I’ve been watching elections since Lyndon Johnson smeared Barry Goldwater in 1964. Even “Landslide Lyndon” had nothing on the sleaze thrown by the public-employee unions against John Moorlach in the March 9 election for supervisor in Orange County’s 2nd District.
Everybody knows John as an upright Christian man. A loving and loyal husband, father and grandfather. A friend to hundreds. Someone who, if California were run even halfway right, would be governor. He’d be finding a way to get the state out of the more than $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities suffered under decades of Democratic misrule. Much as he pulled OC out of the 1994 bankruptcy he had warned about.
The union lies against him were so disgusting I won’t describe them. But I could see firsthand how they physically pained this good man, and his lovely wife, Trina.
The culprits: The Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs. The Orange County Employees Association. The Orange County Attorneys Association. The State Building and Construction Trades Council of California. As John Lennon shouted 50 years ago, “How do you sleep?”
Notice how these defilers operate. Their money for sleaze campaigns comes from union dues. Which are paid by taxpayers. Taxes are grabbed with a gun to your head. If you don’t pay, they seize your property and slam you in jail. The stolen money then is used against you by electing union stooges like Katrina Foley, who won on Tuesday. Who then vote to spike luxury pay, perks and pensions for the union shirkers. Then raise taxes.
It’s not democracy. It’s a joke. Yet the joke will be on the union members. Because the next recession is going to be huge. It will crater dozens of municipal and school district budgets across this spendthrift state. Tax increases only will drive more taxpayers to other states. Revenues will crash.
Instead of pillorying Moorlach, the unions should have listened to him. Moorlach’s famous financial reports showed Foley, as mayor of Costa Mesa, presided over the worst fiscal condition of any of Orange County’s 34 cities. The question now is whether the City of the Arts races to bankruptcy before Orange County.
In interviews, Moorlach has thrown up his hands at reform attempts. He lamented the unions are so blind, only federal bankruptcy courts will be able to solve the problems. As with Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy, pensions will be “haircut” sharply. So much, fellas, for the horse ranch in Idaho. How’s that condo on the Salton Sea?
Let’s not forget the Republicans who split the GOP vote, throwing the election to the Democrats, Kevin Muldoon and Michael Vo: Et tu, Brute?
I first met Moorlach after the 1994 OC bankruptcy when he visited us at the Register, in the middle of my nearly three decades writing editorials. He outlined his recovery plans – without a tax increase.
After that, I called him about various state and local budget matters perhaps a hundred times when he was OC treasurer-tax collector, then supervisor. He provided insight not just on OC policies, but on all types of state and local budget issues. I learned if I called at 8:30 am, no staffers were in the office and I could ring through. He always started with a joke.
After I left the Register in 2016, he hired me as his press secretary in 2017 until he lost his Senate seat last year. I’ve never met a finer public servant.
Godspeed, Johannes Meindert Willem Moorlach.
John Seiler wrote around 5,000 editorials and columns for the Register from 1987 to 2016.
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