Rossmoor voters strongly reject cityhood in Orange County
CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS 2008
Elsewhere in Orange County, Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido is reelected. Irvine elects Sukhee Kang mayor and backs Measure R to control Great Park.
An effort to turn a suburban neighborhood into Orange County's 35th city was overwhelmingly rejected as Rossmoor residents voted more than 2 to 1 to remain an unincorporated county island.
The 1.6-square-mile sliver of land between Seal Beach and Los Alamitos would have been a self-sufficient entity supported by a new utility tax.
Proponents of Measure U argued that cityhood meant local control and better services. Opponents said that the measure would mean an extra burden for taxpayers, and that Rossmoor's commercial sales tax revenue -- only $317,00 last year -- was too little to support cityhood. Rossmoor, a 1950s-era suburb with 10,500 residents and one small retail center, would have been the second-smallest city in Orange County, and the first to achieve cityhood since Aliso Viejo incorporated in 2001.
Only Rossmoor's 7,400 registered voters were allowed to vote on the question; just 28% of residents who cast ballots supported cityhood. One of the last remaining unincorporated areas in the county, Rossmoor has a $1-million budget. In the last fiscal year, it relied on a $600,000 subsidy from Orange County, which has been trying to unload the land since the county's 1994 bankruptcy.
In Santa Ana, veteran Mayor Miguel Pulido -- who has been at the helm of the city for nearly 14 years--was reelected in a decisive victory with more than 53% of the vote.
Pulido, 52, who was born in Mexico City and became the city's first Latino mayor in 1994, has ridden wide support among neighborhood associations, developers and the police and fire unions to win reelection every two years, often by large margins.
This time, Pulido was challenged by Michele Martinez, the first sitting council member to seek the mayor's seat in a decade. Martinez, a 29-year-old rookie councilwoman and self-employed consultant, appealed to voters in the city of 350,000 by drawing on her background.
She grew up in a family troubled by drugs in a gang-ridden section of Santa Ana. She portrayed Pulido as a complacent, tough-to-reach establishment figure, a leader out of touch with a city struggling with poverty, unemployment and resurgent gang violence, which has contributed to about two dozen homicides this year.
Pulido said he never doubted the outcome of the race, but Martinez's challenge prompted more aggressive campaigning than in previous years.
"We worked harder, but I think it paid off," Pulido said at his reelection party Tuesday night.
