Further proving that otherwise politically conservative Newport Beach has an environmental streak when it comes to its own shores (but no one else's): Rep. John Campbell (R-The Arches) joined Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) as the only members of the Orange County congressional delegation to vote against lifting the 25-year ban on oil and natural gas drilling off most of the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico.
The legislation, which passed by a vote of 232-187, controversially offers states billions of dollars in federal revenues if they allow drilling off their coasts. Campbell's OC coastal congressional colleagues Dana Rohrbacher (R-Huntington Beach) and Ken Calvert (R-Riverside, but part of his gerrymandered district takes in the South County coast) voted for oilying up our shores. They were joined by OC inlanders Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) and Gary Miller (R-Diamond Bar, but part of his gerrymandered district takes in chunks of North County).
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.