As readers who saw Jon’s commentary yesterday know, Disney is circulating a ballot-box zoning initiative designed to prevent SunCal Companies from developing a condominium project within the Anaheim Resort District [full disclosure: I’m a member of the consulting team for SunCal’s project].

Disney has hired petition circulators to gather the 20,000 signatures necessary to place their initiative on the February 2008 ballot. During the last two weeks they’ve been posted at several shopping centers in Anaheim. On several occasion I drove around Anaheim visiting these shopping centers and getting pitched by these signature gatherers.

Interestingly, I never say Disney circulators at any of the several supermarkets, like Gigante, Northgate Markets or Jax Markets, that cater to Anaheim’s working-class Latinos. That can be explained, in part, by the sales pitch invariably used by the circulators to entice Anaheim residents to sign the petitions:

I posted about this yesterday on Red County/OC Blog, recounting my conversations with these circulators and posting some video interviews with them. One of them even said the approval of SunCal’s project could ultimately lead to Disneyland leaving Anaheim!

Here’s one of my favorite circulator pitches:

ME: "Why does Disney feel the residential development hurts them?"

SIGNATURE GATHERER: "You know about Knott’s Berry Farm, right?"

ME: "Yeah."

SIGNATURE: "You know about Beach Boulevard, right?"

ME: "Yeah."

SIGNATURE GATHERER: "They don’t want another Beach Boulevard. You understand what I’m saying? They don’t want prostitutes. They don’t want people with drugs around. But Beach Boulevard’s full of that."

ME: "Does housing bring in prostitutes?"

SIGNATURE GATHERER: "That whole area around Knott’s Berry Farm — there’s low income housing, there’s apartments, there’s condos, there’s all that — so yeah, it does."

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.