Mad Dog Norma

Goddess of Pomona had a nice find Sunday. The Pomona blog posted a photo of Pomona Mayor Norma Torres' State Assembly District 61 campaign office at Garey and 2nd St. in Pomona next to the Joey's Bar-B-Que.

Norma's quite the climber and really embodies the best arguments against safe districts. One knock against her is that from the moment she got elected to local office, she's been trying to scheme her way out of it. We actually heard this mentioned as an endorsement - maybe if she gets to higher office, she'll get more pork for her Pomona constituents. Huh? If they buy that one, Mencken might have been right about the American public.

In a competitive district, Torres would be too incompetent and inarticulate to stand a chance. In a safe district, she simply has to be anointed by the incumbent, former Pomona Mayor Nell Soto, cozy up to the right local and state party officials, and she's in.

Torres, as we and others have noted, is the person we have to thank for having Xavier Alvarez, AKA Rambo, as Pomona's representative on the local Three Valleys Municipal Water District Board. Alvarez, is currently awaiting trial on federal charges of lying about being a Medal of Honor recipient. Alvarez also falsely claimed to be married to his ex-wife so that she could qualify for medical benefits through Three Valleys. The water district censured Alvarez for that last bit.

There may be a method to Torres's madness in foisting Alvarez on the voters of Pomona and environs. Norma may sound goofy, but she's no dummy. She's smart enough to backfill the local positions with people who will be loyal to her. Unfortunately, that means finding people less bright than her who won't represent challenges to Torres. Hence Alvarez.

Below is video of Torres in action at a UCLA rally for Barack Obama. (Torres is a Democratic Party superdelegate who supports Obama).


Rally Spirit With Mayor Norma Torres


Doesn't the Peter Principle dictate that Torres remain in her police dispatcher position rather than move up to a State Assembly seat? Oh, well, California's loss is Pomona's gain.

We saw Norma's clip and thought to ourselves, say, haven't we seen this before, just in a different gender? Then it hit us:



Way to go, Mad Dog!