Cerritos Republican Club News
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January thru July 4, 2015
Let Freedom Ring Celebration
July 4, 2015
At the Let Freedom Ring Celebration, the Cerritos Republican Club operated a game booth. Several Club members and friends volunteered their time manning the booth from 4 p.m to 9 p.m. Others brought their family to enjoy the activites, music, and food. Candy Yee captured many members at this annual event in the following pictures.
Cerritos City Council Election Results
as of March 6, 2015
The Semi-Official Total Returns of the Cerritos City Council Election (top three are elected) were as follows:
Mark Pulido 3997 Jim Edwards 3459 Naresh Solanki 2949 Frank Yokoyama 2922 Grace Hu 2839 Chuong Vo 2092 Sophia Tse 1973 Sultan Ahmad 602 James Kang 331 Manny Sethi 236
CRC General Meeting
February 10, 2015
The guest speaker for the February General meeting was Republican Party of Los Angeles County (RPLAC) Treasurer John Goya. John ran unsuccessfully against greater odds for Assembly District 70 in Long Beach last year. His message to the Club was that Republican turnout was a paltry 20 percent in the State last year. Had more Republicans voted, then the election results would have been dramatically different. In future elections, we need to register more Republicans and get the registered Republicans to the polls. We can make a difference.
John also mentioned that the State Legislature is working on a bill to close a loophole in Proposition 13, which allows a business to elude higher property taxes by carving up ownership in commercial property purchases so that no one has a majority stake. This would avert a reassessment of the property which would increase its property tax. Plugging this loophole will be costly for businesses throughout the state. He is against closing this loophole.
Mr. Goya talked about another sales tax bill. Democrat State Senator Bob Hertzberg from Van Nuys has introduced a bill (SB 8) to reform California's sales tax structure and extend the state tax to include certain services, which could possibly include legal work, internet usage, advertising, and even dry cleaning. If passed, it is estimated that state revenue would increase by $10 billion per year.
John mentioned that Caltrans has already decided to make part of the carpool lanes of Interstate 405 freeway into toll roads. This would be 14 mile segment from Seal Beach to Costa Mesa.
When asked about why we don't see or read about some of these topics in the media, his response was that the media doesn't want to cover these issues. He even asked how many of us knew that there was a dockworkers strike in Long Beach? It's not in the papers. Joan Pylman mentioned that she had seen over thirty ships anchored in Long Beach harbor waiting to have their cargo removed.
Next, the Club moved on to the business portion. All five Republican candidates were invited to speak two minutes to ask the Club to endorse him/her. Jim Edwards, Grace Hu, and Chuong Vo spoke for themselves. Bruce Barrows spoke on Naresh Solanki who was not able to attend the meeting. No one spoke for Sophia Tse.
Then all candidates were asked to leave the meeting room.
The Club then considered the question of whether to endorse any candidates. A motion was made and seconded to not endorse any candidates. After some discussion, a vote was taken and the motion was defeated. So the Club decided to endorse one or more candidates.
It was then moved and seconded that each person would vote on any candidates whom they wanted the Club to endorse with the requirement that a candidate must obtain the approval of at least two-thirds of the voting members present. This motion was passed.
Each member, excluding the candidates, was given a ballot with all five Republican’s names on it. One could vote for as many candidates as he/she wished.
The ballots were collected. Mark Dameron called out the ballots, as Ben Campos confirmed each ballot, while Joan Pylman used a white board to tally the votes for each of the five candidates. Three candidates obtained the required two-thirds vote. They are Grace Hu, Naresh Solanki, and Chuong Vo. Jim Edwards and Sophia Tse did not garner enough votes to be endorsed.
The final order of business was to determine how the Club would support each endorsed candidate with Club funds. It was moved and seconded to produce and mail a CRC mailer that would announce the Club’s endorsement to all pure Republican households.
A substitute motion was made and seconded to split the total support equally with the three Club endorsed candidates and donate directly to each of the three campaigns. This substitute motion passed. Each candidate was encouraged to produce and mail a flyer that included the Club’s endorsement. This flyer would be sent to pure Republican households.
CRC General Meeting
January 13, 2015
At the January General meeting, the Cerritos Republican Club held a Candidates Forum. All candidates for the three openings in the Cerritos City Council were invited to this Forum. Chuong Vo, Jim Edwards, Grace Hu, Sophia Tse, Sophia Tse, Naresh Solanki, and Sultan Ahmad accepted the invitation to participate in this event. This was also the random order by which the candidates were seated from left to right.
Each candidate gave an opening speech and then Master of Ceremony (MC) Allen Wood asked questions to which all the candidates responded. There was a rotation for which candidate would respond first to each question. After the Q&A, each candidate made a closing statement to end the Forum.
After the Forum, all the candidates posed for a group picture with MC Allen Wood.
