RANDY ECONOMY: MY WORLD: Recount in Bell Gardens City Council Election starts TODAY at 9 a.m. at Registrar of Voters in Norwalk! This is going to be WILD!

Sunday, December 06, 2009

Recount in Bell Gardens City Council Election starts TODAY at 9 a.m. at Registrar of Voters in Norwalk! This is going to be WILD!

Meet Luis Arias. WannaBe City Councilman of Bell Gardens, California.

He wants to be on the Bell Gardens City Council so badly that he has shelled out around $10,000 for a recount of an election he lost by just 5 votes over a month ago.

In the recent November 3rd election, Arias, lost to Incumbent Bell Gardens City Councilman Daniel Crespo. It was one of the dirtiest campaigns ever held here in a city that plays political hardball year in and year out.

Bell Gardens is just one square mile in size, but has had a huge share of political scandals over the past several years. Arias is an ally of ex-Bell Gardens City Councilman Mario Beltran, who resigned earlier this year on embezzlement charges.

Beltran, 31, pleaded to four misdemeanor counts, including failing to file campaign disclosure forms and failing to deposit cash contributions, all violations of the Political Reform Act. Deputy Dist. Atty. Max Hunstman prosecuted that case. The charges against Beltran, stemmed from failure to report to authorities how he was spending campaign funds entrusted to him and his failure to deposit and account for cash given to him. Beltran received four years of probation during which time he may not hold elected or appointed office and may not seek elected office or lobby. Seven counts of grand theft, one count of perjury and one count of failing to deposit cash were dismissed at his sentencing as part of a negotiated plea agreement.

In a previous prosecution in 2007, Beltran (who campaigned heavily for Arias and reelected incumbents/allies Sergio Infanson, and Priscilla Flores) was convicted by a Downey jury of a misdemeanor charge of filing a false police report.

Sources close to the political pulse of Bell Gardens said they are questioning how Arias came up with the large amount of funds needed for this recount ($10,000) .

Anyway, stay tuned. Every political insider from Bell Gardens and East LA politics will converge on the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters in Norwalk today (Monday) beginning at 8:30 a.m. to witness this exercise in democracy.

I'll be there helping Councilman Crespo, who is a Probation Officer with the County of Los Angeles. <<<<<<<<

Stay tuned. This could get wild.

Randy Economy

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Meet Randy Economy

You may know me from my role as the Senior Advisor and Official Media Spokesman for the Recall Gavin Newsom campaign that established a worldwide blitz of interviews. I conducted more than 2,200 media interviews on behalf of “The People’s Recall” during a 10-month period from November 2020 to September 2021. The iconic magazine Mother Jones in a dramatic feature article called me “A ‘Superhero Pirate’ Radio Host, (and) Gavin Newsom’s Strangest—and Most Dangerous—Threat. Meet Randy Economy, the man behind the effort to recall California’s governor.” I appeared on more than 330 media outlets around the world in my capacity with RecallGavin2020. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Newsmax, NBC Nightly News, ABC News, as well as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Politico, and dozens of other media outlets aired featured reports on my work on behalf of “The People’s Recall.” I am and will always consider myself to be a journalist. Sometimes I think I bleed ink. My talents as an Investigative Journalists in California earned me FIVE top awards from the prestigious Los Angeles Press Club in 2013, 2014, and 2016. I am tenacious. My reporting over the years has led to the prosecution of several elected officials in California. While working for a tiny community newspaper in Southeast Los Angeles County, I worked doggedly to expose the biggest public corruption case in Los Angeles County history when I unearthed a massive pay to play scheme inside the Assessor’s Office that led to the arrest of then Assessor John R. Noguez and four others. However, politics has been in my DNA since I was a child. I have worked on more than 300 political campaigns as a consultant and advisor since 1982 for candidates from all sides of the political spectrum including Democrats and Republicans, and even Libertarians. I am also a small business owner, serving as the President and CEO of Hot Water Studio & Production, LLC. My company works with media outlets across the state, nation, and world exposing public corruption via several new media platforms. I have also overcome personal challenges. I am legally blind with zero vision in my right eye and only 40 percent vision remaining in my left eye. I sometimes wear an eyepatch due to my failed vision. (Hence the nickname of “America’s Political Pirate.”