COMMUNITY COMMENTARY:Don’t trust the city’s new majority

Since the municipal election there have been interesting and provocative exchanges on these pages by readers on all sides of the issues. Writer Ila Johnson’s rejoinder to Jay B. Litvak’s response to Mike Berry’s letter on the results of our election was interesting, to say the least.

In this game of pingpong, please allow me to jump in and make it a true doubles match.

Supporters of the Mansoor-Leece victory have been all over the media and local blogs with their “rejoicing,” as Johnson calls it. Whether it’s rejoicing or gloating is clearly in the eyes of the beholder. Although they won the election, the fact remains that 49.7% of the votes cast were not for Mansoor and Leece.

That’s a slim mandate in my book.

All this chest-thumping by the Mansoor-Leece faction only affirms what some of us feared — the further violation of our rights by this majority. There are those of us who opposed Mansoor’s reelection and Leece’s election that felt such a “mandate” would result in an even more aggressive assault on the Latino population in our city, and on the entities that provide a support infrastructure for that demographic group.

I suspect we’ll see a move to further constrict the distribution of Community Development Block Grant funds to those entities. I would not be surprised to see, within the next few months, an attempt to pass an ordinance in Costa Mesa similar to the one passed in Hazleton, Penn., that penalizes employers and property owners for hiring undocumented workers or renting homes and apartments to them.

I also expect another assault on the Orange Coast College Swap Meet — a target of this group a couple of years ago that was successfully rejected at that time.

With an ICE agent now assigned to the Costa Mesa jail, some of the wind has been taken from Mansoor’s sails.

It’s hard for me to believe that the 10,122 people who voted for Mansoor wanted to turn this city into a police state. Johnson referred to some of us on the other side as “sore losers.” I readily acknowledge that I’m not happy with the results of the election. I do not intend to stop observing and commenting on the follies of our municipal leaders simply because they won their seats. If that makes me a sore loser, so be it.

These are truly sad times for our city. To see absolute control taken by a group of self-named “improvers” — whose vision of “improvement” of our city is one with no diversity — sickens many long-time residents and leaders. I fear that, in a couple of years, the electorate will reap what it has sown and find its own rights trampled. Many of those who can leave will do so.

The rest will remain, to find themselves under the heel of a virtual dictatorship. As this drama plays out, I’ll do my best to remind you how we got into this mess and to help show the way out by electing people with more moderate viewpoints to the City Council. In the meantime, watch your backs — the new majority is not to be trusted.