Democratic Club
by Mary Larson
LW contributor
The LW Democratic Club welcomed Pete Hardin as its keynote speaker at its last meeting. Hardin is running for election as Orange County District Attorney. His campaign is centered on implementing modern criminal justice policies that will enhance safety while reducing costly overreliance on incarceration. Democrats from throughout the county are already actively working to support his election in the upcoming June 2022 primary. He will be running against the incumbent Republican Todd Spitzer. One of the club’s immediate goals is to continue countering misinformation about the potential recall of three members of the Los Alamitos Unified School District Board of Trustees. Leisure World voters are encouraged not to sign petitions to recall Chris Forehan (District 2), Scott Fayette (District 4) or Meg Cutuli (District 5). All three of these board members were elected in 2020. The club believes that the three board members, along with the two who will be running for re-election in the 2022 General Election, have been doing an outstanding job of governing the school district in these troubled times.
There are many reasons why the LW Democratic Club believes the potential recall should be rejected, including the need to continue wearing masks. The elective Ethnic Studies course, now being successfully implemented at Los Alamitos, with 25 students enrolled, is not Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT is not being taught in high schools across the country. The Los Alamitos school district was one of the first in Orange County to get students back to in-person learning under the state guidelines.
The club is also closely following the Orange County Board of Supervisors’ redistricting efforts. At its last meeting, Democratic Supervisor Katrina Foley registered serious questions about the process to date. Formal adoption of new voting districts for election to the Board of Supervisors will have taken place at a special meeting by the time this article appears intheLWWeekly. Clubleaders have been monitoring these meetings by phone and will include a report on the outcome in an upcoming article.
The club is also monitoring attempts to put propositions on the 2022 ballots. To date, only three measures have received the required number of signatures and have been verified by the county elections officials. An attempt to qualify a proposition to divert taxpayer funding away from public schools in order to fund parochial and other private schools is currently underway. The club will be opposing this effort.
••• LW Democrats and supporters interested in more in-depth, reporting on the issues are invited to subscribe to the club’s free electronic newsletter. Email democraticclubsblw@gmail.com
or call editor Mary Larson at (562) 296-8521.
