🍊 🇺🇸 OC Conservative Brief - 2.10.23

Happy Friday morning, and hope you are enjoying this warm OC February weather!

If you're a new reader, welcome! The OC Conservative Brief is your weekly Friday morning run down of Orange County's local politics from a conservative perspective. If you like what you read, please make sure to subscribe and forward to your friends!

We've got some hot "culture war" content to cover today, and we'll start with a controversial vote in Huntington Beach that made national headlines...

NO PRIDE FLAG, NO PREJUDICE? The Huntington Beach city council stirred up national headlines and emotions this week after it voted 4-3 Tuesday night to bar the LGBT Pride flag from flying over city property, revoking a 2021 decision by the city council allowing the flag to fly during Pride month every spring.

Needless to say, some people are upset. Democrat David Min, who is running for Congress in California's 47th district which includes Huntington Beach, pounced on the issue and sent staff to the city council hearing. Local LGBT activists are crying foul.

• "Those four members of the City Council are trying to give speech that LGBT people are not welcomed, they’re not celebrated and they’re not included,” said Aaron McCall, president of the Orange County Young Democrats.

But context matters. Huntington Beach has historically only flown official government flags over City Hall, which is what this ordinance seeks to restore. Proponents of the ordinance claim they are trying to avoid injecting the city into anything that could be perceived as political or divisive. The below quote from city council member Pat Burns, who recommended the ordinance, is notable:

• "We, the City of Huntington Beach, are one community with many different cultures and people. All are equally valued members of our community, and none are to be treated differently or discriminated against. As a municipal organization, the City of Huntington Beach should avoid actions that could easily or mistakenly be perceived as divisive."

• "In keeping with the proper role of municipal government and in the spirit of true unity, the City of Huntington Beach should only fly or display on City-owned property the American, POW/MIA, State of California, and the Huntington Beach City flags. The City should also display the County of Orange flag when the need or occasion requires it."

In my opinion... As I tweeted this week (full disclosure: I am gay), the Pride flag is fun and important, but it is not a symbol of government, and it can certainly be controversial these days depending on what agenda the people flying it are pushing. It would be discriminatory if the city council was barring the Pride flag while allowing other similar ones (i.e. Tea Party flags or Black Lives Matter), but that's not what's going on here. In any case, LGBT equality and acceptance shouldn't be measured based on what flag is - or, in this case, isn't - flying over City Hall.

KATIE PORTER'S SOCIAL(ISM) FAUX PAX... Last week, the U.S. House voted overwhelmingly 328 to 86 for a resolution that condemns the horrors of socialism. Even 109 Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, voted in favor of the resolution...but not Orange County's Katie Porter!

• The resolution read in part: "Congress denounces socialism in all its forms, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America."

When asked by the Orange County Register to explain why she voted no, Porter said that the resolution was a "distraction" (yet she still took the time to vote no) and that she opposed the resolution quoting Thomas Jefferson during Black History Month (that didn't stop Democrats Hakeem Jeffries or Jim Clyburn, who are Black, from voting for it).

Read between the lines! Porter, who is now running for Senate, is no moderate. She is an unapologetic, socialist-Lite progressive and likely voted against the resolution to reinforce her left-wing bona fides for her Senate campaign and endear her to California's liberal Democrat primary voters (one of her main opponents, Pelosi-endorsed Adam Schiff, voted for it).

• This vote would hurt her with Orange County voters...but Porter doesn't have to run for re-election in Orange County again.

Unfortunately, "because I am a socialist sympathizer and I need to win far Left Democrats in my Senate campaign" doesn't make for a compelling justification for her vote to the Orange County Register.

WHAT ARE YOUR KIDS READING? The Orange Unified School District nearly became a national news story this week when it temporarily suspended it's digital library app, Sora, after parents discovered age-inappropriate books being offered to younger students.

• One of the books, titled "A Polar Bear In Love," is about a male polar bear who asks to marry a male baby seal when he’s older.

• Another one, titled "The Music of What Happens," details a sexual assault and includes the words “f**k” and “sh*t.” According to the district's IT department, the book was "checked out 10 times by students in the middle and high school level and from one account at the elementary level multiple times."

According to the district, the "books were improperly classified to the wrong grade level" and the app had some glitches; the app has since been restored. No books were removed from the app itself. But that didn't stop some parents from complaining about "censorship" in the interim; others pointed out that suspending the entire app was disruptive to students' education.

In the meantime, Interim Superintendent Edward Velasquez is recommending that a committee be formed to review app content before they are installed on student devices.

CA-47 UPDATE... The race for the open seat in California's 47th Congressional district (thanks to Katie Porter's decision to run for Senate) continues to generate buzz in Orange County and in Washington on both sides of the aisle:

• The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the campaign arm for House Republicans, said this week that CA-47 will be a top target for 2024, viewing the Porter retirement as an opening to flip the seat back to GOP hands.

• Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) groups are pushing for an Asian American candidate to win the seat given the district's demographics; the political arm of Asian American Democrats in Congress recently endorsed state Sen. David Min.

• Local Democrat activist Joanna Weiss announced her campaign for the seat this week.

As a refresher, Porter has endorsed Sen. Davin Min as her successor. Harley Rouda, who briefly represented the area for one term before being defeated in 2020, is also running again. On the Republican side, Scott Baugh (who narrowly lost last year) is going for round two.

Not sure if you live in the 47th Congressional district? We got you covered.

WAIT, THERE'S MORE...

🗳️ Regarding the looming recall of two Santa Ana city council Democrats, the chair of the recall campaign committees penned an op-ed in the Register explaining the effort: "We are seeking to recall Lopez and Phan for their part in advancing extreme policies that harmful to our neighborhoods and undermine the strides Santa Ana has been making in improving our quality of life. Their palpable hostility to law enforcement is one aspect of their destructive record — but there is more."

🛢️ Get ready for another referendum! Organizers backed by the energy industry submitted enough signatures to put a halt to a new California law banning the construction of new oil and gas wells near schools, homes, and other community hubs and put it on the ballot as a referendum in 2024.

• Between this and the success in putting California's new fast food minimum wage law on the ballot in 2024 (which we covered a few weeks ago), progressive Democrats are growing "alarmed" at the recent flex by the business industry.

🐘 If you're looking for a deeper dive on how and where Republican performance in California in 2022 helped the GOP win back the House, the Washington Examiner has a (long) read on the topic.

🚿 For a positive start to the day, the Los Angeles Times has an interesting read about how Orange County's Sanitation District is utilizing ground-breaking technology to convert waste water into clean water and clean energy.

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Have a tip on a news item in Orange County conservatives should know about? Drop me a line at [email protected]