Out of the fire: the union PAC comes to its senses

     As you know, in late 2010, SOCCCD trustee John Williams was up to his eyeballs in trouble with his county gig as Public Administrator/Guardian. Explaining that he had health issues, he decided to resign from the board—presumably, to concentrate on trying to save his ass downtown.
     He was replaced by the mild-mannered Mike Meldau, who turned out to be a pretty good trustee.
     Eventually, the OC board of Supes managed to get Williams out of office, though the price was a sweet deal for Orlando Boy that included an agreement not to release what must have been a damning report regarding his office at the county. Brown Boy left. Good riddance.
     By that point, Williams was the (latest) poster child for incompetent and corrupt OC government, and, ipso facto, he was a huge embarrassment for the local GOP, some of the past and present leaders of which created and maintained the cronyistic system that brought Orange Countians the likes of Sheriff Mike Carona, Treasurer Chriss Street, Public Administrator John Williams, and many other boobs, rascals, and creeps.
     But John Williams is a shameless bastard, and a guy who, despite his stupidity, does possess a range of minor crafty capacities, including his instinctive sense that he can continue to count on his utterly clueless red-countied, blue-haired constituency, even as his corruption and incompetence has become obvious to intelligent beings everywhere. When some of his long-time supporters in the SOCCCD faculty union—the union had sidled up to him for twenty years, solely owing to his support of the faculty contract (the cheap bastard was willing to tweak his “fiscal conservatism” for the sake of the chump change necessary to run a trustee campaign)—dropped by to suggest his running to regain his seat for the area 7 trustee seat, he saw his chance to complement his very comfy circumstances with a return to his old office, an undemanding job that, nonetheless, had for decades provided him with great benefits and innumerable taxpayer-paid trips to Orlando, Florida.
     He filed.
     A remnant of the corrupt union regulars who controlled the organization during the 1990s then went to work, exploiting faculty’s traditional inattention during summer. They got themselves on the union PAC and managed to get that group to recommend endorsing you-know-who.
     Then disaster struck. Meldau had no stomach for a fight. As an incumbent, he would have been a shoo-in. But it was no use: he wasn't going forward. That meant that Williams had a fighting chance to regain his seat. (For a while there, it looked like Williams would be unopposed! As it turned out, he has three competitors, at least one of whom—Tim Jemal (see)—has attracted significant endorsements.)
     Meanwhile, new union leadership recognized that it was now sitting on a potential powder keg. That crew arranged to put off the Rep Council decision whether to accept the PAC recommendation with regard to area 7 until Sept 10. That bought some time.
     (Comic relief: Supervisor-elect Todd Spitzer sued Williams for lying on his candidate statement, and the judge ruled that Williams must delete the preposterous claim that the OC Grand Jury praised his office.)
     Then (I gather), some time recently, the few sentient beings on the PAC managed to persuade one or two others of the group to vote to “unrecommend” endorsement of Williams. I have no idea how that happened, though I can imagine. In any case, it now appears that the PAC recommendation with regard to area 7 is “no endorsement.”
     Excellent.
     The meeting in which the Rep Council will decide whether to go along with the new recommendation will be at IVC, on Monday (the 10th). Stay tuned.

UPDATE (9/10): During the Sept. 10 Rep Council meeting, faculty were informed that the Ex. committee had voted to accept the PAC's last recommendation (which included no suggestion that Williams be endorsed). The FA Prez described late summer as a "roller coaster ride"—an allusion, I think, to the endorsement fiasco, which (evidently) came about owing to thebylaws, which entitle former FA Presidents to join the PAC. Some of those oldsters showed up to promote Williams. Later, of course, this was undone.