Republican Multimillionaire Gil Cisneros Is Wrecking The Orange County Democratic Party

Cisneros

CA-39, primarily in northeast Orange County, is viewed as a prime target for Democrats, The longtime incumbent, Ed Royce knew he wouldn’t win and announced his retirement. Although the PVI is “even,” Hillary beat Trump in the district 51.5% to 42.9%%. Unfortunately elements at the DCCC recruited 2 completely incompetent, self-funding multi-millionaires from outside the district, Gil Cisneros (who by December 31 had reported spending $1,352,762 of his lottery winnings) and Mai-Khanh Tran (who had wasted $230,000 of her money on the race). And neither of them is even the biggest of the self-funders trying to buy a congressional seat. Andy Thorburn, also from another district, spent $2,335,900 of his own as of December 31. What percentage of small individual contributions went to each of them and to the normal non-self-funding candidate who was actually born and raised and lives in CA-39?

• Andy Thorburn- 0.57%
• Gil Cisneros- 1.76%
• Mai-Khanh Tran- 12.48%
• Sam Jammal- 27.29%

So what’s “normal?” In Wisconsin, Randy Bryce is taking on Paul Ryan. As of December 31, Ryan had gotten 5.6% of his campaign funds from small individual donors and Randy Bryce had gotten 72.8%. Or let’s look at a neighboring district, CA-45:

• Mimi Waters (R)- 5.41%
• Brian Forde (D)- 4.92%
• Katie Porter (D)- 23.74%
• David Min (New Dem)- 13.37%
• Kia Hamadanchy- 14.31%

I don’t know if the amount a candidate gets from small donors— or the number of small donors— really shows the enthusiasm for a candidate or not. But it sure shows something compared too the self-financers. But let’s go back to CA-39 for a second. Two of the worst self-funders in the state— and the country— this cycle are Andy Thorburn, who has persuaded a large number of progressive groups that he’s a progressive, and Gil Cisneros, the DCCC candidate. They have begun turning on each other… or, more accurately, Cisneros, the ridiculous lottery winner with no support from anyone other that people he’s given money, has been smearing Thorburn, DCCC-style.

Cisneros sent out a very expensive mailer that attempts to shred the other multimillionaire as a tax evader. Cisneros is a lifelong Republican, pretending to be a Democrat, who doesn’t understand that Democratic primary voters are not like Republican primary voters. Democratic primary voters hate attacks between Democrats, even while Republican primary voters love attacks between Republicans. Look what happened in TX-07 when the DCCC went after progressive Laura Moser— it won her a place in the runoff, plus a tidal wave of contributions. But Cisneros plodded on anyway: “We already have a con man in the White House. We don’t need one representing the 39th District. Andy Thorburn’s career is an unbroken chain of tax evasion, financial mismanagement, and misreprersentation.” This is coming from someone who has constantly been caught in outright lies and an unending stream of misrepresentations. Cisneros in more like Trump than any other Democrat running for Congress anywhere in America.

These are the claims he made against Thorburn:

• Thorburn is running for office on his record of being a teacher but his only teaching experience was four decades ago in New Jersey. He is in fact an insurance executive who has bankrupted numerous companies, failed to pay his taxes, and made a fortune that he is now spending to misrepresent himself to voters.
• Thorburn says he’s a successful businessman but in fact he has a history of illegal and unethical business misconduct. He led a company that was forced to pay over 234 thousand dollars for breach of contract to a customer who asserts Thorburn defrauded him. A former business partner asserts Thorburn used fraud and defamation to push him out of their business and says that Thorburn did not pay taxes or use normal account procedures, used offshore bank accounts, and used insurance ratings improperly.
• Thorburn says he supports big government policies but won’t pay his fair share in taxes to fund these policies. He failed to pay his taxes for five years and has faced nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in federal tax liens. Thorburn and two of his businesses filed for bankruptcy. When wealthy men like Thorburn fail to live up to their responsibilities, the burden is shifted to ordinary families who pay their taxes. 

The report itself is 28 pages of the kind of opposition research that Republicans will be able to use to defeat Thorburn if he gets the nomination. This comes right out of the arsenal of sleaze bag DCCC political director Jason Bresler. He had signaled that if Thorburn didn’t get out of the CA-39 race, the DCCC would destroy him. It looks like he did it through his Clem Kadiddlehopper excuse for a candidate.



This is the cached website the DCCC designed for Cisneros to use in his attack against Thorburn. They are such scumbags-- but also stupider than shit and unable to cover their own tracks. This is the site that has been taken down-- "Committee name here" written in the disclaimer box-- instead of anybody's disclaimer. Watch them screw up another race!

Meanwhile Cisneros sued the other candidates for something spurious, the kind of frivolous law suit Republicans use against each other all the time but that Democrats try to avoid. Remember, Cisneros has invested a lot of money in Walmart and oil stocks and is also a slumlord. Like Trump, Cisneros is a funny and ridiculous character, and really dumb. His high-priced consultant-run campaign just put out a new TV ad showing he can read a script that makes him sound almost like a Democrat. Yeah, he’ll "stand up to the NRA" just like real Democrats do. But he owns something like $10 million in iShares, a mutual funds company that invests in the gun industry. That’s Gil! And have you seen the Climate Hawks Vote call for Cisneros to divest from his approximately million dollars worth of oil stocks? But at least his consultants are teaching him to sound like a Democrat.

I reached out to Mac Zilber, who works with Thorburn. His statement was kind of boiler plate considering the DCCC’s role in this Cisneros bullshit: "It comes as no surprise that a Republican like Gil Cisneros is making up lies about a progressive Democrat-- that's what Republicans do. Gil Cisneros is misleading voters to distract from the fact that he invests his lottery millions in gun stocks and tobacco-- that is, when he's not donating that money to Republicans." Zilber also pointed me to a Setting the Record Straight page that exposes the lies Cisneros and the DCCC are spreading about Thorburn. And below is the mailer Thorburn sent to labor union members on Gil, revenge I'm assuming... but who knows? My suggestion... get behind Sam Jammal.