Neeki Media, Part 3: Convenient Solutions, Inconvenient Cronies

Author's note: Neeki Moatazedi is running against Sonny Morper to represent District 2 on the Lake Forest City Council. Moatazedi is a three-year resident and project manager for Southern California Gas Company; Morper is a retired educator who has lived in Lake Forest for 40 years.

Neeki Moatazedi closed her Oct. 22 press conference before Los Angeles TV stations by calling on Sonny Morper to “show accountability for his poor judgement in seeking the support of unscrupulous individuals,” apparently forgetting about her own team of unscrupulous supporters who engaged in their own character assassination and lies to get elected and to deceive their constituents; the lies of Councilman Scott Voigts are well-documented, and his calling Morper a liar during his interview with media was the height of hypocrisy.

Additionally, Moatazedi called for voters to “demand my opponent and Mayor Gardner step out of the race for their blatant participation in illegal campaign tactics.”

That would have been extremely convenient, but it was never a realistic solution. It would also cede control of the city council to Moatazedi, Mark Tettemer, Dwight Robinson and Voigts -- all candidates whose election campaigns have been bolstered at one time or another by developers and who have provided no hint that they intend to comply with guidelines set by the Opportunities Study Area, which precludes development from negatively impacting schools and infrastructure, including traffic. About 4,750 homes of a potential 5,000 homes under the OSA have been OK’d; about 1,500 homes have yet to be built. Should Toll Brothers' 800-home project at Nakase Brothers Nursery be approved on top of already overcrowded schools, that would cumulatively add about 2,300 as-yet unbuilt homes to the area.

UNDERSTANDING CRONYISM

The day after Moatazedi addressed the Los Angeles media, with a reach of 17.4 million, she interviewed with Stan Yombo of Lake Forest Community Views and News: “I didn’t want to run because … I wanted my ego to be boosted, I’m running because I really care about what’s going on, it’s really bad, and people don’t realize the level of cronyism and so I just want to step in and do the right thing.”

Moatazedi registered to vote in Lake Forest on Sept. 28, 2017 -- less than a month before the deadline to file papers to run in the special election to replace recalled Councilman Andrew Hamilton.

Moatazedi is the one who doesn’t understand the level of cronyism. She wants to lump Morper in with former Councilman Adam Nick and Mayor Jim Gardner and call that cronyism.

If she had been more engaged the past three years that she’s been a resident of Lake Forest, if she had been paying attention then or had vetted her supporters now, she would know that the real cronyism that impacted Lake Forest was a city council that included Robinson, Voigts, and Hamilton, who voted together with eye-raising regularity -- and that Robinson and Voigts are treating her like Hamilton 2.0 to again gain control of the council.

If Moatazedi had the 40 years of residency in Lake Forest, the 40 years of institutional knowledge that Morper has, she might know that Robinson was Voigts’ campaign manager, that Robinson brought along Nick, Hamilton, and Francisco Barajas to the city council race before bringing her along. Robinson didn't keep his campaign promises, Voigts is a well-documented liar, Nick turned on Robinson and was demonized for it, Hamilton voted in lockstep and created a chasm between the council and residents, and Barajas was basically invisible when Robinson & Co. made him a commissioner on Parks and Recreation.

If Moatazedi was clued in to Lake Forest, she might know that despite a population increase since Tettemer left the council in 2012, crime has dropped 31 percent -- and it’s dropped 19 percent since Gardner joined the council, a statistic even Voigts is using in his campaign literature for his unopposed run in District 3.

If Moatazedi was as aware of cronyism as she wants you to believe, she would recognize that Robinson, Voigts and Hamilton -- her people -- had failed to support measures of fiscal responsibility in the past and had turned their back on an entire neighborhood on a public safety issue in 2015, and that $418,000 spent on recalls was an investment in better government that ultimately yielded $1 million in savings when the council -- with newly-elected Tom Cagley instead of Hamilton -- agreed to pay off the Alton Parkway bond; there were no guarantees that would have happened before the recall because the pre-recall council had not always made such decisions.

If Moatazedi was really ready for a leadership position, she would have recognized that the “cronies” Gardner and Nick were the ones who actually listened to the people to try to fix Saddleback Ranch Road, that they listened to city employees and voted against a development that city employees said wasn’t in its best interests, that they wanted the city administrators to cut 5 percent of fat from their budget to save $2 million annually, that they wanted a no-kill animal shelter and didn’t lock the city into a costly 10-year contract with the county’s killing machine, that they wanted an audit of services to ensure they were getting the maximum benefit from a police services contract that’s increasing by $1 million annually without any additional officers.

Moatazedi, if she knew what she was talking about, would know Gardner and Nick were fighting for those things and Robinson and Voigts, who were supporting her at her press conference, were working against them as part of a council majority. That's the cronyism that created the discord, the so-called dysfunction and incivility that Mark Tettemer has latched on to in his campaign rhetoric.

Yet Moatazedi has turned a blind eye to Robinson and Voigts being part of an incestuous political relationship with meddlesome OC Republican Party Chairman Fred Whitaker, Irvine Mayor Don Wagner (he’s Voigts’ boss) and the developer-backed OC GOP. If Moatazedi wanted to understand Lake Forest cronyism, she would have read this article that shines a light on Robinson and Voigts and their dubious connections.

Moatazedi is apparently in the dark that Robinson, Voigts and Hamilton voted with each other about 85 percent of the time on issues that weren’t unanimous, and that the guy who was recalled only voted separately from Robinson and Voigts once the first two years on the council, and beginning the night he was served a recall notice he voted separately six of the next seven meetings. Does she think that's a coincidence?

Moatazedi, if she understood the issues and the people, would understand that Cagley in his 10 months on the council would vote independently because of his character and integrity; in fact, he has voted more often with Robinson than he did with Gardner, even though Moatazedi said Cagley would be a "puppet" in a Jan. 3 post on Facebook:

"Disappointed the city elected someone who is a puppet (Cagley) to a woman who had a personal vendetta against a council member. My, what a tangled mess. Electing an 80 year old who has yet to say what he will do for our city is quite the story. Talk about establishment politics at its peak. WOW!"

Never mind that Cagley isn't 80 years old, understand that everything Moatazedi says she will do for Lake Forest is redundant; the mechanisms are already in place to fulfill her "vision." She's surrounded by so many party Republicans right now she's wallowing in establishment politics.

If Moatazedi had a grasp of the community, she might understand that she is dismissing the sins of her own band of cronies in favor of targets -- Nick and Gardner, although they were never a majority -- whose voting record clearly showed a greater connection with the people who elected them. "The tangled mess" is with Moatazedi supporters, and she's already stuck in that web of deceit.

Moatazedi is seeking election to join the cronies Robinson and Voigts, who do the bidding of Whitaker and the county's supervisors. That's "the tangled mess ... (of) establishment politics." But Moatazedi is too inexperienced, too lacking in institutional knowledge, to know that. And if she does, and she’s still arguing that point, then she’s part of the problem.

For being subject to a mailer that inaccurately said she had a criminal record, Moatazedi may have deserved some sympathy, but she does not deserve anyone's sympathy vote.

She looked right at the camera and said she was the "truth and transparency" candidate, but she hasn't shown that side of herself yet.

For all the credentials she claims, she lacks the life experience to see through the bull poop that's fortifying the walls around her.