.
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Her move is not universally loved by progressive activists who have sided with Tait, and must now publicly distance themselves from him once the unions start filing behind Galloway. Ooh, this is going to be fun!
I've actually never dealt with Galloway, even in my years covering Anaheim, but what's always struck me about her is that she's quite polarizing. The people who are her acolytes think she can be the rabble-rouser that'll lead OC into the Promised Progressive Land; the people who don't like her HATE her, for reasons I've never quite understood. When Galloway first ran for council in 2004, the haters handed me a binder of stuff that they said proved her non profit, the Eli Home (which helps abused women) was a den of corruption. I never saw it, so have given her little thought ever since.
The one thing I do know about her is hubris: Galloway ran for Supervisor in 2010 and got trounced, finishing in fourth place and even getting beat by longtime Buena Park councilmember Art Brown, whose only name recognition in Orange County is his awesome beard. Then, as now, she ran specifically to cockblock someone else–in those days, then-clerk-recorder Tom Daly–in a move that ensured the Dems would lose. Let's see what happens this time around…
Email: ga*******@oc******.com. Twitter: @gustavoarellano.
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