Father Arturo Ferreras, Linda Lobatos Round Out Early Anaheim City Council Candidates
It's election time in Anaheim and this year, the city council race will be redefined by single-member districts. Incumbents Jordan Brandman and Lucille Kring (the top two at-large vote getters in 2012) are running for re-election, but there's some surprising candidates in the early mix.
District 3 has the highest number of registered Latino voters and is considered to be one of the most interesting races this November. Brandman, representing the establishment politics of the Colony, is running in a district he almost murked from going to a vote and from the People's Map altogether. Cal State Long Beach Chicano Studies Professor Jose F. Moreno is expected to jump in the race at some point. Beating him to the punch is Linda Lobatos, a one-time Moreno ally who apparently has soured on him.
Lobatos has been a fixture at Anaheim school board meetings and, the last I knew, is the mother of kids who attend Anaheim High School. Her entrance into the race might complicate things for Moreno because there's now two Spanish surname candidates on the ballot in District 3. "I am hoping to count on you during this magnificent experience," Lobatos says on her Facebook campaign page. "I want to thank you for allowing me to reach out to you and inform you of how we will achieve a better Anaheim together!"
District 3 isn't the only one with interesting filings. District 4 is also going to the vote in November and Kring faces an early opponent there in Father Arturo Ferreras, an activist in the fight for district elections. The intrigue comes because there's long been rumors that UNITE Here Local 11's Martin Lopez, a well-spoken, affable man and frankly stronger candidate, was going to challenge Kring. Will he have to go against Ferreras, his fellow district elections activist to do that or will he defer to him?
The sins of the Father Ferreras come to mind for those who recall that the early embers of Anaheim's riot scorched year of 2012 began well before summer. The first rumblings started in the alleyway of Wakefield on March 6 when police officer Dan Hurtado shot and killed 21-year-old Martin Angel Hernandez with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. OC Human Relations organized a community forum in the days following when many Wakefield residents rose up in protest saying Hernandez had surrendered his shotgun when a bullet struck him in the head.
Having received funding from the Anaheim police department, OC Human Relations failed to be transparent about possible conflicts of interest at the forum held inside the Ponderosa elementary school library. Residents took the opportunity to rail against police brutality in cathartic outbursts, but did Father Ferreras, who was in attendance, see the frustrations of an oppressed community that night? No.
The South District Chair complained in an email (see below) to Mayor Tom Tait that "the mob of Wakefield" took over the meeting. He chided activists from Santa Ana for having no business being there along with CopWatch youth and others who "thrive on chaos and disorder."
Is a person who calls the oppressed of the barrios a "mob" when they speak out against police brutality the right candidate to challenge the rank bigotry of Kring, who applauded the police killing of Robert Moreno in a 2013 Colony listserve posting because it "saved us a trial?"
