Subject: Claudia Alvarez

• Dem Bones

  First there was yesterday's Election Day lunch--the GOP-heavy shindig where Weekly editor Will Swaim only got halfway through the hilarious speech I wrote for him because he was shuffling back and forth between pages and so lost my text and thus never got to the payoff, "Thank you, ladies and gentlemen! Don't forget to tip your waitstaff and then have them all deported!" Then there were last night's Dem fiestas in Santa Ana. I LOVE ELECTION DAY! I do! I stopped into Proof first; the OC Dem Found

  June 7, 2006

• Fight! Fight! Fight!

  While Latinas have earned a reputation for having “spicy” personalities (just ask the governor!), it was something else to watch Santa Ana council member Michele Martinez and Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Alvarez exchanging insults and dirty looks during tonight’s city council meeting. Things started off with the normal boring stuff (i.e. awards and certificates issued to boy scouts, some children sang. . .yawn), but when the topic turned to adapting term limits for the seat of mayor, the sparks

  November 5, 2007

• Register, Times Slam Santa Ana Good--And a Challenge

  If there's one thing that Orange County Register editorial writer Steven Greenhut hates more than Sheriff Mike Carona, it's city-controlled urban planning, and he ripped SanTana officials a new one and then some yesterday in a piece blasting the city's much-ballyhooed Renaissance Specific Plan. Proponents say the Renaissance Plan will transform the city's downtown; opponents say the same, except use the word "gentrification." Greenhut, in one of his increasing moves to the Left, sides with the o

  December 24, 2007

• Have Money, Will Vote: How Carlos Bustamante Pays Back Donors

  Part dos of 3... Every day, we drive by City Place, the unfinished development across the street from MainPlace Mall with cool live/work lofts and horrid restaurants (seriously: McCormick & Schmidt's and Corner Bakery as the anchor tenants??? Can't wait 'til Mother's Market opens to save us from that crap). And every day, we're reminded that SanTana councilmembers stricken with conflict-of-influenza sometimes do learn. Consider Claudia Alvarez. Activists were furious with Claudia in 2004 aft

  January 8, 2008

• Time to Give Santa Ana's Mayor a Nickname!

  Today, bad-ass Los Angeles Times reporter Jennifer Delson writes about the idiotic Measure D, the SanTana ballot measure that would extend city council term limits from eight years to 12 years. She reveals that Measure D originally started as an attempt by residents and councilmembers to install term limits for the mayor's seat, but eventually devolved into another power-grab by loony SanTana councilmembers--scratch that. Let's turn it over to Jennifer: [Councilmember Sal] Tinajero said two rec

  January 9, 2008

• None of His Bisno-iss

  Only in SanTana can an effort to impose term limits on Papi Pulido transform into a ballot measure to extend term limits for councilmembers. But that's exactly what happened with Measure D, which SanTana voters will decide on February 5 and is one of the most laughable pieces of crap to grace Orange County ballots since Tan Nguyen ran for office. Measure D proposes to extend term limits for SanTana councilmembers from two terms to three. The person who would immediately benefit is councilmember

  January 25, 2008

• Correction Regarding Robert Bisno's Influence on Santa Ana Politics

  We must apologize for two huge errors we made in our recent post regarding developer Robert Bisno's campaign contribution love affair with SanTana councilmember Claudia Alvarez. We had reported that Bisno and his friends contributed $36,300 to her failed 2006 Assembly race, but we were grossly off. The real figure is $42,900--just Google Bisno with the names Transaction, EMG Properties, Hammerstein, and Andrew Tapper and mix 'n' match on this website. And Bisno didn't donate $20,000 to SanTana's

  January 28, 2008

• I Remember Claudia Alvarez

  I remember SanTana councilmember Claudia Alvarez. I remember back in early 2000, when a friend of mine asked if I could help stuff envelopes for a campaign he was working on for a deputy district attorney. I remember meeting her--young, energetic, sincere--and thinking I wanted more politicians like her in office. I remember Claudia Alvarez. I remember stuffing envelopes in the garage of her mother's realty firm, bundling up next to the heater as my friends and I worked for free. I remember loo

  January 30, 2008

• Somebody is Reading Jennifer Delson

  We've always been big fans of Los Angeles Times SanTana reporter Jennifer Delson because her stories are how journalism should be: hard-hitting, about unserved communities, and making a difference. And her skills have never been more evident than this past weekend, when Delson wrote a piece about the robo-calls infiltrating SanTana households this past weekend in support of Measure D, a topic we already discussed. She revealed that the message "does not identify who is paying for the call, a vio

  February 4, 2008

• Obama's OC Man is My Boy

  Ben Escobedo is my college pal from Chapman University and a Morrissey freak. He's also the point man for Barack Obama's campaign in Orange County and the Inland Empire and just called me on his cell phone to rave about Obama's grassroots effort in OC. "There are 18-year-olds who just had their birthday volunteering," he said. "People with full-time jobs who are taking a break to help out. It's amazing." The conversation then turned to Escobedo's longtime friend, SanTana councilmember Claudia

  February 5, 2008

• Hispanic Bar Association Hijinks!

  With apologies to Orange County Register sports genius Randy Youngman, notes, quotes and observations from yesterday's Orange County Hispanic Bar Association annual fundraising dinner: *Greeting the well-dressed, well-coiffed crowd as they drove toward the Westin South Coast Plaza hotel were about eight anti-Mexican whackjobs--and we don't add the "anti-illegal immigrant" qualifier like other journalists because they told more than one cute attorney of Mexican descent to "go home." Spotted was

  March 2, 2008

• Some Words of Advice for Mike Harrah

  Was walking up Main Street in SanTana the other day, and who was driving a massive Cadillac Escalade without a care to gas prices? None other than Mike Harrah, the Weekly's former landlord, one of many sugar papis to councilmember Claudia Alvarez, and the man who wants to build a 37-story building near a residential neighborhood that would be the tallest in Orange County. Seeing Mike staring glumly into traffic reminded us we hadn't thought about his phallic skyscraper complex for a while. SanT

  June 26, 2008

• Santa Ana Now Officially Run by Lazy Mexicans

  *Updated, with new information on the bottom... As the largest city in Orange County, SanTana needs a more-committed city council than, say, Laguna Niguel. Unfortunately, the county seat is cursed with buffoons, a veritable clowncil, to use the term of Orange Juice! bomb-thrower Art Pedroza. We've documented the wackiness of Mayor Papi Pulido and councilmembers Busty Bustamante (pictured), Claudia Alvarez and David Benavides, and at least one of them is amongst the pendejos who are out of town

  August 2, 2008

• First OC Book Signing for Orange County: A Personal History Mucho Success

  With apologies to Orange County Register sports genius Randy Youngman, notes, quotes and observations from my Sept. 18 book signing at the Yost Theater for my new book, Orange County: A Personal History: *About 500 people showed up to hear my lecture! About 500! I add the qualifier because the Yost's bottom shell seats 500--there were empty seats, but not many, and there were also a lot of people standing in the lobby or in the aisles. Gracias to everyone who attended; to everyone else, you mis

  September 20, 2008

• Busty Bustamante Losing Sense of Reality

  *Updated, with new info on the bottom... I will always be a fan of Art Pedroza, the county's original political blogger and the man behind Orange Juice!, because he's living proof that people's political philosophies can change—in Art's case, he went from a homo-hating, MEChA-bashing Republican to a Prop. 8-opposing virtual Aztlanista who tells it like it is, damn public opinion. Nevertheless, Art has an uphill battle in his campaign to wrest the SanTana City Council's Ward Three seat from Bu

  October 29, 2008

• Live from the Banana Republic...

  November 4, 2008

• The Best Posts of 2008, Direct From the Weekly's Parallel Universe

  January 1, 2009

• Three Local Elections Worth Watching. Call It Morbid Fascination

  October 30, 2008

• This Is Your Life: A Companion Guide/Shameless Propaganda for 'Orange County: A Personal History'

  September 11, 2008

• Controversial Developer Robert Bisno Brings His Grease-a-Palm Politics to Santa Ana

  March 6, 2008

• Puta Politics

  February 8, 2007

• The Lovable Loser

  June 15, 2006

• Slapp-Happy

  February 24, 2005

• A Questionable Transaction

  January 20, 2005

• The Wild One

  July 29, 2004

• Letters

  July 29, 2004

• The War on One Bank Plaza

  April 15, 2004

• Letters

  March 18, 2004

• The Times They Are A-Changin . . . Back!

  March 4, 2004

• Loretta-Lite

  February 26, 2004

• Racist OC Register Fustercluck of the Week: Bullets for Bangers!

  Nothing like a good old gang-related murder in Santa Ana to set off all the Register readers who would like nothing more than to see the city cordoned off by immigration cops and the entire non-English speaking population rolled into Tijuana-bound paddy wagons. The latest example? This story from Wednesday about an 18-year-old Latino gangbanger who shot another man during an armed robbery. "Eduardo Valencia, 18, is expected to appear in court today to face charges that he killed Jaime Anica Olve

  August 7, 2009

• From the Mixed-Up Bankrupcty Filing of Mr. Robert Bisno

  Bisno: Doesn't pay bills​A source sent us the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of Robert Bisno, the man who essentially bought an election for SanTana Mayor Don Papi Pulido's regime by pouring tens of thousands of dollars into a campaign that extended term limits for the SanTana city council. Maybe the developer of the desolate City Place Lofts on the city's north side should've been paying his bills instead of fucking with democracy, though. In his August 31 filing, Bisno claims to have between

  September 22, 2009