Last night Orange County Republicans filled the main ballroom at the Irvine Hyatt Hotel to capacity for the 8th Annual Flag Day Celebration fundraising event. The "big winner" of the evening was OC GOP Chairman Scott Baugh, who spearheaded a major effort to sell out this event, succeeding as over 1100 Republicans were on hand to hear from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. The event raised over $300,000 for the party, and gave Giuliani the coveted opportunity to bring his message to the single largest annual gathering of GOPers in America’s most Republican county.
My colleague, Matt Cunningham, a FR Orange County blogger on this site, and the proprietor of the venerable Red County OC Blog (where I am a blogger as well) was at this dinner as well (digital camera in hand) and he’ll be cross-posting his take on the event, for you to read all about it. Fellow FR bloggers Adam Probolsky, Ray Haynes, Adam Aleman and Jim Lacy were also on hand, and perhaps we’ll hear from them as well.
I am leaving right after I post this commentary to travel up to Santa Barbara where I will be touring the Reagan Ranch in advance of a major event tomorrow commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" speech — I will be on hand with the FR "FlashCam" so you’ll be able to see some video footage of the event.
I will leave it to the others to go into more detail on last night’s event — but I will say that after a brief introduction by former California GOP Gubernatorial nominee Bill Simon (who is now Giuliani’s policy guru for the campaign) Mayor Giuliani had an engaged ‘chat’ with the crowd. Free from a lot of fiery rhetoric, Giuliani established a conversant tone that left many of those with whom I spoke afterwards telling me that they felt like they had ‘chatted’ with the Presidential aspirant.
Personally, I was really quite pleased that Giuliani had as a central part of his ‘talk’ about why President Bush’s amnesty bill was poor public policy, referring to it as "compromise for compromise’s sake" — and he forcefully declared that the bill would actually make the current situation worse.
Anyways, a few quick takeaways. Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle did a fine job as emcee, even giving Giuliani a Mighty Ducks Stanley Cup cap (which we all noted the Mayor did not put on). Giuliani came in early, speaking before the dinner was served, so he could fly to the east coast right afterwards. This format did not help out California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner (no one wants to follow the ‘big act’), who probably could have helped himself by talking about Presidential politics, the topic which brought every to the dinner (he talked "insurance issues"). Orange Mayor Carolyn Cevecche gets extra points for a stirring invocation to start the evening.
We also heard from Cyrus Nowrasteh, the writer of the documentary "The Path To 9/11" which gained notoriety when scenes were cut out of it by ABC before it aired on television. Nowrasteh aired some of those scenes for the crowd. I don’t remember who introduced him but it was unremarkable.
I will close with a few ‘shout outs’ to FR friends. First to Assemblyman Mike Duvall and his wife, Susie, for hosting me for dinner. Second to Jim Lacy, for bringing me a bottle of 2003 Spanish Grenache wine to enjoy with dinner. Next to the hard working team of staff and volunteers who made the evening a success. And finally to my friend Gary Kutscher whose masterful painting of all of Ronald Reagan’s favorite things raised thousands of dollars for the County GOP.
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