Chmielewski is right – Gebre should resign, say sorry or get fired

Julio Perez, the ultra-liberal union hack candidate for the 69th Assembly District, is still losing after the O.C. Voter Registrar updated the results of last week’s Open Primary today (June 13 @ 5 pm).  Perez is behind Republican candidate Jose “Joe” Moreno, who currently has 5,933 votes to Perez’ 5,649 votes.  With very few votes left to count, it is highly unlikely that Perez will catch up.

Tefere Gebre, the unctuous executive director of the Orange County Federation of Labor, went nuts on election night when he saw that his boy Perez was losing.  O.C. Register reporter Andrew Galvin was hanging out with Gebre, which comes as no surprise to me at all, when Gebre went nuts, dropping multiple “F-bombs” and saying that “Jose Solorio is dead to me.”

Gebre’s behavior was so totally outrageous that even Dan Chmielewski, the editor of the Liberal OC blog, ripped into him, writing that “Gebre should issue a public apology for this unprofessional statements.  If he can’t, he ought to be taken to the woodshed by other union leaders.  If that doesn’t work, he needs to go.  Fired.  Resignation.”

Chmielewski then wrote a follow-up post defending Solorio, where he stated that: “State Rep. Jose Solorio, who was declared “dead to me” by OC Labor Fed chief Tefere Gebre on primary night for the sin of not backing Labor activist Julio Perez, has a 93 percent pro-Labor voting record in Sacramento and an 89 percent pro-labor rating throughout his assembly career according to Cal Labor Fed records.”

As Chmielewski pointed out, he comes from a union family, and he is pro-labor, so he didn’t rip Gebre lightly.  But he is right, Gebre’s conduct was despicable and he really needs to go.

But beyond that, the sick fact is that Gebre has lost his mind.  Orange County is not liberal at all.  Even the Democratic center of the County is fairly moderate – note that the voters in the 69th Assembly District selected corporate Democrat Tom Daly and Republican Moreno over the more liberal Perez, and the other Democrats, Santa Ana Council Member Michele Martinez (who is actually pretty moderate) and Occupy supporter Francisco Barragan.

Solorio agrees with that Central Orange County is not liberal, as he told the labor-supported Voice of OC that “the 69th is more moderate than Gebre and others think.”  He pointed to the results of last week’s primary as proof.

Here are a few more comments by Solorio, from the same Voice of OC article:

Solorio ran down a list of labor’s recent Election Day defeats, including Umberg’s loss to Janet Nguyen in the 2006 supervisor race, Supervisor Shawn Nelson’s victory in 2010, Phu Nguyen’s unsuccessful bid for in the 2010 race for the 68th Assembly seat and a slate of unsuccessful candidates for Anaheim City Council in 2010.

“The labor federation political strategy has failed.,” Solorio said. “And I think the leadership there really needs to look inward to see why they failed and how they begin to have winning strategies and how to work with everybody.”

Amen!  Again, Solorio is spot on.  But he is also likely finished in local politics as he is now termed out and he has to wait two years for State Senator Lou Correa’s seat to open up, in 2014.  By the the only thing the voters will remember about Solorio is that he cost Orange County about $50 million a year in state funding, when he voted with the other Democrats in Sacramento to reallocate that money – having been lied to by liberal Assembly Speaker John Perez.

As I have pointed out repeatedly, Perez never should have run for the 69th A.D.  He was totally unknown to the voters – and when the voters found out how liberal he was most of them backed other candidates instead.  Had labor gotten behind Martinez, who is pro-labor, their money would have put her in the Top Two, and she would have trashed Daly in November.  Instead the Democrats are now stuck with Daly.  But will the Republicans do anything to help Moreno?  Labor should as Moreno is a union member, unlike Daly.

Until Orange County’s labor leaders figure out that ultra-liberal candidates cannot win in Orange County, they will continue to waste money on candidates like Perez – and I imagine that if Gebre hangs on to his job he will have future “F-bomb” laden tirades.  Go ahead Gebre – you are just turning off more voters every time you act like such an ass!