Democracy by the Numbers (Red Emma)

     WELL, DISSENT READERS, it’s been quite a while now, and the editors of the Register have failed to respond to my short, once-topical, middle-brow, politically tame, and at least mildly amusing commentary (see below). Maybe they think their regular commentator, Larry Elder, is funnier than Red Emma. 

     Larry sure says some funny things on his radio show—about the war and tazering kids and locking up Arabs. The nice folks at the LA Times thanked me, offering that the essay was indeed clever but didn’t quite work for them. I’d send it along to the OC Weekly now, but those folks are all more clever than I am, and besides, the people who I imagined needed to read my wacky brand of broad satire or sophomoric humor don’t read the OC Weekly, though I certainly hope they at least check out the ads in the back. Cheri is new in town. Tanya is waiting for your call. 

     In addition to posting it below, I am now also sending my commentary along to the new Al Jezeera English network, Women’s Wear Monthly, and High Times. Happy Thanksgiving. —Red Emma

Democracy by the Numbers 

     It’s been a week now. Post-election analysis of the vote by television, radio and internet pundits suggests that Democrats won big because of perceived GOP corruption, Bush’s war, Congressional scandal, and hypocrisy. 

     I beg to differ. That nearly 15,000 voters in Area 2 of the Rancho Santiago Community College District voted for candidate Steve Rocco may not mean anything to you. You don’t reside in eastern Orange County, don’t live with these folks—whoever they are. You don’t run into them at the market or while walking the dog—again, whoever they are. Of course, you probably don’t accept the proven fact that aliens occupy Area 51 of the Southern Nevada desert. It probably doesn’t impress you that, four hundred years ago, Nostradamus actually predicted the birth and subsequent election of Mr. Rocco to the Board of the Orange Unified School District (true!) or that there is no interchange connecting the southbound 55 to the southbound 5. 

     But riddle me this: Remember that scandal over letters mailed anonymously by Republican candidate Tan Nguyen to potential “Latino” voters in a local congressional race? It turns out that the number of Tan letters was almost exactly the number of voters giving the notorious Mr. Rocco their “aye”!  

     Accident? Coincidence? I think not. And no more inexplicable than the fact that the former head of OC’s Republican Party received a $15,000 (that’s right, 15,000) consulting fee from Nguyen. Or that, two years ago, Orange voters elected Mr. Rocco, a man nobody had ever seen, to a seat on their city school board because he wasn’t the candidate endorsed by the dreaded liberal teacher’s union, a Mexican-American county ranger. Or that the OC Register’s chief editorial writer boasted that he’d voted for Rocco to challenge the status quo. Or that a neighbor of ours voted for Rocco “to shake things up.” 

     Mr. Nguyen was onto something, and it’s all about the numbers. Just to review: Roccoistas voted for a guy who wears a longshoreman’s cap, a beard with no moustache, and sunglasses. —A recluse who some have suggested is Andy Kauffman playing his best prank, whose vanity press autobiography reveals “secret chronicles and public-record accounts of corruption, murder and scandal of corporate and political California, written by America’s premier legal technician.” —A man who has alleged that Albertson’s (yes, Albertson’s) has tried to murder him. 

     The Rancho Santiago college district board election offers an hypothesis about democracy. It is this. At any given moment, an admittedly fluid rubric about the voting demographic may be applied, indeed must be applied:

Some percentage of the voterate is certifiably insane.

And in Orange County this number is a little higher than elsewhere, perhaps as high as one in four. Indeed, the League of Women Voters confirms that 26% of those casting votes in the college district did so for Rocco, who, it notes, “did not respond to our request for information.” And why would he? Organizing the insane, endorsing the insane, hitting up the insane for political endorsements, voting the Insane Candidate to “shake things up,” happens here without spending a minute at a candidate’s forum, a dime on advertising, or a calorie walking a precinct or printing a handbill. Steve Rocco’s loss is a gain. 

     His performance in a local community college district race should be a heads up for party bosses, editorial writers, and voters, at least in Orange County. This constituency can be relied upon, and should not be overlooked. It took a nutty anti-immigrant candidate and an experiment in direct, if insane democracy to prove the undeniable political power of an often-overlooked constituency. Insane people.

     Out here in eastern Orange County, we should expect—as Nostradamus also predicted—a campaign that will make history: Rocco for Assembly. -RE