Rosie's Riveting Fabulists

It's always entertaining to see which sacrificial lamb the Orange County Republican Party offers to Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez every two years, but the 2008 election is already proving to be particularly fun. Running unopposed as the Republican nominee for the 47th Congressional District is Santa Ana Unified School District Trustee Rosemarie Avila, whom we'll always remember for telling her pastor, Calvary Chapel's Chuck Smith, that her school district was planning to become the first in Orange County to offer benefits for same-sex couples. Smith, in turn, told his zombies to complain--and, oh, did they.

Enough about the past. On May 28, Avila will speak before the converted at the California Coalition for Immigration Reform. As part of the promotion, CCIR links to an ad paid for by Friends of Rosie Avila touting their candidate. Amongst many hilarious assertions (Avila was hardly the main catalyst behind the 2004 Nativo Lopez recall) is this: that Avila "regularly appears on FOX NEWS, CNN, ABC, cable television and radio talk shows as a trusted source of information."

Or, does she?

According to the Lexis-Nexis database, Avila has appeared on major network and cable shows exactly TWICE: in a November 13, 1994 CBS News segment on Proposition 187, and a 2005 appearance on FOX's The Big News with John Gibson regarding the Mexican government's donation of textbooks to Santa Ana classrooms.

Lexis-Nexis is an inexact science, but it's pretty damn accurate: it's updated daily for television transcripts, and their archives go back more than 20 years. So, to claim Avila "regularly appears" as a national television pundit is simply false. Not even Avila's website makes such outlandish claims.

Tune in to more Rosemarie Avila hilarity in the coming months...