Foes in Santa Ana’s Measure C Fight Try to Settle Differences

Opposing factions in the recent dispute over Measure C, a ballot initiative to restructure Santa Ana’s government, met privately Monday night seeking to reconcile their differences.

Measure C, which lost by only 282 votes out of several thousand in the June 3 election, called for election of city councilmen by ward rather than citywide and for election of the mayor by the voters rather than by the councilmen.

“I called this meeting tonight as an individual citizen to see if we could work something out, some sort of an agreement,” said lawyer Michael J. Silvas.

Silvas said representatives of the political action committee of the Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce and members of the Good Government Committee, both of which opposed Measure C, were at the meeting.

Representatives of pro-Measure C forces, including the Santa Ana Merged Society of Neighbors (SAMSON), were also at the private meeting at Silvas’ office.

SAMSON was the driving force behind getting Measure C on the June 3 ballot. Its organizers have said they are angry at the Good Government Committee--which includes many Chamber of Commerce members--for having mailed out “racist campaign literature” urging the defeat of Measure C.

However, the Good Government Committee denied that its mailer was racist. Among various arguments against Measure C, the mailer warned voters of “swarming multitudes about to occupy” Santa Ana.

Silvas, who is chairman of the Hispanic Affairs Council of the Chamber of Commerce, said he had sponsored the Monday meeting strictly “on my own,” adding that if harmony could be reached between the opposing Measure C factions, then “some sort of agreement on a proposed change (in Santa Ana city government) might be the result.”

Latino activists who had supported Measure C charged at a June 6 meeting of the council that the chamber had a role in the “racist” campaign literature against the ballot measure.

SAMSON members have already announced that the group is seeking a second ballot measure, this one for the November election, to change how city councilmen and the mayor are elected.