I don't know much about Orange councilmember Jon Dumitru other than he's running for mayor this year, he's pals with Red County blogger Matt Cunningham, and that he likes to go on KFI-AM 640 to proclaim how his support of resolutions against the city's day laborers and in support of SB1070 aren't racist because, hey: his dad was an immigrant who came in the right way!
Add to this list a more concrete description: liar.
In a July column in the Foothills Sentry, a community newspaper serving the developments around Orange Park Acres, columnist Marjan Bavand Dunn–who also goes on and on about the superiority of her legal-immigrant parents to illegals, but that's another story–mentioned how Dumitru told Dunn he had just schooled some loudmouth Mexican on SB1070.
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That Mexican was Yolanda Alvarez, a fourth-generation Orange resident whose father opened the city's famed Army-Navy Store. Dunn mentioned in her column how Alvaraz expressed her opposition to SB1070 at a council meeting (Dunn, of course is in favor of it), and that people around town still ask her if she's fresh from the Rio Grande. Dumitru told Dunn that he had called Alvarez and asked her if she had actually read the Arizona law, a favorite trick of Know Nothings. He told Dunn that Alvarez admitted she hadn't.
“I think this speaks volumes about the debate,” Dunn then proceeded to write triumphantly. “The law isn't under attack as much as the perception, or rather misperception, of racism.”
Only problem with the exchange between Alvarez and Dumitru? It never happened.
An infuriated Alvarez called the Sentry and Dumitru and demanded a retraction. An embarrassed Dunn published it in this month's issue of her column. “I was shocked to learn that Alvarez never met nor spoke to Dumitru,” she sheepishly admitted. “Dumitru later admitted that he misspoke and 'meant to say' he was 'going to call her' and ask her if she read the resolutions.”
What Dunn doesn't disclose, however, is that Dumitru never bothered calling Alvarez until after she complained to the Sentry, and the paper's editor called the councilmember to double-check his quotation. So, either way, Dumitru comes out as a liar. FUNNY.
In a letter to the editor published in the Sentry, Alvarez retells the above story and ends with strong words for Dunn and Dumitru. “In the future I suggest to the editor and the writer to check facts responsibly,” she wrote. “I urge Jon Dumitru to think before speaking. There are serious consequences for such a fabrication as this.”
Alvarez, by the way, is running for Orange city council. Better a longtimer help run the city than some idiot newbie…
