Election 2010: Gustavo Drinks Through the Election, Or: Trashing the Dems and Bashing Whitman

​Updated throughout the day, with the freshest post on top. Click after the jump for vignettes on Barbara Coe, Loretta Sanchez, Meg Whitman, and Borat!

Midnight. Drink of choice: Alka-Seltzer...my pockets hurt. Loretta Sanchez has pulled away by thousands of votes, but we'll wait until the official results to pontificate on whatever result may happen. Instead, let's focus our attention and final update on a different vendida: SanTana councilwoman Michelle Martinez. 

In a frankly awesome (in the most terrifying, truthful sense of the definition) display of the power he has, the Don Papi has turned Michelle into a sniveling sycophant. The two, along with councilmember Sal Tinajero, celebrated their victory earlier in the evening at the high-rise luxury apartments on Main and Macarthur streets in the South Coast Metro area--REAL down with the youth there, Michelle. I'll have more to say when I'm sober, but in the meanwhile, Michelle: congrats on selling your soul to Orange County's wiliest politico. And to the Don Papi: details to come...

11:06 p.m. Drink of choice: Nothing right now, but I have a drink ticket in my pocket...About an hour ago, Loretta Sanchez took to a Santa Ana-owned stage festooned with posters with the names of her and Don Papi Pulido. Hundreds cheered the two on, as Loretta said her battle against Van Tran wasn't over yet.

Photo by Todd Barnes

Namaste, SanTana!

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Why am I reporting on this an hour after the fact? Well, Sherlock, that's because my wireless went kaput, along with my laptop, which had all of the notes of her speech. Who said technology would revolutionize reporting again? What I can say right now is that a competing mariachi is on-stage, and drunken Loretta supporters are carrying on as if they were at a quinceañera...

Sanchez is pulling ahead. Let's see if she can keep the lead. The Don Papi destroyed his competition. Sigh...

​10:19. Drink of choice. Water. It was a double shot earlier. Scenes from Memphis, where about a dozen Don Papi Pulido supporters crowded the bar.

"FUCK THE HATERS!"

"ONE, TWO, THREE: PU-LI-DO!"

"PULIDO"

"MI-GUEL PU-LI-DO!"

They're so loud that a Democratic Party activist comes to me and apologizes on their behalf. Are you kidding me, sister? This is GOLD!

​9:55 p.m. Drink of choice: Another shot of Corralejo--I think it's a double. Memphis is slammed with young Dems, mostly of the Chicano All-Star variety. They're all slamming shots--"To democracy!" some toast. But the young guns are lying. They all love Loretta Sanchez, but she currently has a less-than-100 vote lead over opponent Van Tran.

"We're all worried," one confides, even after slamming some Sweet Harmonies, a concoction of peach schnapps and other insanity. "Even today, the top advisers were worried. We hope she wins...but it's not looking good.

The latest results from the Orange County Registrar of Voters are in: Loretta has widened her lead. "Still too close, man," he mumbles before running off to a celebration.

9:37 p.m. Drink of choice: Awaiting a sangria...just got it. Good stuff! Dozens of people, if not a good hundred, stand inside and outside Libreria Martinez in SanTana, the campaign headquarters of SanTana mayoral candidate Alfredo Amezcua. A mariachi blares, and if you want to know something about Al, know that the mariachi just played "Los Mandados," the legendary Vicente Fernandez song that features an illegal immigrant boasting of how he has come into this country multiple times.

Amezcua is inside with his family, shaking the hands of supporters. He is always enthusiastic and maintains he will pull off a colossal upset and defeat SanTana Mayor-for-Life Don Papi Pulido.

Photo by Todd Barnes

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Right now, the Don Papi is destroying Amezcua--he has 55 percent, to Amezcua's low 20s. But optimism reigns. The mariachi plays "Solamente Una Vez," the Agustín Lara torch song. "Only once I've loved in life," a woman sings. "Only once, and never more.'

Pulido's campaign headquarters? Empty.

8:47 p.m. Drink of Choice: A quick sip of water. Perhaps the most-loathed part of SanTana these past couple of months--more than the Don Papi, more than cholos, more even than the ICE station--has been the Fourth Street headquarters of the Meg Whitman campaign.

Photo by Todd Barnes

About as busy as it ever was...

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The caption says it all!

​8:07 p.m. Drink of Choice: Rebel Reserve bourbon, straight. Up in Los Angeles, the political culture is now ruled by what I and others call the Chicano All-Stars, the college-educated, longtime volunteers for political campaigns that try to dress themselves up in ties and suits but can't exactly get the wab or the cholo out of them. They're not stupid, but class ain't exactly forté.

Right now, downtown SanTana is SWARMING with them. I'm drinking at Memphis right now, and they're outside, inside, cheering on the Dems and cursing the Republicans. They're running the campaigns of Alfredo Amezcua, Loretta Sanchez, and SanTana Mayor-for-Life Don Papi Pulido--and winning. They can attend a high-priced fundraiser as easy as they can pull off the MEChA clap. They walk in sharp suits, drop Chicano slang--in other words, weak-ass Dems, the Reconquista is HERE.

​7:15 p.m. Drink of Choice: Manhattan Up, made with rye. The funny thing about covering the Van Tran-Loretta Sanchez congressional race is despite bashing her at every moment possible, I find myself having to defend her and the race's reality more often. Latest proof? A Wall Street Journal blog post on the race.

Writer Allysia Finley says the 47th Congressional District "isn't out of the realm of possibilities." Okay, but then Finley goes stupid. She tells Journal readers that Loretta "has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the state's grossly gerrymandered districts," which anyone who actually pays attention and doesn't Google Hugh Hewitt-approved websites knows is bullshit; Loretta wins because Mexicans constitute the majority of voters in the district, and because she's a seven-term incumbent. And Finley also calls Tran a "second-generation Vietnamese-American," when his own website makes much hay of the fact Tran was a refugee--ergo, first-generation, or 1.5 at the most.

But what else can we expect from a Murdoch-owned news operation? I also left that bon mot on her blog post...

​6:26 p.m. Drink of Choice: Water. My liver needs a break. Driving to downtown SanTana earlier this afternoon, I saw a van painted with the logo of the Orange County Employees Association (OCEA), the union for county employees--government workers. We know a few county workers and don't necessarily consider them leeches, but OCEA head Nick Berardino is a tool and a Carona apologist.

Berardino has cried much about saving his workers' pensions during these hard times, so I wonder what justification he used to buy this portable, massive barbecue grill heading toward OCEA headquarters? Real hard times, Nick!

As taxpayers, we're all entitled to some OCEA-cooked babyback ribs...

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​5:32 p.m. Drink of Choice: Another shot of Cazadores. It's refreshing to know that all these years later, long after the Weekly stopped covering former Supervisor, now-Assemblymember Jim Silva, that he is still a moron.

Appearing on Christian talk station KBRT-AM 740 this afternoon, Silva was asked by a caller to offer a Christian perspective on Proposition 19. Silva stayed silent for a bit, then asked the host to explain that proposition again?

IDIOT.

After Silva got his moorings, he began rambling about how marijuana makes kids get bad grades and education is important. The caller--a self-described Christian libertarian--challenged Silva's faulty logic (he also railed about the evils of alcohol) and asked if Silva (who opposed Prop. 19 upon being informed what it was about) would support a proposition that would ban alcohol. Silva said he wouldn't, but the Christian libertarian made the point that alcohol was far more destructive than marijuana, so why not?

Silva never did give a lucid response--made quite the entertaining listen while stuck in traffic on the 55 Freeway. IDIOT!

​5:08 p.m. Drink of Choice: Shot of Cazadores Reposado. A Don Papi Pulido sighting! The SanTana mayor rushed through the Santora Building promenade a couple of minutes ago, setting up what's being advertised as a celebration of democracy but will probably be played as the Don Papi's coronation--again. He's expected to win his race tonight against challenger Alfredo Amezcua even though he emerges from his Floral Park estate only to beam among toadies. Pulido...is also having his campaign party on Broadway, across the street from the Santora Building, and just a couple of doors down from Amezcua's headquarters: Libreria Martinez. The question on everyone's lips tonight: will Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez cross the street to meet and greet with Amezcua--who has claimed a Loretta endorsement for months despite no proof to it--or the Don Papi?

​1:34 p.m. Drink of Choice: Hennessy, straight. California Coalition for Immigration Reform head witch has a message for ustedes: "We have an Illegal Alien Muslim IMPOSTER PRESIDENT who WELCOMES illegal alien and Muslim killers to VOTE in OUR elections (her italics and CAPS, of course). IF he fails to control Congress, many believe he will 'draft' these barbaric killers into his 'Civilian Security Force' and authorize them to 'terminate' as many loyal, law-abiding American patriots who OPPOSE his 'hate/destroy America' goals as possible.

Learn the TRUTH. Then YOU decide. THE LIFE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN!"

Remember to aim for the helmet, Babs! 


​11:44 a.m. Drink of Choice: My own bile. We did name Meg Whitman one of our Scariest people this year, for her Newport Beach tequila shot with the Hispanic 100. But the best critiques of the former eBay executives have come from that seething site, the eXiled, the former free Moscow weekly turned into class warfare gone gonzo.

Borat: Whitman's most lucid endorser?

​Unsurprisingly, their last missile against the Whitman campaign involves a righteous dig at Orange County. Under the title, "MEG WHITMAN: STINGIEST BILLIONAIRE IN AMERICA? (Or: Top 8 Reasons Why Borat Would Vote For Meg Whitman), writers Mark Ames (America's modern-day Twain) and Yasha Levine summarize her lack of donating to charities--and the prospects of her becoming governor of California--thusly:

What is so strange about this is that even the most rapacious plutocrats and robber barons in American history have made a big show of donating a great part of their riches back to the nation that made it all possible -- even they had a tiny flicker of humanity left in them. No ol' Meg Whitman. For the Long Island carpetbagger, "charity" means transferring $150 million of wealth she'd soaked out of eBay and plunking it down on advertising agencies to buy herself the governorship of California. You see this sort of thing in corrupt Third World semi-dictatorships like Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan -- the homeland of Borat -- but California? When did California get so pathetic that it's going to be led by very same sort of corrupt, carpetbagger- oligarch that Borat would proudly support in Kazakhstan?

And now, Orange County!:

It's as if Meg Whitman is writing the Borat sequel, with Orange County Californians playing the comic foils: 'Borat 2: Republican Leanings of Orange Kountystan Make For Benefit Glorious Billionaire Meg Whitman.'

Other great quotes?
Read the brilliant piece here.

​Who Had the Most Pathetic Gubernatorial Campaign? Chelene Nightingale, Come on Down!

10:53 a.m. Drink of Choice: A swig of Gringo Bandito Hot Sauce, to get the gut ready for tonight.

I'm glad California's election is today, if only so that I don't have to see/hear a Meg Whitman ad/sign/face ever again. But even she wasn't the worst choice for California's next governor--that honor falls on Chelene Nightingale.

Nightingale was the candidate for the American Independent Party, whatever the hell that is, but local activists know her as Barbara Coe, Jr.: a crone that rails on and on about illegals. You'd think that in the land of the Minutemen, where Mexican-hating is religion, Nightingale might've had a more-prominent presence than, say, the Green Party candidate, whoever the hell that was.

Nope!

In the months leading up to today, I saw exactly one Nightingale sign: yesterday, on the 5 North entry off Newport Avenue in Tustin. And it was gone by this morning. I drive all around Orange County, from skinhead havens to South County, and this was the best the Nightingale campaign can do? In Orange County, where a good segment of the population might actually vote for her? For chrissakes, I saw more campaign signs for the Green person AND the Peace and Freedom Party candidate--okay, there were five signs I saw of each between the two parties, and they still beat Nightingale.

Funniest of all? The Nightingale campaign is having a victory party tonight in Pomona. Nightingale has as good a shot of winning as SanTana has of becoming majority-gabacho by next century.

​Miracle of Miracles: KUCI-FM Cracks through the Airwaves to Rip Me Off!

10:21 a.m. Drink of Choice: Arrowhead Spring Water

I have heard KUCI-FM 88.9 on my car's radio exactly twice before today. Its signal is legendarily weak, and current station politics might actually make it worse.

But, as if a reminder by God that voting is necessary, its signal came on strong and loud, starting from the 5 South-55 South interchange straight to Weekly world headquarters in Costa Mesa on the drive to work. The topic? "Ask a Voter." REAL original...

I didn't catch many names, but the soft-spoken host invited callers to share with the audience their voting history: when they registered to vote, why is it important to vote, and any message they might send to the audience. I only had the chance to listen to one full caller, but it was a goodie: a UC Irvine professor who the host kept calling Susana, without any last name. Susana told the audience that, though living in this country since immigrating from Mexico in the late 1970s, she only became an American citizen in 2007 due to the bureaucratic nightmare that is becoming an American citizen. She registered to vote upon becoming a citizen, and urged all the people who could vote out there to visit their ballot boxes today, unlike her fellow Mexicans in Mexico, who view the process apathetically. You heard the Mexican, people! Go out and vote lest you be like Mexican--and you know that that's the last thing an Orange Countian wants to be.