CSUF College Republicans Take Punch in Josh Newman Recall War (and More)

Cal State Fullerton’s College Republicans are playing the victim card in the lawsuit brought by opponents of the recall campaign against state Sen. Josh Newman (D-Fullerton).

“The CSUF College Republicans helped lead the efforts to recall California State Senator Josh Newman after the Democratic Super-Majority passed a significant increase to car and gas taxes,” reads a statement from the GOP Titans.

The lawsuit Democrats filed on June 29 “intends to stop the petition from circulating and halt the recall process, falsely citing deceptive messaging as grounds for suing,” the College Republicans claim.

Newman, viewed as a vulnerable Democrat because he won the historically Republican 29th Senate District by fewer than 2,500 votes in November, has been cast by GOP politicians, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and conservative commentators everywhere as having made the “deciding vote” on a transportation bill that included the controversial gas tax increase they say will soak Californians for $5 billion annually.

Replacing Newman with a candidate from another party won’t turn really blue California red, but it would eliminate Democrats’ supermajority, where partisan votes can get legislation passed without any GOP support, as well as represent the rare Republican win in the Golden State.

Not that any of that finer detail is mentioned in what the College Republicans characterize as “the latest in a long list of attempts by Newman and California Democrats to subvert the will of voters.” No, they are instead making hay out of CSUF members Amanda McGuire, Ryan Hoskins and Brooke Paz being named defendants in the suit due to their initial support of the recall petition.

The suit filed in Sacramento County by three Newman supporters claims the recall petitions signed by 85,000 voters made false statements about the $52 billion transportation deal and a sanctuary state bill that the freshman state senator supported. Besides the recall organizers and supporters who include the named CSUF College Republicans, Secretary of State Alex Padilla—a Democrat—is also named as a defendant.

“The lawsuit is a shameful and frantic attempt to silence voters of the district,” claims McGuire, the College Republicans CSUF chapter vice president. “The intimidation tactics espoused by the California Democrats should no longer be tolerated. It’s gone too far when college students are being dragged into court for becoming involved with the issues faced by their local cities.”

Meanwhile, Eric Eisenhammer, director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association’s Newman recall committee, piled on Wednesday by again identifying Newman as deciding state Senate voter, this time on a $300 million tax increase. “With this vote, Newman has demonstrated yet again taxpayers can’t trust him to stop rubber stamping even more taxes,” writes Eisenhammer, before the inevitable pitch: “That’s why I’m writing to you now to ask you to donate to the Josh Newman recall effort.” Remember, your donations of $100, $50, $25 or even just $5 are tax deductible, kiddies.

Victimization does not extend solely to college and no tax/no spend Republicans, of course. That’s why Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Orange County GOP, and Shawn Steel, Republican National Committee stooge and wife of the Orange County Board of Supervisors chairman, are crowing about having forced the Costa Mesa-based Coast Community College District to immediately cease “at-large elections.”

They actually make a point that we wish OC’s rich and powerful would impose on other college districts, special districts and cities, even those rich and powerful that would have to cede some of that power to minority groups that lean the other way (not that there’s anything wrong with that). See, the Coast district—or CCCD, as the cool underclassmen at Orange Coast, Coast Community and Golden West colleges call it—is broken up into five separate geographical board of trustee areas. So in 2016, Vong Xavier Nguyen, who resides in Trustee District 2 that includes Westminster, Garden Grove and Fountain Valley, lost by a 2-to-1 margin to incumbent Jerry Patterson, due to an “at-large” election that allowed all CCCD voters to cast ballots. not just those in that individual geographical trustee area. “Professional politician” Patterson, as the GOPers put it, had name recognition districtwide, baby.

In a letter to the Board of Trustees dated May 18, Whitaker, Steel and their respective law firms threatened to sue the district for violating the California Voting Rights Act with its at-large policy. Amid an offer to share embarrassing data showing the district disenfranchising a large number of Vietnamese American voters, the board agreed, through district general counsel Jack Lipton, to “[adopt] a motion to commence the process to change the method of election for trustees to the ‘by-trustee area’ method.” That is scheduled to be teed up for the board at its next regularly scheduled meeting on Wednesday. Victimhood can have its privileges.

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